Nostalgia as a tool to imagine reconciliation in Welcome to Dongmakgol

Welcome to Dongmakgol employs nostalgia in order to "represent a Korea in which national division never occurred"(Bevan, 53). Bevan argues that the film "revisit[s] the past in order to construct a history that belongs to the Korean nation, rather than one of the two separate Korean states" (51). In taking place in the remote village of Dongmakgol, isolated from the influences of modernity so much so that its residents are unfamiliar with guns, grenades, or even the war itself, the film seems to literally go back in time. Modernity, then, is seen as complicit in the existence of warfare and animosity between the two sides, and in order to reconcile such tension one must revert back to the "pre-modern" where such technologies of destruction were not yet known.
In all its "backward" ignorance, then, Dongmakgol represents a place where the rules of war simply do not work. The most prominent example of this is during the "stand-off," where the villagers' ignorance of the soldiers' weapons completely subverts the soldiers' tactics to threaten and antagonize them. Because they are ignorant to what the soldiers' warnings imply, they cannot be forced to comply to orders, and talk about things such as boars in the field and leave for bathroom breaks while both South and North Korean soldiers have them at gunpoint. The only one who quivers at the threats of fire by the soldiers is the village teacher, who responds appropriately to the danger because he has the most education, and thus experience with "modernity" than the others.
Such ignorance is comical precisely because it undercuts the normal terror and authority of war, and actually give the residents of Dongmakgol the power in the situation because they do not submit to the same laws that the soldiers do, literally existing outside the division that has turned their visitors against each other. One man asks if the grenades the North Koreans are holding are "painted potatoes," re-interpreting the normally aggressive and lethal logic of war into something as harmless and familiar as a potato.
This symbolic re-interpretation of division into community occurs throughout the film as the soldiers begin to integrate into village life, trading in their uniforms for traditional garb, working in the fields, protecting each other and forming relationships. They participate in a utopian, pre-modern lifestyle where they are able to immediately reap the benefits of their work, and live of the land in a sustainable and nourishing way. By focusing on greater external problems than the politics of North and South Korea, such as finding enough food, protecting each other from the wild boar attack, and so on, the film "depicts a Korean identity beyond the ideological constructs formed during the Cold War" (Bevan, 53).
In order to imagine a reconciliation and re-harnessing of "Koreanness," Welcome to Dongmakgol must literally go back in time, using a utopian village to remind audiences what life was like before modernity brought us war and ideology based on economics. By showing viewers that Korean identity used to thrive before the imagined division of North and South, it becomes apparent that it is the soldiers themselves, not the villagers, who are the crazy ones, taking orders to fight each other when they could be working together for a greater good.