by Joseph Davis, Contributing Writer
For the first Out of Market of 2025, I decided to skim through Netflix’s international selection, and stumbled upon the 2024 South Korean film My Name is Loh Kiwan. A film about a North Korean defector who is seeking refugee status in Belgium, it immediately piqued my interest. A movie that dives into one person’s struggles is always something that catches my interest, but honestly, I found that this movie is about far more than that.
I’m going to discuss the stories of the two main characters separately. First off is the title character of Los Kiwan (Song Joong-ki), a man who has defected from North Korea and is trying to seek refugee status in Belgium after leaving China. Here is a character that, in all honesty, I greatly empathize with the entire movie. He’s in a country by himself that speaks languages that he doesn’t understand (French, Dutch, and German), and if he were to be deported back to China, it’s likely he’s also being sent back to North Korea. It’s easily a situation that I’m sure most readers can also empathize with, and in several ways, it’s handled rather brilliantly. For example, there are moments where a character speaks in a language other than Korean, and the film doesn’t provide subtitles. That in itself gives us depth into Loh Kiwan’s situation, as we have to wait just as much and just as long as he does for an answer. As we get to see him going through the process of homelessness, finding a job and place to live just to get by, and the process of trying to prove he is indeed a refugee, the movie does a great job of making it feel like every step forward is followed by two steps back, as each breakthrough is followed by an event that just knocks him back down. It’s hard not to root for a guy who is just trying to seek out a better life, and as the film progresses, you begin to see the moments of hardship and glimmers of hope that tug more and more at your heartstrings.
Conversely, we have the character of Marie Lee (Choi Sung-eun), who is a former member of the Belgian shooting team, and herself has fallen into a difficult situation. We again have a character who constantly feels like she’s only destroying herself, in debt to a gangster with an underground club. She suffers from nothing short of destructive tendencies brought on by someone who is pushing her into those same tendencies for their own personal gain. On its own, having a story where a character is destroying themselves only to find someone (Loh Kiwan) who is able to help and pull themselves out of the darkness is a good story to tell, and many of the moments with Marie are extremely tense. However, while it’s still well-acted and well-written, it does at times feel as if it’s pulling our attention away from the already interesting narrative that Loh Kiwan is facing.
Now, this isn’t to say that My Name is Loh Kiwan is a bad movie, because I greatly enjoyed the film. There are moments where it feels like part of the movie is unnecessary, but not once would I say it completely hurts the film. There are plenty of moments where you feel elation followed by defeat. as the characters’ lives go from joy to suffering, and that’s more than enough to give this movie a solid recommend. It does a good job putting you into the position of the characters by the subtitles you receive, and the sudden moments where the wind is taken from their sails. All in all, it’s worth watching to remind oneself that sometimes people are going through extremely difficult times, and we cannot know one person’s life experiences from the outside.
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