My Name is Loh Kiwan follows the arduous journey of a North Korean defector who seeks refuge in Belgium while trying to survive alone. The film is currently streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Loh Kiwan and his mother are North Korean defectors living in China where they struggle to survive.
After his scuffle at work leads to the authorities hunting him down, Kiwan’s mother continues working while hiding him at home.
He’s eventually sussed out and while trying to protect him, his mother ends up dying by accident.
He’s sent to Brussels, Belgium by his uncle, who sells his mother’s body to a hospital to get him some money, as was his mother’s wish.
Kiwan faces a lot of struggle trying to survive in Brussels while his refugee status hangs in balance, as his defector status needs to be proven.
His wallet full of the money he got because of her mother is stolen by a girl named Marie.
She is a former shooting athlete who, after losing her will to live, has gotten mixed up with the betting mafia and bad eggs in general, while also getting addicted to drugs.
After feeling some sympathy for Kiwan, she tries to fetch his wallet back but her mafia coach would give it back only after she wins him a match.
In the meantime, she helps Kiwan get a job at a meat-packing factory through her estranged father.
He begins making a very humble but honest living and is helped greatly by his colleague and neighbor Seon-Ju.
That’s until an altercation between two rowdy Belgian men forces Kiwan into steamrolls into a big issue and he’s arrested.
Marie helps bail him out and at the trial, Seon-Ju has to lie against him to protect other refugees who are also working at the factory.
Meanwhile, Kiwan and Marie get close romantically and fall for each other deeply. His trial continues, and after a promising turn, his chances of getting accepted as a refugee look great.
However, he has to leave the trial midway when he realizes Marie might be in trouble, which she is, as Cyril plans to take her with him to Amsterdam.
Kiwan arrives and helps her escape trouble, eventually reaching out to her father to get her out of the country.
Some time passes, and after making enough money working at a restaurant, he leaves Belgium to go reunite with Marie, as My Name is Loh Kiwan rolls the credits.
Ending explained:
Kiwan’s mother
Loh Kiwan defected from North Korea along with her mother.
The two even attempted to take their own lives while escaping, whenever they feared they might be caught.
They fled to China and started working small jobs at the restaurants in Yanji.
After he retaliated against his boss for beating up one of their own, he had to go into hiding from the Chinese authorities who began looking for him.
His mother would continue to work but never blamed him for their troubles.
The authorities come searching for him at her workplace and eventually spot Kiwan, who, by chance, comes to give his mother an umbrella.
They chase him and his mother also rushes after him, and gets run over by a truck, dying shortly after.
Before shutting her eyes for good, she tells Kiwan to survive and find himself a life worth living.
Seon-Ju’s reason
Seon-Ju is one of Kiwan’s colleagues at the Brusells meatpacking factory he gets work at, thanks to Marie’s father.
She helps find a place to stay, learn the ropes at work, and other things as well. However, at the trial where he has to prove he’s a North Korean defector, she lies.
She later comes to apologize to him, telling him she had to lie because she was asked to do so by a person from the refugee office.
If she didn’t, it would lead to the court learning that Kiwan’s documents that got him the job were forged, leading to the plant getting shut down and other refugees being put out of work.
She was threatened that her visa wouldn’t be renewed, which was terrible news to her since her youngest daughter needed surgery and relied on her wages.
In the end, her visa didn’t get renewed anyway, and she was deported back to China. Sometime later, she sends back a newspaper clipping of Kiwan’s mother’s accident to him.
She apologizes again and her help leads to Kiwan’s case becoming more credible at the trial.
Marie’s mother
Marie is a former shooting athlete who lost her mother to an illness that makes he chronically bedridden and on heavy medical support.
At one point, her mother, Lee Jeong-Ju asks her husband to let her go. She deems her life miserable not only for herself but also for her loved ones.
She wishes to not trouble them any more, to not be immobile and frequently being carried in and out by her husband, and also to stop waiting until the day she dies.
She is the one who asks her husband for euthanasia. She also asks him to keep it a secret from Marie.
She wants him to hide that he was involved in this decision, or that it was her own decision because she thinks it’ll ruin Marie and she’d blame herself.
That’s what ultimately happens when Marie learns that her mother passed away due to being euthanized, rather than a natural death.
She lashes out at her father and deeply resents him, even blaming him for murdering her mother. At the death anniversary, she causes a storm at the church before doing drugs.
She is rescued from drugs by Loh Kiwan, who keeps trying his best to protect her.
At the end of My Name is Loh Kiwan, Marie leaves Brussels and tells her father she still loves him no matter what, before bidding farewell.
Loh Kiwan and Marie
Loh Kiwan is accepted as a refugee in Belgium, but before that, he helps Marie escape Cyril, a bar owner and a gangster who bets on and fixes her underground shooting matches.
He intends to take her away with him to Amsterdam, where he will open a new shooting parlor.
However, Marie doesn’t need him anymore, having recovered from her addiction and also her miserable, hopeless life, thanks to Kiwan.
Loh Kiwan leaves his trial midway when he gets the hunch that she might be in trouble. He goes to the bar and fights Cyril, who’s shot in his arm by Marie.
They escape, and Kiwan calls her father to help her get to safety, by fleeing the country. She bids Kiwan a teary farewell at the airport.
Before My Name is Loh Kiwan ends, the titular protagonist ditches the benefits and protection his refugee status grants him in Belgium, to go reunite with Marie in a South Asian country.
More than the freedom to live in a country, Kiwan always wanted the freedom to leave it whenever he wanted.
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