As the Korean war raged in the 1950s, eight students – all members of the North’s new elite, destined for a life of privilege and power – left for Moscow to study at a prestigious Russian film school. They never returned.

Scattered to the corners of the Soviet Union after they chose asylum and exile to denounce the personality cult around the North’s founder Kim Il-sung, the eight of them lived as authors and filmmakers – forever separated from friends and family.

“We call the places we are born our homes,” wrote one, Han Tae Yong, in a short story. “There should be a separate word for the places we die, a word that sounds as fond as the word ‘home’ does.”