Propaganda in The Marines who Never Returned

In ’Military Enlightenment’ for the Masses: Genre and Cultural Inter-mixing in South Korea’s Golden Age War Films, Diffrient notes that “[Lee] stands out among his peers for his humanistic approach to the Korean War movie, a genre commonly perceived to be a propagandistic vehicle for extolling the virtues of the political status quo.” (23) While many can understand this statement by considering the major role and significance of the rescued little girl, Yong-hui, in highlighting the compassion of the Korean soldiers, I think that it can also be understood by looking at the brief portrayals of the enemy in the movie and that although humanistic, it still holds aspects of propaganda. I found that within the first few scenes of the movie, an image of the enemy had already been created, one that portrayed them as sneaky, cowardly, and intensely cruel. In the first scene, the Korean soldiers are fighting a hidden enemy, we never actually see the opposing soldiers but only have the suspenseful music and sporadic flying bullets to let us know that they are there. In contrast, the Korean soldiers are shown as brave, there is a shot of the solitary, courageous Korean soldier who goes into the open to throw grenades, provoking the enemy. As well as this, the Korean soldiers are shown as strategic whereas the others are foolish, an example of this is the scene where one soldier takes off his helmet and holds it up as a target, outsmarting the enemy shooting at him. This opening scene is also when Yong-hui is rescued and when the soldiers stumble into the room full of dead, hanging, and piled up bodies. Both of these invoke the compassion of the soldiers, first in demanding a ceasefire to get the girl, and then in the shots of the soldiers crying, or close to crying, while looking at the bodies.  These highlight the humanistic aspects of the movie, but the propagandistic aspects cannot be looked over.