INTERVIEW One man's journey back to North Korea as a filmmaker
Joon Bai tells the story of his journey back to North Korea, where he was born, during an interview with The Korea Times on Sept 13. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
Korean-American achieves dream of screening his film made in North Korea in the South
By Jung Da-min
Aspects of Joon Bai's life may resonate with many ethnic Koreans living overseas, in the United States in particular. Born in 1937 in Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province in North Korea, he fled to South Korea during the 1950-1953 Korean War, immigrated to the United States and became a businessman.
Bai, however, stands out in that he has returned to his birthplace to produce and shoot a film. It all began with one day in 1997 while he was driving in San Francisco, California, where he now lives.
“I remember that day so vividly,” Joon Bai said in an interview on Sept. 13 at The Korea Times office, Seoul. “I was driving home from work and turned on the radio and they were saying that hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation in North Korea. I just could not shake that story and it would stay with me for days.”
That's when Bai began making trips to North Korea.
Since then, he has been doing humanitarian work in the North, including building schools and providing relief goods like soap and agricultural supplies.
“I didn't do humanitarian work with any church organization or other international organizations such as agencies of the United Nations,” he said. “It was just one man and I haven't told anybody about it until this moment, not to the media nor to my church members.”
Joon Bai, left, during his visit to North Korea as a filmmaker. Bai says he was able to convince North Koreans of the film project after building trust as a friend while doing humanitarian work since the late 1990s, after the country was hit by a great famine called the “Arduous March.” Courtesy of Joon Bai
Getting to know the people of the North, it struck him that he wanted to write a story that dealt with the real voices of North Koreans.
“I have gone to the North at least three or four times a year, like 20 to 30 times in the course of nine years from 1997 to 2015,” he said. “As I did that, I got to know people there, farmers and children, and I felt such beautiful people had no way to speak their minds, or shout in front of the mountain or cry openly. So I thought somebody must speak for them.”
In 2005, Bai wrote a screenplay about a North Korean woman who falls in love with a South Korean soldier and showed it to the director at the Overseas Koreans Aid Commission of the North.
When they met again, the director said he liked the story, and that was the start of seven years of making the film titled “The Other Side of the Mountain.”
“I had courage, I knew the North Korean government can go there,” he said.
But the first three years were difficult.
At the first reading with North Korea's screenplay association, one North Korean screenwriter, who was supposed to translate what Bai wrote in English and Korean into the North Korean dialect, said she could not imagine a North Korean girl falling in love with a South Korean soldier.
A scene from the movie “The Other Side of the Mountain (2012).” Courtesy of UMFF
“There were tears in her eyes and she was shaking with a red face, saying it cannot be done,” Bai said. “I spoke to her all night in a conference room trying to convince her that it can be done, that people can love each other even though they are enemies. Finally, in the morning, she was fine, and as we were coming down the long escalator, she held my hand and said that she could start the work.”
There were other hurdles. While North Korean authorities took it as a “golden chance” to show off the country to the outside world, Bai could not allow propaganda messages to be included in the movie.
“There were many times when I said to North Korean staff, 'I'm going to leave tomorrow by plane, I'm not going to get this project done.' I was sitting in my hotel room with nobody to talk to, but then the next day they came and said 'let's go back again,' because they liked the stories too.”
The four years of filmmaking was an exciting experience for Bai and the North Korean staff.
“One evening, there were millions of stars in the sky and they were so bright,” Bai said. “An actress asked me, 'Do you think someday our brothers and sisters in South Korea will see this film?' So I told her, 'I'm sure someday they'll see it.'”
North Korean actress Kim Hyang-suk during filming. Courtesy Joon Bai
President Moon Jae-in may have helped get the movie
in South Korea, at the Ulju Mountain Film Festival (UMFF), Bai said.
“I wrote a letter to President Moon about three months ago where I told him how much I wanted this movie to be screened in South Korea, writing a page and a half of my life story and what motivated me to make the film,” Bai, now 81, said.
He did not receive a reply from the presidential office. “But a month after I sent the letter, I received a letter from UMFF asking me if I would be interested in showing the film in Ulsan. So I really don't know whether there is a connection there, but that's how it started.”
“The Other Side of the Mountain” was filmed in the North Korean mountains by a North Korean director, with North Korean crew and actors.
Bai says he could convince the North Koreans to participate in the film thanks to the trust he built as a longtime friend to them.
The film was completed in 2012 and since 2013, Bai has brought it to many international film festivals, including ones in Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, San Francisco and Chicago.
Crew work on the film. Courtesy of Joon Bai
While it had received media attention in the U.S., showing it at a South Korean film festival had not been possible until this year's UMFF, as it did not receive approval from the Ministry of Unification, with the National Security Law a hurdle.
Bai is still in touch with the North Korean crew and the actors and actresses.
The movie's stars Kim Ryung-min and Kim Hyang-suk married in real life by the time the film was completed and now have a daughter called Jin-ah.
“She is eight years old now and writes letters to me once in a while and tells me how much they miss me,” Bai said. “She is my North Korean granddaughter.”
The family now lives in Pyongyang.
Jin-ah with her parents Kim Ryung-min and Kim Hyang-suk, who starred in the movie “The Other Side of the Mountain.” Courtesy of Joon Bai
Bai hopes many South Koreans, especially the younger generation, will watch the film, to see North Korea from the view of North Koreans.
“This is why the title is 'The Other Side of the Mountain,'” he said. “Would there be any difference if one lives in Hoeryong (North Hamgyong Province) and another in Gyeongju (North Gyeongsang Province)? I had four brothers and one sister living with my parents in the North before the Korean War and North Koreans consider me as one of them, who happened to live in the U.S.”