Native North Korean Filmmaker Gives Lowell Lecture

Filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson and her camera glimpsed life in her native North Korea, leading her to challenge American denunciations of the Communist country. Photos courtesy Dai Sil Kim-Gibson

“When the United States and the Soviet Union divided the Korean peninsula at the end of World War II, a child held her grandmother’s hand, walking across the 38th parallel to South Korea.” Filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson recalls that seven-decade-old memory, from when she was seven, to describe her life divided between two worlds: the North and South Korea of her youth, and the United States, where she came in 1962 to study at BU.

Kim-Gibson (GRS’69, STH’69) has written a memoir, Korean Sky: A Memoir (Shoulder Friends Press, 2015), recounting her family’s hardships during the Korean War, and her time at the University: “Going to classes, reading at the library between classes, and eating my two hard-boiled eggs and carrot sticks for lunch.” She stayed in the States, married an Iowa-born historian she met when both were working at the National Endowment for the Humanities, Donald D. Gibson, and starting in the 1990s, became a documentarian interested in social justice. Widowed in 2009, she subsequently traveled to her birth country to make her latest film, People Are the Sky. 

Kim-Gibson will give this fall’s School of Theology Lowell Lecture, funded by the Boston-based Lowell Institute, and premiere the documentary about life in modern-day North Korea. The screening and lecture are tonight at the George Sherman Union.

BU Today: Why did you want to make People Are the Sky? 

Kim-Gibson: People Are the Sky is my eighth and most personal film. It connects two ideas: the search for home and the nature of ordinary people, while exploring the evolution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, DPRK, in relation to the Republic of Korea, ROK, and the United States.

There is little real information about North Korea available in the West, and most of it is agenda-driven, often focused on three “monsters”: rulers Kim il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un, and the North’s human rights violations. Most of the extant works are based on interviews with defectors, food refugees, and illegal émigrés. I based my film on the people who have remained in the DPRK, placed in the historical and political context of the 20th and 21st centuries, using my experiences as a narrative arc.

When I lost my husband in 2009, I felt homeless. I set out to explore whether my place of birth in North Korea could be my home once more. Searching its cities and mountains shrouded in myth and misunderstanding, I met people—ordinary citizens. Eventually I found home not in places, not in North Korea as a country, but in the ordinary people.

What do you hope American audiences take away from watching the documentary?

I would be happy even if they just felt “wow” in their hearts and minds, full of amazement for many things: how little they had known about this country, demonized, looked down, and feared for its nuclear power. How much there is to this country beyond the three “monster” leaders. How could they have imagined its people mere puppets who simply obeyed their leaders? How this little country of 25 million people is still in existence despite the outside pressures and demonizations, led by the United States.  

Was it difficult getting permission to film in North Korea?

My first approach was to contact official North Korea representatives and ask their permission. I had a long lunch meeting with an American and two North Korea officials, which I thought went well. I was told to wait. Six months passed. Finally, I learned that the officials had sent my request to Pyongyang and that it was denied.

Then I learned that there was an organization that helps Korean Americans to travel to North Korea—the Korean American National Coordinating Council. As luck would have it, I knew the group’s head. He suggested that we make an official request to film in North Korea through his group.

He asked me to write a three-page request in Korean—what the film is about, why, etc. Finally, I was with a group of Korean Americans on my way to Pyongyang in 2012.

What is North Korea like—the geography, the living standards, the routines and rituals of daily life?

I can’t tell much about living standards since I was not exposed much to their life. I was taken to the home of a young couple with a newborn baby. Clearly, the family was selected for me, which means that it was better than others. It was a modest apartment and had a few modern conveniences, e.g., a refrigerator. People I saw were mostly on the streets, parks, hotels, restaurants where I was taken by my guides. Those people looked fine—good clothing, plenty of smiles, no sign of malnourishment. I rode a subway, and the people all looked well taken care of. I was struck by how beautiful and handsome many women and men were. From my childhood, my grandmother told me about the beauties of women in Pyongyang.

When I ventured out of Pyongyang and tried to penetrate into ordinary people’s lives, I saw that their clothes and facial expressions showed signs of hardship in life, but not any worse than the workers in western countries, including the United States. As I drove to the countryside, I noticed that women still carried huge bundles on their heads, men on their A-frames and oxcarts. Clothes they wore were mostly white, turned into light brown, covered by dirt and dust. They looked much like the people who worked for my family in my hometown when I left in the winter of 1945.

This to me meant that there were differences between the big cities and countryside, which did not surprise me. I must mention that the children I met on the streets, parks, and other places were small, much smaller than those in South Korea, not to mention America. But their eyes were bright and alert, and they all looked joyful and hopeful, and on the whole, well-mannered. So many of them were able to play musical instruments, both western and traditional Korean, dance, swim, dive, calligraphy, etc. I was truly led to believe that North Korea would not perish no matter what. Those children were the country’s future.

After 70 years away from North Korea, what surprised you the most?

I did not know what to expect. As a Korean saying goes, even the mountains and rivers change in 10 years. I knew that I would find people different from the images depicted and promoted by the media.

When I landed at Pyongyang International Airport, I felt as if I came to Omaha Airport, where I flew in more than a few times with Don to visit his parents in western Iowa. I felt right at home. People were innocent, polite, and friendly. Even the officials with uniforms were friendly, making me feel welcome. It was a homecoming, the home I did not want to leave, but had to, in the winter of 1945.

This was definitely good, but also not so good; people have not changed much with the fast-moving changes everywhere in the 20th and 21st centuries.

What’s the biggest misconception Americans have about North Koreans, and what is their biggest misconception about us?

That they are puppets who blindly obey their leaders with no thoughts and ideas of their own. Further, that they are the worst human rights violators in the world. In short, that they are not human beings with feelings and hopes who strive for freedom like any other people.

What they think of Americans I would not call misconception. As some tell me in my film, they do not trust Americans. And they consider America their worst enemy, responsible for dividing their country and making South Koreans our puppets. Before the Korean War, North Koreans liked Americans, as people who brought Christianity to their country and who were on their side against the colonizer Japanese. But during the war, they witnessed Americans who dropped bombs as if the people were just inanimate things. Americans demolished their cities and towns without blinking their eyes. Civilian deaths were 70 percent, whereas it was 40 percent in Vietnam. That image of “inhuman” people did not get better with the current American policy toward them and their country. These views are, objectively speaking, not misconceptions—they are true to a large extent historically and politically, and my film shows that.

How has Boston University influenced both your life and your filmmaking?

The Korean War caused me to step over dead bodies, some of them those of my friends. As a 12-year-old girl who was brought up a good Christian kid, I was extremely distressed how God could tolerate a war that killed innocent children. That’s why I decided to study religion at the School of Theology, and received a PhD. That study did not offer me rational answers to my question, but I realized early on that if one is a true believer, one should be engaged in meditation and contemplation, as well as actions for making society and people better. This I owe to the School of Theology, which was a pioneer in social ethics and actions. So I’ve made films that dealt with racial conflicts, economic discrepancy, and historical issues and persons that were abandoned, neglected, and forgotten, such as comfort women, forced laborers, and migrants.

The School of Theology fall 2015 Lowell Lecture, a screening and talk with Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (GRS’69, STH’69), free and open to the public, is tonight, Tuesday, November 3, at 5 p.m. in the George Sherman Union second floor auditorium, 775 Commonwealth Ave. The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with Dai Sil Kim-Gibson and Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, bishop of the North Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church, with a reception at 7:30 p.m. The Boston-based nonprofit Lowell Institute, which funds the School of Theology’s twice-a-year Lowell Lectures, has sponsored free public lectures and other educational programs throughout the Boston area since its founding in 1836.