Crossing the Line

At the beginning of Daniel Gordon's documentary, "Crossing the Line," James Dresnok is "doing very good," but he's a little angry. Why he is angry is explained later, but the point is that Mr. Dresnok is a blue-eyed good ol' Southern boy, who happens to be living in North Korea.

Dresnok explains that he has never regretted coming to North Korea. His particular statements are what make his story and this film so fascinating. North Korea is universally acknowledged to be the last testament of the Cold War, completely isolated from the world and sheltered to the point of chronic alienation. Propaganda is propaganda (and Gordon and his crew do an extremely effective job at largely avoiding a propagandist vernacular and tone), and the Western world has come to fear North Korea, its nuclear arsenal, and its leader, believed by the West to be erratic and dangerous, possibly unstable. How could an American be living in North Korea? Has he been brainwashed? Is he being held against his will? No regrets? The latter appears so, and Dresnok will explain why. Mr. Dresnok is going to tell a story he has never told anyone.

James Joseph Dresnok has been living in North Korea twice as long as he lived in America. He has a sweet Southern twang, and is a large fellow, simultaneously frightening and harmless. He is described by the narrator Christian Slater (who is constantly matter-of-fact and neutral in his narration) as being of a broken home, abandoned parents, and developing a rebellious attitude, always wanting to run away. He is heartbroken in describing his first wife who fell in love with another man while he was stationed in Germany. He again left for the army and was stationed at the DMZ, a place Bill Clinton described as the scariest place on the planet. Having been to the DMZ myself, his statement is mostly accurate, though I would not use the word scary so much as surreal. After seriously disrespecting the orders of his superiors, he said "to hell with this," and in daylight ran across the mine field and was captured by North Korean soldiers. The recounts of his defection are described by Dresnock, U.S., and even North Korean soldiers (one of whom wanted to kill him because both of his parents had been killed by the Americans).

North Korea is scary enough now, so imagine what it would have been like for an American four decades ago. While South Korea is still one of the most homogeneous nations in the world, it is climbing towards one million foreigners in its land; the same cannot be said about their neighbors to the North, and North Koreans probably would have had even greater hatred and suspicion of Americans than today.

Dresnok soon met a fellow defector, and eventually there were a total of four. One of them was named Charles Jenkins. They all became scared, confused, and ready to retreat to the Soviet Union, whose embassy turned them back over to the North Koreans. Dresnok became determined to understand Korean culture and language and become one of them. The four were initially viewed skeptically by the North Koreans, but they, especially Dresnok, eventually became celebrities when the government instructed them to appear as American villains in a 1978 propaganda film. Incidentally, while South Korea's cinema has reached a global audience in an incredibly short period of time, North Korea claims to have given to a global audience the world's most "wonderful" movies. I challenge you to find someone who has seen a single North Korean film.

At the time of the filming, Dresnok was the last defector in North Korea. Two had died, and Jenkins and his wife, a Japanese woman who had been captured by North Korea, escaped to Japan. He was arrested and served thirty days in prison. He released a book describing his misery in Pyongyang, and claimed that Dresnok would beat him if he did not fully comply with the government's wishes. Dresnok claims he is an absolute liar, and Dresnok's emotions shift from reflective to empathetic to sad to proud (as almost any man his age would); it is here, in describing Jenkins—his actions and his words—where Dresnok gets really, really angry. As for Jenkins, he is still alive, living in Japan, and several years ago he returned briefly to the United States to visit his ninety-one-year-old mother before returning to Japan. Dresnok also has a family. His second wife was an Eastern European woman, who birthed him two handsome boys, and although it is not mentioned in the documentary, they are constantly striking awe and flirtation in Korean women, though one of them at least does not want to marry a Korean woman. Dresnok's third and current wife is the biracial daughter of a black parent (again, this is not mentioned in the documentary). Their very young son, Dresnok's third, has curly hair and darker skin. All three of his children are attractive, and Dresnok appears totally blissful in Pyongyang, a country where people are starving to death (at least the government recently executed the scapegoat behind their failed currency redenomination). Dresnok at least is perfectly aware that North Koreans are starving, and he is deeply moved that he still gets rice rations from the government.

Documentarians are often praised for their bravery. These filmmakers are incredibly brave, having filmed in North Korea for three different documentaries (one on the country's soccer team and another on athletes preparing for the Arirang Festival). They are also risking the possibility of facing accusations that they are giving undeserved attention to a defector, communist and anti-American traitor. Sympathy is sympathy and empathy is empathy. Do both exist here? It's in the eye of the beholder, but I found both, though I suppose I'm a little weary of being called a communist.

Movies are usually seen through prisms and experiences. Here's mine: I have lived in South Korea for about seven months. I have become much more interested in North Korea than I was in the United States, but not because South Koreans are interested in North Korea (most of them are clearly not). I have been to the DMZ, as mentioned, and tours to a city called Kaesong, or Gaesong, have been suspended by the South after North Korean soldiers shot and killed a South Korean tourist. The North and South are currently negotiating terms to open up the tours again. Relations between the two are currently at their usual worst, but if the tours were to reopen, I would consider traveling to Kaesong in a second. When I watched this film, it was about a week after a South Korean vessel suffered an explosion and thereby sank it, causing the deaths of nearly fifty South Korean navy men. As of now, it is not clear if North Korea was responsible. If conflicts do heat up again, Mr. Dresnok and I are geographically speaking not too far apart, and we will be first-row witnesses to the tempest.