The Brotherhood of War

‘The Brotherhood of War” was filmed by Kang JeGyu in 2004. Taegukgi hwinallimyo is a war film, which contains the two brother’s story during the Korean War. This was the saddest film we watched during this class over the semester. Unlike the other war film, this film was successful within female since the two main characters are Jang Donggun and Won Bin.

The scene where JinSeok decided to find his brother JinTae, even though he did not liked JinTae’s actions did not understand his decision before he reads the letter tht JinTae wrote to his mom, was the saddest scene of the film. However, JinTae did not recognized Jin Seok first, and thought he is one of the military members from South Korea, tried to shot him, but Jin Seok says “we have to go back to where mom is waiting”. As mentioned in the reading, “emotional reunion between separated families and finally on sepia-tinted photograph, encased in a cracked frame, of chinsok in his student uniform with this mother and older borther. CHinseok represents the aging Korean War generation, one still haunted by those memories, as well as one of the many separated families plagued by this past today” (Kim, 305).  Jin-Tae had antagonism towards South Korea’s (south Korean military and people from upper class status) reactions. Even though they said they would send Jinseok to home if JinTae gets the military awards, they did not keep the promise. However, after JinTae misdeem about JinSeok’s death (he saw the pen that he gave to Jinseok so he thought Jinseok was dead), JinTae became a leader of the North Korean flag-troops. This scene shows that JinTae’s decision was caused by South Korea’s reactions. Also, this indirectly shows that JinTae represents the North Korea itself, and JinSeok represents the South Korea itself. If the government (people from the upper class in this film) reacted what the citizens or weaker (JinTae in this film), there would be no war occur nor the conflicts have lefts.

Also, as mentioned in the reading, “in South Korean film and literature, the Korean War and division constitute an ongoing conversation of a myriad of loose ends as texts continued to catalog and articulate stray stands of such discarded memories” (309), there are many films that contains the story of the Korean War in these days, which cherish those killed in the war. As Kim stated, “Films like T’aegukki hwinallimyo no longer play to an audience with direct experience of the war, but to an audience that is once removed. The films that include the war contents would approach to the audience as an interesting genre that they never had experienced. However, these films would remind the traumatic events to the audience who have experienced, and/or who have lost their family during the war.  As the beginning scene and the ending scene shows, the generations of our grand parents remember these days and have pitiful emotions, but our generations only have the pitiful emotions about the fact that there were many those who have killed during the War.