Review of My Name is Loh Kiwan / 로기완, directed by Kim Hee-jin

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the magical powers of the Internet: welcome! My name is Ashley, and I worked as a film critic, am an author myself, and I just generally love reading, writing, and watching all forms of art.

I started this blog as a form of a digital diary to keep track of what I’m reading, as I was finding I was reading so much I was beginning to forget the basics of what I was consuming.

There was a time before I was funemployed (I’m writing this at the end of December 2024, when I found out an opportunity I was supposed to have and was told I was guaranteed was, indeed, not guaranteed.), and I was watching a ton of movies in order to pretend and avoid the reality of applying for jobs.

I was in the right financial situation at the time to avoid having a job for a bit, as I believe firmly in minimalism and not spending my life’s savings frivolously in the name of accumulating more stuff. So I had the ability to sit and watch these movies, read a lot of books, and focus on my blog in the short term.

I watched Loh Kiwan during this time, hence why I am even bringing it up. This is a movie that had been on my radar, as it was released on Netflix a bit before I watched it, and I knew that Song Joong-ki was in it. I haven’t seen him in anything personally since watching Descendants of the Sun, so I was definitely curious.

And so I pressed play on this movie, as I had nothing else to do and needed a distraction.

Let’s get into the review—I can tell I’m rambling, and that’s probably not what you’re here for in the end!

A North Korean defector ends up in Belgium, where he struggles to start a new life and meets a woman who’s involved in the crime world.

We begin this movie meeting our protagonist, Kiwan, and his mother. They’re defecting from North Korea through China, which has its own set of perils when trying to get in China and into South Korea. A lot of Chinese authorities will deport North Koreans back to their country if they’re caught, and Kiwan and his mother need to learn how to survive on the streets.

And they do, for a bit. But when they’re caught by the police one night, his mother tells him to run, and Kiwan flees into the crowded streets. When he comes back to see what has happened to his mother, she’s gone. Fate isn’t too kind to her, as she was killed by the police, so he needs to move on and ends up in the city of Brussels in Belgium.

But because he came from North Korea, he has nothing in his name. There’s no one out there helping him, and Kiwan is homeless. He wanders the streets, unable to really speak the local language, and scavenges for food because he has no money or resources to keep going.

This puts him at odds with the local population as well, but Kiwan isn’t going to give up so easily. After all, it took him so much in order to reach this point, even if he is homeless, and he thinks that his mother would have wanted him to continue. Her dying wish was for him to find somewhere where he can live safely, and he’s gonig to do that.

He finds a job and a cheap room with a Korean woman, then tries to start his life over again. Sometimes he can afford a bit of a nicer meal, but his room doesn’t feel like a room or home yet, and he’s still pretty much living on the edge of poverty.

While all of this is happening, he also meets Marie. She’s a Korean-Belgian who had a career as a shooter, and people thought that she was going to make it big in the Olympic and sports world. However, she’s also not doing so well in the world, which is why these two get along.

There’s also something major to know about Marie: she’s involved with the underground crime world. This puts Kiwan in danger as he continues interacting with her, and this becomes the driving plot and antagonistic points later on in the film. Marie’s desperation to keep going shows how his way of getting up higher is more honest, but together these two are trying their hardest in order to survive in this world.

One of the bigger points brought up in the later half of the film is the fact that Kiwan is stateless. Even though he can say his name is Loh Kiwan, there is no documentation for him, nor is he able to be properly identified as a citizen of any country. When he’s faced with a decision where he needs to leave the country or stay, it means that he might never be able to come back to Belgium the way he has lived there.

Overall Thoughts

From what I’ve seen out there in the world, a lot of movies and dramas grappling with North Koreans and their escape turns into spy or action movies. Or, in the case of Crash Landing on You, a romance drama where a South Korean chaebol finds herself in love with a guy higher up in the North Korean army.

That said, I find this plot refreshing because it goes outside of that mold. It gives room to humanize this character who has been through so much, and shows how these kinds of refugees struggle under foreign systems. Even North Koreans in South Korea tend to struggle there, especially with the influence of the English language in Korea.

I thought this was an excellent movie. It might not be the most entertaining for those with modern tastes for bang bang click click shoot, but there is so much to learn about others and humanity through these kinds of work.

Watch it if you haven’t already and want to; it may be worth a Friday night watch!

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