Crossing the Line

Oct 16, 2006

1h 34m

★ 7.2

Overview

In 1962, a U.S. soldier sent to guard the peace in South Korea deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified area on earth and defected to the Cold War enemy, the communist state of North Korea. He became a star of the North Korean propaganda machine, but then disappeared from the face of the earth. Now, after 45 years, the story of James Dresnok, the last American defector in North Korea, is being told for the first time. Crossing the Line follows Dresnok as he recalls his childhood, desertion, and life in the DPRK.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Dongoong Arts Center

VeryMuchSo Productions

Crossing the Line Trailers

Cast

Himself

James Dresnok

Himself

Charles Robert Jenkins

Narrator

Christian Slater

Self

Bruce Cumings

Self (archive footage)

Kim Il-sung

They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.

7.7

A State of Mind

Aug 10, 2005

Two young North Korean gymnasts prepare for an unprecedented competition in this documentary that offers a rare look into the communist society and the daily lives of North Korean families. For more than eight months, film crews follow 13-year-old Pak Hyon Sun and 11-year-old Kim Song Yun and their families as the girls train for the Mass Games, a spectacular nationalist celebration.

7.7

Beyond Utopia

Oct 23, 2023

A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.

8.3

Markiplier from North Korea

Nov 20, 2022

Markiplier From North Korea: Mark Fischbach, a top gaming YouTuber, learns about his mom's escape from North Korea and his family's history. He meets his relatives, visits the KDZ, and discovers his heritage in this emotional documentary.

7.7

The Trap of Kim

Feb 6, 2018

The escalation of tensions between Pyongyang and Washington continues, plunging the world into fear of a nuclear war. Update on the geopolitical issues of this conflict.

6.9

Assassins

Aug 12, 2021

True crime meets global spy thriller in this gripping account of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader. The film follows the trial of the two female assassins, probing the question: were the women trained killers or innocent pawns of North Korea?

6.0

The Fantastic

Oct 15, 2021

In Maija Blåfield’s documentary, eight former North Koreans talk about what it was like to watch illegal films in a closed society. In addition to the 'waste videos', South Korean films were also smuggled into the country via China.

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0.0

PAN MUN JOM, You have never seen

Sep 9, 2021

In July 1951, all the sides to the Korean War sought a ceasefire. For a ceasefire, the Allied and Communist forces began to hold talks at Naebongjang, located northeast of Kaesong. However, they only sharply opposed each other and didn't make progress in the negotiation. In October 1951, the two sides met again in the small village of Neolmun-ri below Gaeseong. They set up tents there to negotiate and named the place Panmunjom. The name Panmunjeom is a combination word of Panmun, meaning Neulmun-ri, and “Jom,” of an inn.

6.2

Kimjongilia

Jan 18, 2009

The first film to fully expose the humanitarian crisis of North Korea, this stylish, deeply moving documentary is centered around astonishing interviews with survivors of North Korea's vast and largely hidden prison camps, and interspersed with archival footage of North Korean propoganda films and original art performances.

7.8

Bureau 39: Kim's Cash Machine

Dec 15, 2020

How is it possible that North Korea, one of the poorest countries on earth finances a nuclear weapons program large enough to challenge the USA? The answer: Bureau 39, a legendary organization nestled deep inside the government apparatus. Its aim is to procure foreign exchange by any means possible to provide Kim Jong-un’s regime with money.

6.5

Dictator: One Crazy Job

Jun 12, 2013

They’ve become the human face of inhuman barbarity. Leaders like Hitler, Idi Amin Dada, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu, Bokassa, Muammar Kadhafi, Khomeini, Mussolini and Franco governed their countries completely cut off from reality. These paranoid leaders were driven to abuse their power by the pathology of power itself. Dictators are driven by a relentless, thought-out determination to impose themselves as infallible, all-knowing and all-powerful beings. But they are also men ruled by their caprices, uncontrollable impulses, and reckless fits of frenzy, which paradoxically render them as human as anyone else. The abuses they committed were clearly atrocious, yet some of them were as outlandish as the characters portrayed in the film The Dictator. They sunk to depths worthy of Kafka: so incredibly absurd, they are outrageously funny.

5.5

Korea, A Hundred Years of War

Jun 11, 2020

A contemporary history of Korea(s) from a unique point of view that embraces the inner history of both South and North Korea in a single narrative.

6.5

North Korea: A Day in the Life

Jan 1, 2004

If the cityscapes and patriotic anthems of this film seem a far cry from the bleak landscape of Seoul Train, that's no accident. Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, with the full permission and cooperation of the North Korean government, created this propaganda film that gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of one of the world's most enigmatic societies. A Day in the Life, largely dictated by the North Korean film bureau, follows a typical North Korean family through their daily duties, largely dedicated to the pride in the North Korean nation of comrades and the glory of General Kim Jong Il. The film is meant to extol the success of modern North Korea. But does it? With straight footage and a total absence of narration, viewers may interpret Fleury's film in a slightly different manner than intended

7.1

Inside North Korea

Mar 5, 2006

Join National Geographic's Lisa Ling as she captures a rare look inside North Korea - something few Americans have ever been able to do. Posing as an undercover medical coordinator and closely guarded throughout her trip, Lisa moves inside the most isolated nation in the world, encountering a society completely dominated by government and dictatorship. Glimpse life inside North Korea as you've never seen before with personal accounts and powerful footage. Witness first-hand efforts by humanitarians and the challenges they face from the rogue regime.

0.0

Kim Il Sung's Children

Jun 25, 2020

From 1950 to 1953, one hundred thousand children were orphaned by the Korean War. With no resources to mend the wounds, the two sides, North and South, took different paths to find homes and families for the war orphans. While the children of South Korea were sent to Europe and the United States through ‘International Adoption’, the children of North Korea were distributed across Eastern Europe through a method called ‘Commissioned Education’. As a result, more than five thousand children from the North had to spend nearly a decade living in foreign lands across Eastern Europe. This story is a record of their lives, which used to be kept hidden from the rest of the world. There is a key to understanding how North Korea's closed political structure began and how the ‘Juche ideology’ was formed in this documentary movie. Understanding North Korea in the 1950s is an important way to understand North Korea at present.

0.0

North Korea's Secret Slaves: Dollar Heroes

Oct 27, 2018

Shrouded in secrecy and notoriously cash-strapped the North Korean regime has resorted to running one of the world's largest slaving operations - exploiting the profits to fulfil their own agenda. These bonded labourers can be found in Russia, China and dozens of other countries around the world including EU member states. Featuring undercover footage and powerful testimonials, we reveal the scale and brutality of the operation and ask what, if anything, is being done to stop it.

0.0

DMZ, The Wild

Apr 3, 2017

4-Part documentary series where Lee Min Ho films over a 700-day period in the DMZ to capture nature and animals. Untouched by humans for over half a century, DMZ’s nature would be close to how this land would look when the civilization disappears. Nature and wilderness breathe here freely, and endangered species have made the place their habitat. With the narration of actor Lee Min-ho, the documentary reveals the beauty of Korea’s nature in its rawest and purest form. Here, there is a silent land where humans stepped down. It is a military demarcation line between North and South. It is the foremost front that consumed two-thirds of the 37-month Korean War, and the DMZ, a military operation area that has not been available for more than 60 years since the armistice. It is the largest temperate primeval forest on Earth, where human history of heartbreak and the wild survival of wild animals coexist.

6.7

Camp 14: Total Control Zone

Nov 8, 2012

Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp. He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.

7.2

Under the Sun

Oct 30, 2015

Over the course of one year, this film follows the life of an ordinary Pyongyang family whose daughter was chosen to take part in Day of the Shining Star (Kim Jong-il's birthday) celebration. While North Korean government wanted a propaganda film, the director kept on filming between the scripted scenes. The ritualized explosions of color and joy contrast sharply with pale everyday reality, which is not particularly terrible, but rather quite surreal.

Crossing the Line

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Crossing the Line Trailers