Crossing the Line
I recently saw a documentary called Crossing the Line about the US soldier James Dresnok who defected to North Korea during the Korean War and has lived there ever since. The documentary was fascinating not only because of its subject – a 60 something American with a Southern twang continually launching into fluent Korean, but also the strange, aberrant trend that it elicits – the flight from the West to the East.
Dresnok describes himself as a disaffected young man without hope, wanting only a rebirth into a new kind of life. He certainly got what he wanted. He unwittingly became North Korea’s most famous star of anti-American propaganda movies. As an expatriate in my sophmore years, I have seen so many young Americans come to East Asia with the same kind of attitude, a longing for something different and yes, even movie stardom.