When Joe, a US Army officer stationed along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, learns that he will soon be deployed to Vietnam, he leaves everything behind and defects to one of the most mysterious countries on the planet - North Korea. There, he meets Mariko, a Japanese woman abducted as a teenager and forced to work as a language instructor for her captors. Underneath the seeming acceptance of her fate lies a determination to get a message to her parents by whatever means necessary.

Over the course of two decades as Joe makes the transition from state propagandist to unlikely movie star, he finds himself alongside Dave, a fellow American defector who enjoys his comfortable life and is willing to aggressively defend it. His Romanian wife Elena, whose dedication to communism masks her own sense of captivity, forms a friendship with Mariko based on shared experiences. Under the stern eye of Captain Kim, the two couples form a volatile unit in which loyalty and fear, ambition and performance, all blend together until truth is obscured entirely.

As the Cold War ends, all are faced with decisions about their future, and for those that reclaim their elusive freedom, it remains unclear whether the compromises they made in order to ensure their survival have been completely erased.

Welcome to Pyongyang is a five-character drama inspired by real events. It spans twenty years and explores reinvention, complicity, and the fragile boundary between survival and self-deception. It takes place primarily in two major sets: one a home interior and one a film set. The running time is approximately two hours.