Great, Human & Korean: THE BEST Movie about the Korean War

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2006)

By the time I finished watching this movie the first time, I really cried my eyes out. This movie has beaten the record of "Titanic", the most successful Hollywood movie (worldwide) to date, in South Korea. This movie was that good, and that "Korean".
The Korean War ended in 1953 and there were a flux of Korean movies in memory of it recently. This was one of the leading movies where Jang Dong-Kun, the most popular Korean actor, starred (not as a war hero, but as an "ordinary Korean" during the War). I'd like to give the readers a little bit of historical background to better appreciate the movie. The followings are related to many scenes in the movie.
Beginning: The war broke out on the very early morning of June 25th (Sunday), 1950 without a declaration of war. Kim Il-Sung, the then North Korean leader broke so many people's heart and eventually divided the whole nation in two for more than 60 years (and counting). Many of those war generation people, my grandparents for example, are still wondering if their brothers and sisters are still alive on the other side of the borderline, praying for re-unification of the Korean peninsula. When the War broke out, nobody expected (much less, prepared) the North Korean forces would storm the South so aggressively; they took over more than 90% of the South within 3 months. Before the War there was no balance of the military power between the North and the South; while Kim Il-Sung had been raising his army under the supervision of Joseph Stalin, the South was mainly into economic development. For most South Korean people, a war between the North and the South, shortly after the liberation from the Japanese imperialists (resulted from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki in August 1945), never crossed their minds. The South Korean government moved to Pusan (or Busan), a harbor city at the southernmost part of the peninsula. The last resistance line, and therefore the heaviest battle fields were around the Nakdong River, only two hours' drive from Pusan.
Middle: Then there was this general from the U.S., Douglas MacArthur, who came up with a brilliant plan to break into Inchon, the second largest harbor city of South Korea, which is only one hour away west from Seoul. That was September 28, 1950, three months from the breakout of the war. The so-called "Inchon Landing Operation" was extremely successful mainly because, this time, the North had never expected such a crazy plan; they had already taken over Inchon three months before. The aim of the operation was to cut the enemy's supply line, which it did, and the North Korean army fled back north while receiving heavy resistance from the South. They fell apart quickly, and the allied forces of the U.N. (including the U.S.) and South Korea almost reached the "Abrok" River (near the North Korea - China border) by the end of the same year. South Koreans clearly had a chance to take over the entire peninsula and establish a "united" democratic republic.
End of Disc 1: Then the Chinese forces intervened out of nowhere, again without a declaration of war. The Chinese and North Korean forces recaptured Seoul on January 4, 1951 (Koreans call it "1.4 Retreat") and since everything changed overnight. The Chinese forces used "Oceans of People" (or "Human Wave Attack") strategy, a tactic they used to repeat in their civil war (1946 - 1949) against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. In short, the Chinese soldiers greatly outnumbered the joint forces of the U.N. and South Korea. Many of the Chinese soldiers were actually not heavily armored - because of the very nature of the strategy the majority of the Chinese soldiers were only meant to be human shields or bullet wasters for the joint forces. Some historical records even indicate that the number of the Chinese forces was even larger than "the number of the bullets" that the South Korean and allied forces carried at many of the battlefields.
End of Disc 2: In this movie Jang Dong-Kun plays a very symbolic role representing the ideological dilemma and the emotional pain of Korean people during the War, which started as a civil war but soon escalated into a "Third World War"; the Western Allied forces of 1.2 million fought against the equivalent number of communists, the Chinese forces alone being close to 800,000 (The Allied Forces consisted of the U.N. Forces with almost 20 countries including the U.S., the U.K., France, and others from as far away as South Africa). Obviously the War was another ideological power game between the U.S. and the Communists (the Soviet Union and China), but the Korean peninsula unfortunately happened to be their playground.
The last battle scene where Jang turns the heavy machine gun around (literally 180 degrees) and shoots his own "North Korean comrades" in order to protect his younger brother (Won Bin), a soldier from the South, reminds me of the movie "Taepung" where Jang (as "Sin") swore to kill all the South Koreans because of the tragedy that he and his sister suffered after the South Korean government rejected their family's request for asylum (because of the sensitive diplomatic relationship between China and South Korea in 1983). That last battle scene symbolizes the main theme of this movie that "ideologies do not matter when it comes to families, brothers and sisters."
This movie includes a number of controversial scenes including the one where the South Korean soldiers execute the North Korean POWs in retaliation of the communists' massacre of innocent Korean civilians. These days the South Korean filmmakers enjoy making controversial movies in which South Koreans or Americans are not always good guys (and North Koreans are often good guys or poor victims with no better choice), which reflects their artistic and political matureness.
A touching story, spectacular scenes, great music, excellent acting... this movie is a true masterpiece.