Enemies can be Allies... in a Fantasy Village

       The movie “Welcome to Dongmakgol” was probably the most different movies I’ve seen so far, about the Korean War. The movie starts like any other war movie with soldiers fighting. However, the first unusual thing I’ve noticed was the woods where the soldiers get lost (ignoring the fact that the North Korean leader was presented as being admirable from the first scene, which was surprising as well). This place looked like it was part of a fairytale: with butterflies, bright colors, and even the music sends a similar feeling. This forest was more like a barrier or a transition from a real world to an unusual village (Dongmakgol). This isolated village was unaware of the war and ignorant of the conflicts that were dividing Koreans apart, but at the same time it was the perfect place to show how absurd this war was. For example the South Korean soldiers try to explain to the villagers that there is a war going on, but in the end even they get confused about who is actually fighting against whom, and for what reason.

         In all the previous movies the North Korean army is presented in a very negative light, sometimes even dehumanizing them; however this movie makes a lot of effort to show that that was the wrong message. Not only that the North Korean soldiers are not shown as being evil (the antagonist) but the director puts a lot of effort into showing that they are good (helping others, and most importantly they are willingly to collaborate with their initial enemies). This movie is in line with Shin’s article which mentions how today the attitude changes towards the North Koreans. They are in the end part of the same ethnic group as the South Korean, but they were always presented as this monstrous group who were evil.

        It is also important to point out that there is also an American in the village, and this shows that the director is not trying to say that only North and South Koreans are part of the same unified group. He shows that our modern world is no longer divided in nationalistic groups, and that it has a multicultural component. An individual group can be formed by North Koreans, South Koreans as well as Americans and still be bound together by a way of thinking or just by simply willing to be good people (which was heavily emphasized in the movie).