This is the story of James Joseph Dresnok, once a United States Army private, who successfully crossed the minefield-strewn demilitarized zone and defected to North Korea during the war.

Dresnok has spent more than half his life living, working, and raising a family in North Korea, and was nicknamed Comrade Joe by Western media when he walked into infamy at the height of the Cold War, still remaining a man of eternally divided loyalties.

From his appalling childhood in a rural 1950′s Virginia foster home, to interviews with his fellow GI’s, Crossing the Line uses combined historical footage with contemporary interviews to both uncover the Kim-Jong Il regime and end 44 years of secrecy and rumour by allowing Dresnok to tell his own story.