In the Land of Machines is a documentary about migrant workers who have arrived in Korea from Nepal. In particular, it focuses on those workers who wrote poems for a 2020 collection entitled This Is the City of Machines. Among the 35 Nepali migrant workers who contributed 69 poems to the book, the documentary closely follows the lives of three Korean residents: Dilip Bantawa, Sunil Dipta Rai, and Jiwan Khatri. It also includes interviews from Nepal with others who have returned, including Ramesh Sayan and Aishwarya Shrestha.

From this introduction, some readers might think the documentary seems obvious. Indeed, Dilip, Sunil, and Jiwan all worked in somewhat elite positions in Nepal as a schoolteacher, financial company employee, and network reporter, respectively, so it may not seem like anything new to hear that they suffered wounds to their pride after coming to Korea, or that they and their colleagues experienced discrimination from the small to the very large scales. It may not even be all that shocking to learn that migrant workers have died in accidents, by suicide, or by suffering heart attacks in their sleep. Perhaps hearing about similar stories in the news over the years has so hardened our consciences that little shocks us anymore.

In the Land of Machines might not have attracted notice had it merely described the realities facing migrant workers in a straightforward way. Director Kim Okyoung has been a documentarian for more than 40 years and has been producing documentaries for over a decade. Fittingly enough for such a veteran's directing debut, the work approaches its subject in a new way. The methodology is one that presents the lives of Nepali workers through the use of poetic language. The film includes scenes that show the contributors to This Is the City of Machines reading their own verses to suit the story's context. The result is something surprisingly fresh. The approach of reality being interpreted and transformed in terms of poetic language is distinctly different from the typical documentary grammar.

For example, there are passages that transport the viewer into the writer's mindset and open the doors for a connection to form. In 'Me,' Dilip Bantawa writes, "When you become a robot in a country that makes robots / spending your time in diligent labor / you sometimes look at your cell phone's address book / You stare at your own graduation photo / taken in your university gown / obscured at the very bottom at the page." In 'Employment,' Ramesh Sayan writes, "One day, I was so tired from life / that I said / 'Sajangnim, you have resolved my hunger and want. / I want to thank you. / Now let me die.' / My boss said, / 'I understand. / But there is too much work today / so finish all that work / and die tomorrow!"

In the Land of Machines uses different strategies to heighten the impact of the poetic lines. It uses a variety of inserts and edits the speakers' accounts in an unhurried way to evoke an overall sentiment. At points during the film, the grim reality facing Nepali workers and the misdeeds and apathy of Koreans are conveyed in subdued ways, as when Jiwan Khatri drily reads out news about "someone from somewhere in Nepal working somewhere or other who died yesterday." Instead, the portrait of Korea as another hell is formed naturally through the weight of verses that express the migrant workers' roiling sentiments. The truth about the Republic of Korea as an advanced economy that can only survive by excluding and oppressing others is laid bare through lines by Nepali workers that are both plaintive and direct.

Thus, it is not merely because of a sense of identification with the emotions of migrant workers that the viewer might feel choked up when reading lines like those in 'Machine' by Saroj Sarbahara, who writes, "My friend, this is the city of machines / Here, it is not people who run machines / but machines that run people / [. . .] In this city of machines / you play like a machine / and before you know it / you have become a machine." The lives of these migrant workers become mirrors showing our true face as people who have grown into bizarre Frankensteinian creatures, reflecting the dark side of Korea.

A particular fitting passage for this space may be found in the words written in the introduction to The Perilla Leaf Struggle(2022), a book written by migrant human rights activist Woo Chunhee after 1,500 days spent with Cambodian workers in a Korean farming community: "I like the line that reads, 'When a person comes, a person's life comes.' Migrant workers do not come simply as 'hands' to fill holes in our society's workforce. Migrant workers are people who come bearing their own bundles of stories. Inside those bundles are lives, dreams, tears, and laughter. Most of all, there are migrant worker human rights."Director Kim Okyoung has been a documentarian for more than 40 years and has been producing documentaries for over a decade. (Moon Seok)