SEOUL, South Korea - A North Korean refugee boy rejected by South Korea for asylum narrowly escapes North Korean guards who kill his parents, growing up to become a pirate on a vengeful mission: drenching the peninsula in a nuclear rainstorm.

The South Korean action film "Typhoon" strikes many viewers as implausible, but North Koreans who risked their lives escaping the communist regime know better.

"I think it's the first movie that accurately depicts the reality of North Korea," said Kang Chol Hwan, who met President Bush last year to discuss his memoir of growing up in a prison camp. "This is the true story of us. I cried throughout the movie."

"Typhoon" tells the story of Choi Myung Sin and his family, who flee to China and seek refuge in South Korea after breaking into the Austrian embassy in Beijing. Fearing a diplomatic conflict with China, South Korea rejects their asylum bid and secretly repatriates them to the North.

During yet another escape attempt, Choi's parents are shot dead by North Korean guards. Choi and his older sister manage to run away, but their life in hiding means scavenging for food and the sister gets raped by a Chinese farmer while trying to steal a few dumplings for Choi.

The reality for North Koreans trying to flee the totalitarian regime is "far more tragic and tearful," said Kang, who was sent to a North Korean prison along with his family at age 9 because his grandfather was accused of anti-government activity.

At a recent press screening for the movie, Kang talked about a North Korean woman who was sold to work on a Chinese shipping boat, where she was constantly raped by seven ethnic Korean crew. She was dumped into the sea when she died, Kang said.

Nearly 7,700 North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, with more than two-thirds arriving since 2002 amid famine and increased economic hardships, according to the South's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs.

Still, thousands more North Koreans are said to be living in hiding in China, which is obliged to send them back under a bilateral treaty. Activists say China repatriates up to 400 defectors every week to the North where they can face harsh punishment.

"North Korean women, in particular, are in extreme peril in terms of being snared by human traffickers either to be sold into marriage to a Chinese person or to be pulled into the sex trade," said Tim Peters, founder and director of Helping Hands Korea, a Christian charity group supporting North Korean refugees.

Activists estimate more than 70 percent of North Korean women who try to defect become victims of human trafficking in China, while North Korean defectors say the figure is much higher, Peters said.

"Typhoon" director Kwak Kyung-taek, whose father fled the North during the Korean War, said he was trying to portray the "kind of hostility the North Koreans would harbor against South Korea" when they were sent back to their communist homeland.

The anger is personified by Choi Myung Sin, played by top star Jang Dong-gun. Choi becomes a pirate named Sin who conspires to explode nuclear waste over both the South for rejecting his family and the North for killing his parents.

In the movie's climax, Sin berates a South Korean navy officer trying to thwart him. What's maddening about the situation, he shouts, is "that you and I speak the same language."

"There is a great sense of alienation between South and North Koreans, but when we meet we can easily communicate," Kwak said. "This is the ironic situation on the Korean Peninsula."

The movie is South Korea's most expensive, costing $15 million to make. Despite the big budget, the film has drawn just over 4 million viewers since its Dec. 14 premiere.

Critics complain of clunky action scenes and a plot with too many holes centered on the much played-out subject _ at least to South Koreans _ of the divided Koreas. But defectors say South Koreans are too apathetic to their Northern brethren.

"Other countries are concerned about problems of North Korea's human rights and defectors. On the contrary, South Koreans are just not that interested in the North Korean defector issue," Kang said. "I hope the movie helps raise South Koreans' awareness of North Korea's human rights situation."

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