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"Crossing" Moves U.S. Audience to Tears

A screening of "Crossing", a South Korean film based on true accounts of North Korean defectors, was held at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. The audience included House International Relations Committee specialists Dennis Halpin and Doug Anderson, Peter Beck, executive director of the U.S Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Kim Sung-min, a former North Korean refugee and head of Free North Korea Radio, and 100 foreign journalists.

The film is about a North Korean father who crosses the border to China in search of food, leaving his ailing wife and 11-year-old son behind. After reaching South Korea, he desperately tries to bring his family out of North Korea, but his wife dies from malnutrition and his young son perishes in the Mongolian desert.

Several audience members reportedly broke in tears at the sad plight of this desperate North Korean father and the horrendous state of human rights violation in the North. Dennis Halpin called it a "masterpiece" that showed the tragedy of North Korean residents to the world just like "The Diary of Anne Frank" did for the Nazi Germany. Peter Beck called it the best film ever made on the subject of North Korean defectors.

Directed by Kim Tae-gyoon and starring South Korean film star Cha In-pyo, "Crossing" will be released in theaters on June 5th.

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