 Image: Daily NK |
“When I first came to South Korea, I wanted
to be a pear farmer. I was thinking of settling down in Naju, South Jeolla
Province, an area famous for its pears. But the police officer who was in
charge of looking out for me suggested I study and try something else since
farming is something you can always do later. That’s what got me thinking.”
This is how Kim Gyoo Min’s film career
began after he escaped from North Korea and settled down in the South. Kim was
accepted to Hanyang University’s Department of Theater and Cinema, but upon entering school, he quickly came to realize how
different reality was from his ideals and questioned whether he would be able
to become an actor.
One day he was offered the opportunity to
speak in front of an audience. He prepared well in advance for the event, knowing that a number of prominent figures would be there; however, the first question thrown out by an audience member rendered Kim incredulous. It was, “Do people in the North have relationships?”
That moment was an epiphany for him: he realized how prevalent misconceptions about the North were among the population in the South, despite the opportunities at their disposal to dispel them. “This is why I decided to focus on letting people
know what life is like in the North,” he says.
Advice from a school professor who
suggested he try to convey these thoughts through the medium of film is what got Kim on to
the path of becoming a film director. He graduated from university and started
working on film production sites. With his late introduction to the scene, Kim
was always the least experienced and often subjected to harsh words of
criticism. He frequently wondered whether it had to do with him being a North
Korean defector–a depressing, yet very real, possibility.
“I wasn’t able to be very proactive in the beginning
because of those thoughts, but later on I talked to other people who had more
experience in the field. They told me things were even rougher when they first
started out. That’s when I realized everything I was experiencing was simply a
stage that everyone goes through,” Kim recalls.
Rising the ranks from assistant to film director was a difficult journey, but Kim now says he only carries the memories
from it and not the struggles he endured. “No matter how difficult it was, I
knew that as long as I was in the South, I would never starve to death. I had
that confidence, and that’s what allowed me to focus more on becoming a
director,” he says.
“Winter Butterfly”
Having worked in the industry for a long
period of time, Kim was able to make a lot of good friends, whom he credits as making the 2011 debut of his film, “Winter Butterfly,” possible. “The movie we were working on got pushed back, and I
ended up with some time on my hands. That’s when I remembered the script for ‘Winter
Butterfly’ that I had worked on eight years ago. As I was revising it, I ended
up crying, overcome with sadness with the reality of life in the North. I showed a friend
the completed script and he vowed to collaborate with me on it. He was adamant that it was a story that needed to be told,” Kim says.
Kim experienced an outpouring of dedication and support for the project–many offered to not only work for free as long as it took to produce the film, but also solicit more people to offer their services.
He explained that the most challenging–and upsetting–part of the filming process was the virtually impossible task of recreating scenes of life in North Korea. There were no mountains completely devoid of trees, the ravaging effects of severe deforestation, here in the South; and regardless of
how much weight the actors shed for the film, it was hard to convey the sense
of desperation that comes from true starvation.
Kim knows “Winter Butterfly” is not a movie that would be considered apt for success in the box office, considering the
nature of its contents, but nonetheless, he firmly believes the must be told for the sake of the North Korean people. “I wanted people to know what hunger can do to people. As a film
director, I think it is my duty to share that story of misery and pain,” he asserts.
*This article was made possible by support
from the Korea Hana Foundation [the North Korean Refugees Foundation].
