Beyond Utopia
On ignorance, dogma, and the danger of believing there is only one truth.
Deep Life Reflections | Essay 49 | James Gibb
A society without doubt can quickly become a prison, and a mind without doubt can become its own smaller version of one.
North Korea calls itself a utopia. That alone should make us suspicious of utopias. The term utopia describes an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. Sir Thomas More first used the term in his book Utopia, contrasting the social and economic conditions of Europe with an imaginary island located off the coast of the Americas. His coined term, “utopia,” combining the Greek for “not” (ou) and “place” (topos), expressed his idea that the perfect conditions on his fictional island could never really exist.
Which brings us back to North Korea.
North Korea is a place you’ll likely never visit. It’s also a place desperately hard to leave. Kim Jong Un tells his people their country—his country—is a utopia. In his utopia, citizens get to live in an oppressive Orwellian regime where malnutrition, suspicion, torture, cruelty, and death are part of everyday life. This is the reality of North Korea, brutally exposed in Beyond Utopia, an award-winning documentary from filmmaker Madeleine Gavin.
Gavin pulls back the curtain on the misery and pain suffered by the North Korean people. She does it through the central character of a gentle pastor called Kim Seongeun, known as Pastor Kim, who smuggles North Koreans to freedom. The film focuses on the plight of a three-generation family: a middle-aged mother and father, two young daughters, and an 80-year-old grandmother—the Woo family. Through first-hand mobile footage, we see the desperate lengths this fugitive family will go to for freedom.
The Woo family’s journey begins by crossing the Yalu River into China. It’s here, the first hurdle, where many fall. They cross successfully and then begin a perilous trek through the jungles of Laos and Vietnam, culminating in a harrowing boat journey across the Mekong River into Thailand. They face not only the natural dangers of the elements but also the threats posed by patrol guards, hunger, and sheer exhaustion, all while knowing the grim fate that awaits them if captured.
The film also reveals the dubious role of “brokers,” unidentified figures who act as a cross between a guide and a negotiator, driven by profit over ideology, and at times, exploitatively demand more money from the desperate family.
“Once you become aware that you can save innocent lives, it is hard to stop” – Pastor Kim
Right there with the family the whole time is Pastor Kim, a man with his own physical limitations, the haunting loss of his son, and the threat of the death penalty. Yet, Pastor Kim dedicates himself to plotting the path to freedom for the Woo family and many others. He believes he may have brought 1,000 people out of tyranny over the course of 20 years. His mission isn’t just to rescue individuals from a totalitarian regime, but to end its rule. In Pastor Kim, the film highlights the tremendous humanitarian efforts of a single individual at great personal cost.
Beyond Utopia exists to remind us that beyond the geopolitics and the memes, there are decent people who had the misfortune to be born in the wrong country, subjected not just to brainwashing and systematic abuse, but the robbing of freedom in every sense. I am reminded of the words of the historian and journalist, Jill Lepore, “Dystopias follow utopias the way thunder follows lightning.”
Most of us do not live inside a totalitarian state, but we can still become captive to what we believe we already know. The prison can be smaller and quieter: the locked room of certainty. Whether in politics, ideology, religion, or our own private convictions, the refusal to rethink is where dogma festers. It is where humility goes to die.
Utopias, as More suggested, do not exist. The pursuit of an ideal society carries the peril of dogmatism, dictating “the right way” and suppressing any debate or discourse in which someone is thinking “the wrong way”. The twentieth century witnessed the catastrophic consequences of chasing such ‘perfect’ utopias, with regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as grim examples. Yet the aspiration for better societies has also been the driving force behind significant social reforms and progress.
Societies tend to prosper when there is conversation, disagreement, and a collective willingness to listen, work together, rethink and improve. This is broadly the last five thousand years. Unattainable perfection cannot be the goal. The goal is something much more modest and more human: a common good that remains open to debate and correction.
The danger levels start rising from amber to red when any society, or any mind, believes it has nothing left to question.
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