From: Nhan Tran <tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com>
Subject: NEWS/VN: S.Korean film probes scars of VN experience
Originator: daemon@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Reply-To: tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com
Organization: N/A
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:42:18 GMT


08/23

S.KOREAN FILM PROBES SCARS OF VIETNAM EXPERIENCE

    By Diane Stormont
    SEOUL, Aug 24, Reuter - Seventeen years after its last soldier returned
home, South Korea is beginning to lift the veil on a taboo subject and come to
terms with its Vietnam War experience.
    Film-makers and novelists are the ones probing the scars -- a painful and
emotional process for many who were caught up in the maelstrom of a foreign war.
    "About 300,000 Korean soldiers fought in the Vietnam War, but there has been
no serious movie about it until now," said film director Chung Ji-young.
    "The Vietnam war was swept under the carpet for many years."
    His film "White Badge" is the first Vietnam War movie to look at the South
Korean role, warts and all. It has drawn angry protests from the Vietnam
Veterans' Association in South Korea.
    Based on a novel by Ahn Jung-Hyo, who served in South Korea's White Horse
division in Vietnam, "White Badge" pulls no punches. It regards the South Korean
soldiers who served in the war mercenaries of the Americans.
    "They should not have been there," Chung said.
    The film addresses in detail the atrocities committed by the "Daihan" troops
-- the Vietnamese name for the South Koreans. South Korean troops were regarded
by allies and enemies alike as tough, even brutal warriors.
    Filmed in Vietnam, "White Badge" views the war through the haunted eyes of
Sergeant Han Ki-ju, a brooding intellectual who returns to Seoul with a textbook
case of "Vietnam syndrome."
    An encounter with an even more seriously disturbed veteran triggers a series
of flashbacks.
    Some scenes are not for the squeamish. Much of the symbolism of the film
hinges on the severing of ears.
    "I know the government didn't like it," said Chung. Censorship has been
light, however. Three cuts were ordered -- a brothel scene and two scenes
involving the severing of ears.
    War veterans, angry about the atrocities portrayed, demanded broad cuts.
They tried to insist that Chung included scenes showing South Korean war
veterans helping Vietnamese villagers.
    "Korean involvement...earned the country hard currency at a time when South
Korea was one of the poorest nations in Asia. While South Korea was paying its
soldiers the equivalent of $10 per month, those who went to Vietnam got $45 per
month from the U.S.," the film's brochure said.
    Returning soldiers, lugging back U.S. television sets, washing machines and
consumer goods bought in American commissaries, were hailed as heroes until
Hanoi's victory made it taboo to discuss the war in staunchly anti-communist
South Korea.
    It was only this year that Seoul acknowledged that 4,687 of the 312,853
soldiers sent to fight, as the film synopsis said, "for the American cause and
American dollars," were killed.
    The first South Korean soldier left for Vietnam on September 22, 1964, sent
by strongman president Park Chung-hee as part of a promise to U.S. president
Lyndon Johnson to support the war effort.
    Seoul feared the U.S. would withdraw its troops stationed in South Korea
unless it backed American efforts in Vietnam.
    The last South Korean soldier left Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
    The film's release coincides with increasing demands for compensation by
South Korean veterans who were exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange, which U.S.
courts have ruled causes a range of cancers and genetic abnormalities.
    The Veterans Association is now collating claims. No compensation has been
paid to South Korean survivors of the war.