ThoughtGallery.org > First U.S. Screening & Director Talk Back: Across Land, Across Sea

First U.S. Screening & Director Talk Back: Across Land, Across Sea

Director Hark-Joon Lee, long-time reporter turned filmmaker, discusses his amazing, and in some cases life-threatening, experiences making documentaries on two wildly different subjects: North Korean defectors trying to escape to freedom and K-Pop, Korea’s musical entertainment industry. Lee deeply embeds himself in his film projects and goes to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of stories he thinks are worth telling.

From 2007 to 2011, Director Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China filming episodes which tell the moving and dramatic stories of a few of the many North Korean defectors who have crossed into China and made the harrowing journey along the 20,000 kilometer escape route stretching through China to Laos and Thailand or north into Russia, traveling through Khabarovsk, Tynda and on to Moscow.

Posing as a North Korean defector, Lee risked his life filming undercover to capture the haunting stories first-hand. He witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea. Crossing Heaven’s Border, which captures several of these harrowing, heartbreaking stories, aired in 2009 on Wide Angle, a PBS series, and received an Amnesty International’s best in human rights journalism award and a 2010 Emmy award nomination. Another documentary, Across Land, Across Sea, received an Emmy nomination in 2012 and has been shown in Korea and Europe.

The Korea Society will be showing Across Land, Across Sea for the first time in the U.S. on April 16 at 6 p.m. preceding a talk with Director Lee.











When: Wed., Apr. 16, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Where: The Korea Society
950 Third Ave.
212-759-7525
Price: $20; $5 students; $10 members
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Director Hark-Joon Lee, long-time reporter turned filmmaker, discusses his amazing, and in some cases life-threatening, experiences making documentaries on two wildly different subjects: North Korean defectors trying to escape to freedom and K-Pop, Korea’s musical entertainment industry. Lee deeply embeds himself in his film projects and goes to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of stories he thinks are worth telling.

From 2007 to 2011, Director Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China filming episodes which tell the moving and dramatic stories of a few of the many North Korean defectors who have crossed into China and made the harrowing journey along the 20,000 kilometer escape route stretching through China to Laos and Thailand or north into Russia, traveling through Khabarovsk, Tynda and on to Moscow.

Posing as a North Korean defector, Lee risked his life filming undercover to capture the haunting stories first-hand. He witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea. Crossing Heaven’s Border, which captures several of these harrowing, heartbreaking stories, aired in 2009 on Wide Angle, a PBS series, and received an Amnesty International’s best in human rights journalism award and a 2010 Emmy award nomination. Another documentary, Across Land, Across Sea, received an Emmy nomination in 2012 and has been shown in Korea and Europe.

The Korea Society will be showing Across Land, Across Sea for the first time in the U.S. on April 16 at 6 p.m. preceding a talk with Director Lee.

Buy tickets/get more info now