Beyond Utopia: Escape from North Korea, shown on BBC4 last night, was a superb piece of documentary film-making. The journey of the family from the border Yalu river across China and through Vietnam and Laos to Thailand – with the hero pastor – was extraordinary, only made bearable by the knowledge that, if they'd been caught, we wouldn't be seeing all this video footage. On the other hand the mother trying to reunite with the son she'd left behind was just heart-breaking.
A main take-away was the scale of the bubble that North Koreans live under. The family, still, couldn't shake off their old beliefs. The grandmother was shaking her head about how things got so bad for them, considering that Kim Jong-un, a very intelligent young man, was doing his best to make them happy. The two children, asked about what they thought about Kim, said he was the greatest man in the world. It wasn't till they got to South Korea that they started to realise just how wrong they'd been. It was, they said, impossible for people in North Korea to believe that in the outside world people lived so well. If they somehow got a glimpse of life outside, they'd automatically assume it must be faked.
Which is why, of course, the regime goes to such draconian lengths to ensure that no outside culture, and particularly no South Korean culture, can ever be seen.
Mick Hartley 
Leave a comment