Watch Little Pyongyang

Little Pyongyang is a 2018 documentary film directed by Roxy Rezvany that follows the daily life of one of the few North Korean defectors living in London. The film, which runs for just under an hour, offers a rare glimpse into the life and psyche of a man who has fled his homeland but still can't escape the emotional and psychological turmoil it has left him with.

The subject of the film, Joong-wha Choi, is a North Korean immigrant who fled his homeland in 2004 and has since built a life for himself in the United Kingdom. Despite having lived in London for over a decade, Choi still regularly visits a small community of fellow North Korean defectors in the city's New Malden neighborhood, known as "Little Pyongyang" due to its high concentration of North Koreans. Here he can network, socialize, and speak Korean without fear of being misunderstood or judged.

We see Choi's daily routine as he works at a fish and chips restaurant, where he is often praised by his boss for his hard work and excellent English language skills, and attends meetings with his fellow North Korean defectors, who discuss the hardships they faced in their homeland and the challenges of adapting to life in a foreign country. We also see him struggling to maintain contact with his family back in North Korea and grappling with the guilt of having left them behind.

Throughout the film, Choi reflects on his experiences in North Korea, particularly his time as a college student in the early 1990s when the country was just beginning to open up to the outside world. He recounts the overwhelming sense of disillusionment and despair he felt when he realized that the rosy picture of his homeland he had been fed by the government was a lie, and the lengths he went to in order to obtain banned foreign media and information.

The film is shot in a simple, stripped-down style, with few interviews or talking heads. Instead, we are immersed in Choi's world, with the camera following him as he goes about his daily business, engaging with others, and reliving his traumatic memories. Through this intimate approach, we get a sense of the deep emotional wounds that North Korea has inflicted on Choi, and the ongoing struggle he faces in trying to come to terms with his past and build a new life for himself.

One particularly powerful scene in the film sees Choi visiting a Korean cultural event in London, where he sees an exhibit on North Korean propaganda and is visibly upset by the images of a disguised and impassioned population. As he moves through the exhibit, he reflects on the ways in which the government's use of propaganda has shaped his own life, and the difficulty he has had in separating fact from fiction. It is a moment that underscores the film's central theme - the complex and multifaceted nature of life in North Korea, and the myriad ways in which it continues to haunt those who have left it behind.

Overall, Little Pyongyang is a moving, thought-provoking look at the emotional toll of life in one of the world's most repressive and isolated countries. Through the eyes of one man, we gain a deep appreciation for the struggles that North Korean defectors face in adapting to life in a new country and shedding the psychological scars of their past. It is a powerful reminder of the need for empathy and understanding in the face of extreme adversity.