(Yonhap Interview) Through refugees, U.S. director tells of horrors in N. Korea

By Shin Hae-in
SEOUL, Feb. 10 (Yonhap) -- For an outsider, the leader of North Korea is a man
who flirts with nuclear weapons, gags critics and would-be defectors by throwing
them in gulags, and controls the nation through his personality cult.
For an insider, he is a "dear leader" loved so greatly they named a flower after
him.
It seems almost ironic then that a documentary drawing its title from the
rarefied red begonia named after the leader on his 46th birthday would lay bare
agonizing accounts of North Korea's prison camps, devastating famine and
repression, as told by people who once called the country home.
Directed by American N.C. Heikin and produced across multiple time zones -- in
France, South Korea and the U.S. -- "Kimjongilia" hit screens at the Sundance
film festival last month.
Through interviews with North Korean refugees who fled the country to escape
varying harsh circumstances, Heikin gives flesh to the grim story behind the
reclusive state's facade.
"I want the audience to feel the refugees as individual human beings and their
stories to go straight to the viewers' hearts," she said in an e-mail interview.
"The point is to get beyond statistics, which carry no emotion, to individuals
who move the viewer to care enough to want to help.
"Emotional engagement is a far more effective means to action than intellectual
engagement. The key message of the film is that in North Korea right now, a human
rights disaster is taking place that the world community must address."
"Kimjongilia," Heikin's first documentary since her debut in 2004, was invited to
this year's World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival,
and will also be screened at South Korea's upcoming Pusan International Film
Festival and the U.S. San Francisco Film Festival.
The film has also been picked up by American distributor Visit Films, which plans
to commence international sales of the film at the upcoming European Film Market.
But a date has not yet been set for when it will hit screens in South Korea,
where it is most likely to strike a tender nerve.
The film touches on the lives of North Korean defectors like Lee Shin, who was
kidnapped and sold into sex slavery in China after she tried to defect, and a
woman identified only as "Mrs. Kim," a former dancer who was sent to a
concentration camp because she knew about an affair between Kim Jong-il and her
best friend.
But "Kimjongilia" overarchingly examines the mass illusion created under North
Korea's totalitarian rule and the human rights abuses required to maintain it.
"I would imagine that if you bring people up from birth to believe in the 'great
leader' and the 'dear leader,' and no contradictory information ever reaches
them, that love and pride will continue," Heikin said.
"I've also been told that in North Korea, if you have a 'subversive' thought, you
don't even share it with another member of your family, let alone a stranger. So
there is probably a great deal of self-censorship."
Heikin first came in touch with the idea for the film at a human rights
conference in Tokyo in 2002, where she met Kang Chol-hwan, a North Korean
defector. After finding out more about North Korea through refugees and NGOs at
the European Union human rights conference in 2006, she decided to make the
documentary to expose the hardships being endured by the country's people.
"I was shocked and horrified by what I was hearing, and felt strongly that the
human rights disaster in North Korea needed to be exposed to the world," she
said. "I was especially sickened by the thought of concentration camps in the
modern world, and the idea of children being incarcerated, starved, beaten and
ultimately killed."
Because North Korea is such a reclusive country, Heikin could not actually take
any footage there -- all of the film was shot in South Korea, where the refugees
live.
"I was forced to think creatively in terms of visual components to the film. This
was what led to using dancers and North Korean propaganda films," she said.
As a Westerner, Heikin said she was probably "emotionally less involved" than a
Korean audience might be.
"Most Westerners don't have personal experience of the Korean War and division,
the families separated, and all the fears and struggles Koreans lived through,"
she said. "A South Korean is bound to know much more about North Korea by dint of
shared language, culture and history, all things a Westerner can only get
second-hand. That depth of experience would inform any Seoul-made film, both
emotionally and (with) a level of authenticity, a Westerner could not achieve."
Despite the emotional distance, some question the impartiality of the
documentary, as it is based on the refugees' account of the country they decided
to leave.
"The film makes no attempt to be impartial," Heikin says to such criticism. "My
intention was to let the defectors speak for themselves."
"Almost all of the defectors wanted to speak out. They long for the world to know
about what is happening in their country."
The film also tells the stories of refugees who hold out hope for the future and
want to return to the North if Kim is removed from power.
"They are from all different walks of life, have all suffered terribly and have
different ideas about what to do about the North, but they all remain hopeful,
which is so inspiring," Heikin said.
"I would hope for North Korea to change a lot after its leader passes away, but I
fear it may take a while for the power structure to break down," she added.
"In Cuba, Fidel stepped down, his brother took over, and nothing changed."
hayney@yna.co.kr
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