SEOUL, South Korea - Oh Yon Jong fled North Korea in 1998 to seek food for her family, promising her son as he lay asleep and unaware of her departure that she would soon return. She never saw him again.
Instead, what began as a planned three-month trip led to her leaving her communist homeland forever to seek refuge in prosperous South Korea. Her story, one of the many painful tales of separation for thousands of North Korean refugees, is among the real-life accounts that served as the basis for the new film "Crossing" - an emotional dramatization of the plight of the refugees that opens Thursday in South Korea.
"My heart was broken when I left behind my son ... but couldn't we die by sitting idle?" Oh said in an interview posted on the filmmakers' website.
Director Kim Tae-kyun said he hoped the film would help draw international attention to the dire human rights situation in the North.
"North Korea is perhaps the most hidden country in the world and is in a situation where people are starving to death again, but there is no channel to show the facts" to the world, Kim said at a recent press screening for the movie. "I hope that people around the world will watch this movie and their interest will be used to change North Korea."
Filmmakers will screen the drama for the European Parliament next month, and push to distribute the movie in the U.S. and Japan this year. The film was already shown at special screenings in Washington during an April event highlighting the human rights situation in North Korea.
The movie tells the tear-jerking tale of Kim Yong Soo, a decorated soccer player-turned-coal miner who secretly crosses into China to get medicine for his tuberculosis-stricken wife. Like the real-life refugee Oh, Kim's promise to return home soon goes unfulfilled after he is pursued by Chinese police. He eventually storms a foreign embassy in Beijing along with several other defectors and later winds up receiving asylum in South Korea.
Kim then tries to bring his family to the South, but a Hollywood ending is not meant to be.
Filmmakers sought the advice of North Korean refugees like Oh to help make the movie more authentic, and some also play roles.
"I could not forget any scenes because the story line is the same with what I lived," said Oh, who played the role of a broker who bribes border guards and arranges transport to sneak people across the loosely controlled Chinese-North Korean frontier.
Thousands of North Korean refugees are believed to be living in China in constant fear of being repatriated to their homeland, which Beijing is obligated to do under a bilateral treaty, drawing criticism from human rights activists.
The refugee issue has drawn little attention in South Korea - now home to more than 13,500 North Korean defectors - as Seoul sought reconciliation with Pyongyang over a decade of liberal rule in the South, which abstained from publicly criticizing its neighbour.
Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition in the U.S., said the movie could raise awareness about the suffering of North Koreans so that pressure can be brought against the Pyongyang regime for its treatment of its people.
"This film has the potential to move the hearts and minds of the South Korean people as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' moved the hearts of the American people on the horrors of slavery," she said.
Actor Cha In-pyo, who plays the title role of Kim, also said South Koreans should become the "voice of North Koreans to the world" as people living in the isolated country have no way to reach the outside world to talk about their dismal human rights situation.
But Shin Dong Hyok, a North Korean refugee who was born in a political prison camp and spent 23 years there before escaping in 2005 and coming to the South in 2006, doubts the movie will raise any interest among South Koreans.
"South Koreans only care about their safety and they don't care at all about starving North Koreans," Shin said, referring to the weeks of anti-government protests against plans to resume imports of U.S. beef.
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