To make this a hit with USA audiences

Rating: 9/10 (19 February 2008)

This is a very moving film, and unlike most war movies, it illustrates the amount of incompetence, along with sheer evil, that takes place during war. I give it a 9.
To make this a hit with audiences in the USA (and presumably in other countries aside from Korea, the distributors should do several things.
(1) They should coordinate the subtitles with the English soundtrack. The subtitles seriously disagree with the English soundtrack. Of the two, the English soundtrack seems to be far better than the subtitles, which sound a lot like manga captions or video game text.
(2) In one way or another, they should provide some historical background. The Korean War went back and forth to a greater degree than any war I have ever read about (and I've read about hundreds). That makes the film seem more disjointed and disoriented than it is. * Precede the film with a two-minute feature showing a map of Korea, and explain the stages of the war; or * Put up some title cards at the appropriate points, saying things like, "This is when the US came into the war, and the tide of war turned completely" * Enclose some liner notes including maps with the DVDs.
The time-line that the explanation should explain:
(i) The 38th Parallel. North Korea invades pm 6/25/50 to try to reunify Korea under its Communist regime.
(ii) No American or UN forces were in South Korea, and the ROK (Republic of Korea) lost 80% of its territory, to the Pusan Perimeter.
(iii) US forces crossed from Japan and invaded at Inchon. The North Koreans lost 90% of THEIR territory.
(iv) China became afraid that the US forces were going to cross the Yalu River, right into China, so China invaded with massive forces and drove the ROK and US forces all the way south again.
(v) The US/UN/NATO forces regrouped, built up forces, and pushed north to near the 38th Parallel. This time, they stopped, and there was stalemate, and eventually cease-fire.
Other things for it to explain: * When each side captured an area, they ruthlessly purged it of collaborators, probably including people who were denounced by their neighbors for ulterior purposes (e.g., someone just didn't like the neighbor, or wanted to take over their house, so they'd make an accusation and get the neighbor killed) * When each side left an area, they tried to leave nothing behind but a wasteland
The poor civilians were over-run again and again, and treated ruthlessly each time. Between over-runs, they'd starve because the troops would sweep up all the available food.
As far as I could tell, the film only shows ROK and North Korean forces, never US/UN or Chinese forces. It might be good to explain that, also, because sometimes it's hard to tell the sides apart.
Finally, the scenes of hundreds of planes passing over are cheesy, and from what I've read, inaccurate. There were never huge numbers of planes.