How pro-North Korean activists and their friends tried to suppress a human rights documentary
Image / Beyond Utopia Production
By Lawrence Peck
When Leo McCarey, director and producer of “Going My Way,” starring Bing Crosby as a Catholic priest, was testifying before Congress and asked if his hit 1944 film had been successful in the Soviet Union, he replied that it hadn’t made a single ruble. Asked why, McCarey answered that there was a character in the movie the Soviets found objectionable. Was it Crosby that displeased Stalin’s regime? No, he said. It was God. That presumably got a laugh yet it was quite true.
Fast forward to 2023 and the premiere of the acclaimed documentary “Beyond Utopia” which movingly chronicled the struggles of a family attempting to escape from North Korea. The film’s executive producer was Thor Halvorssen, founder and CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, which publishes NK Insider. It won awards from Sundance Film Festival, Hamptons Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival, and Columbia Journalism School, in addition to nominations for dozens of other awards.
However, when it failed to be nominated for the Academy Award nomination, Hollywood Reporter noted that it was one of the “surprise omissions.” Variety lamented that it “should have been there.”
A source involved in the making of the documentary believes that this denial of the top accolades was due to a hate campaign launched by pro-North activists and their friends in the United States who sought, if not to suppress the film, at least to smear it enough to deny it an Oscar.
The pro-North activists and their friends did not object to any specific person in “Beyond Utopia.” Instead, they strongly objected to the negative portrayal of the North’s regime and the criticism of its massive human rights abuses as truthfully presented in the documentary. They clearly viewed it as being harmful to their cause, debunking their phony narrative that the North Korean regime is an innocent victim of “demonization” and “aggression” by “U.S. imperialism.”
For the North’s sympathizers and their friends in the U.S., a film about defectors that highlights the regime’s crimes against humanity and was made by human rights activists, was just as objectionable as a religious-themed movie was to 1940s Stalinists.
The activists were following the censorial mindset of American communists in the 20th century who attempted, in some cases successfully, to block the making of films and smear existing films which were critical of the Soviet Union and exposed its crimes.
Communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo bragged in a 1946 article how he and his comrades used their influence to prevent several films critical of communism and the Soviet Union from being made, including some based on novels by ex-communists and defectors such as Arthur Koestler’s “The Yogi and the Commissar” and Victor Kravchenko’s “I Chose Freedom.” Few things upset defenders of communist regimes more than the experiences of those who have escaped them being described in books and movies.
The suppression campaign aimed at “Beyond Utopia” involved open letters and other targeted messages sent, for example, to Independent Lens, a weekly television series on PBS that eventually did show the film. The letters were relatively moderate in tone so as not to raise suspicions of pro-North bias.
These letters of complaint were purportedly written by three longtime members or at least supporters of pro-North groups who did not disclose their full affiliations but instead emphasized their experience as documentary filmmakers.
Their approach relied on what the brilliant Professor Philip Selznick, in his 1952 study for the Rand Corporation and book “The Organizational Weapon,” described as a “neutralization strategy.” In line with this, the activists who wrote articles and sent letters to targeted individuals and organizations were well aware that they were seeking to influence not their comrades, but those who, like most Americans, are hostile to the North’s regime. They therefore focused, as communist screenwriters of the 1930s and 1940s had done defending the party and the Soviet Union, “not so much to get pro-communist ideas on the screen as to keep anti-communist propaganda off.”
As Selznick put it, “This tactic is predicated on conspiracy and deception,” which in the case of this campaign against the documentary was demonstrated by the manner in which pro-North front groups such as Women Cross DMZ helped organize the effort, somewhat behind the scenes, by drafting and distributing “talking points” and a sample cover letter which its supporters were urged to send along with the full-length letter condemning the documentary from the three filmmakers.
The deception involved an absence of any reference in that letter to the openly pro-North groups and pro-North fronts that its authors either supported or belonged to.
As Selznick perceptively said, “The communists and sympathizers [seek to] appear as reasonable and restrained men [in this case women] who merely ‘call into question’ certain basic notions, who ask that ‘judgment be suspended’…and who suggest that criticism of Soviet totalitarianism does not serve the interests of peace. In this way, the intellectual and moral principles of the target audience are undermined, and open anti-communists can be labeled as fanatics who see grave danger where only mild criticism is apparent. This helps to neutralize the anti-communists…”
The regime defenders raised six objections. First, they claimed the brief introductory description of the Korean War, its causes, and aftermath was “unbalanced and inaccurate.” Second, they objected to what they termed the “unequal power relations” between the escapees and the Christian pastor who helped them defect. Third, they protested the failure to blame the U.S. for hostility between it and North Korea, and for not holding the U.S. responsible for the North’s human rights violations, which they directly linked to U.S. sanctions.
Fourth, they objected to the lack of roles in the film for Korean Americans and others who approach Korean issues from a “critical” theory, meaning a far-left perspective. Fifth, they objected that the film did not foster “diplomacy and engagement” with the North because it was made with the input of North Korea human rights activists and organizations, such as Thor Halvorssen, CEO of the Human Rights Foundation, who had a “vested self-interest” in the cause of North Korea human rights.
Finally, they requested, that is, demanded, that Independent Lens add a disclaimer to the film to the effect that it offered only “one perspective,” that audiences be provided with “resources” explaining opposing perspectives, and that Independent Lens disclose the “fact checking processes” it used in approving the film for showing on PBS.
The protesting filmmakers, Deann Borshay Liem, Hye-jung Park, and JT Takagi, listed the documentaries on which they have worked, but almost nothing about their organizational affiliations. Their letters stressed that they were simply professional documentarians, implying that they, unlike those whom they were condemning, had no particular ideological motivations, and were merely dedicated to accuracy and balance in filmmaking. Given that Liem, Park, and Takagi focused on the views, affiliations, and motives of those involved in the making of Beyond Utopia, an examination of their own views and affiliations is warranted and will prove enlightening.
Since a thorough online search would likely cause them embarrassment, it was not disclosed in the letters smearing “Beyond Utopia” that Liem is a supporter, at minimum, of two pro-North groups. One is the Korea Policy Institute, on whose board of directors her husband and pro-North activist Paul Liem sits. It is a kind of think tank for pro-North and far-left activists. Originally established as a front group, it has in recent years become more openly pro-North and extremely hostile to human rights activists and defectors. The other is the hardcore pro-North group Nodutdol, whose fanatical young members enthusiastically praise the Pyongyang regime as a beacon of freedom, advocate its state ideology of Juche, and laud its dynastic dictators, and whose leaders have for many years been communicating, meeting, and collaborating with the North’s intelligence agents in New York and Pyongyang.
Park is not a mere supporter of those same groups. She was in fact a co-founder of Nodutdol. She is also on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute. Park was one of the delegates who participated in the pro-North front group Women Cross DMZ’s cross-border march and related anti-U.S. propaganda events in the North in 2015, at which, to the applause of the delegates, the U.S. was denounced as the “kingpin of international terrorism.” She even played a key role in planning that event in collaboration with the North’s officials, when she visited Pyongyang along with Women Cross DMZ founder Christine Ahn in 2013.
Takagi is also a member of Nodutdol and on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute. Takagi and Liem were listed as speakers at the July 2025 People’s Summit for Korea conference in New York, which included calls for the “liberation” of South Korea, support for Palestinian terrorism, communist “revolution” in the U.S., and enthusiastic praise for the North’s regime. Their particular panel at the event was entitled “Filmmaking for the People’s Struggle,” which focused on “film as a weapon” for the “liberation” of South Korea and “resistance to U.S. imperialism.”
One can see why Liem, Park, and Takagi were not eager to disclose their organizational affiliations to the recipients of their letters condemning “Beyond Utopia.” They clearly wanted to portray themselves as merely reasonable advocates of peace to PBS and the other organizations which they targeted in their ideologically inspired efforts to suppress it.
As to their objections to the documentary, the hypocrisy and double standards exhibited are shameful. With tremendous gall, total chutzpah, Liem, Park, and Takagi accused the human rights activists who were involved in its making of having a “vested self-interest” in supporting human rights for North Koreans suffering under a brutal dictatorship.
They derived that terminology from the standards and policy guidelines of PBS’ Independent Lens, and implied that the makers of the film were personally, selfishly profiting in some manner from the film, which was clearly not the case.
Liem, Park, and Takagi would surely prefer that any documentary about escapees from the North be made by those who have no “interest” in the cause of human rights for North Koreans and oppose any serious discussion of the nature of the Pyongyang regime, while blaming its crimes on the U.S.
Regarding the “alternative resources” about the North that Liem, Park, and Takagi demanded that PBS publicize, perhaps they had in mind the “balanced perspective” of the 1992 book by Liem’s father-in-law Channing Liem, published in Pyongyang, which is based on a book by Soviet agent I.F. Stone that maintains that South Korea started the Korean War and that the ruthless dictator Kim Il-sung was a lovely fellow who was misunderstood. Have they condemned that book as “inaccurate” history?
Further examples of the double standards and hypocritical “do as we say, not as we do” arguments of Liem, Park, and Takagi, are that some of their own documentaries lack the “alternative perspectives” they demanded of “Beyond Utopia.”
Documentaries of Park’s and Takagi’s extreme-left Third World Newsreel lauded terrorist Yasser Arafat. Did it refer to Arafat’s theft of millions in international aid or his ordering murders of Israeli children on school buses and an American diplomat?
The documentary of Liem’s Mu Films in praise of the pro-North front group Women Cross DMZ, a cinematic tribute to its founder Christine Ahn, was certainly far less “balanced” than “Beyond Utopia.” Did it note that she lobbied against North Korea human rights legislation in the U.S. and South Korea?
When Liem and Takagi interviewed Yoon Kil-sang, leader of the openly racist and virulently antisemitic pro-North group Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC), was he asked about that bigotry? When Park made a documentary about Korean American visitors to the North, did she disclose that KANCC financially profited from helping the North’s mission to the United Nations process visa applications?
Those filmmakers should be the last to complain of potential biases or lack of opposing perspectives in documentaries.
Lawrence Peck is a correspondent for NK Insider based in Seoul and Los Angeles. Having intensively researched and closely monitored the activities of pro-North Korea and other extremist groups and activists in the U.S. for over 25 years, he has been recognized in the U.S. and Korea as one of the leading American authorities on such topics, and has lectured, written extensively and been interviewed on such topics in the U.S. and Korea. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Juris Doctor degree from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles. He previously worked in Korea for several of the largest Korean business groups in the fields of intellectual property licensing and international business development. He also serves as an advisor to the North Korea Freedom Coalition of the U.S. Lawrence may be reached at the email address: lawrence.nkinsider@gmail.com
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