A new private grantmaking initiative called Bearing North has launched in Los Angeles to fund films about North Korea, founded by entrepreneurs and film investors Blaine Vess and Esther Paik Vess. The fund will support independent filmmakers worldwide across documentary features, narrative features and shorts, with a stated preference for projects put forward by North Korean defectors, and it matters because it creates a dedicated funding stream for stories that its founders say are otherwise underexplored while the people and places involved remain accessible.

The initiative's advisory board includes documentary director Matt Tyrnauer, journalist Anna Fifield, North Korean defector and author Joseph Kim, and Hannah Song and Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, an organisation on whose board Blaine Vess has served for over a decade. Bearing North's first supported project is "School for Defectors", directed by Jeremy Workman, which follows students at the Jangdaehyun School in Busan, South Korea, an institution serving North Korean defectors and their families. The couple have previously backed North Korea-themed documentaries including "I Am Sun Mu", "Assassins" and "Beyond Utopia", and grant applications for the new fund are now open.