[The Marines Who Never Returned] Realism

Released in 1963, The Marines Who Never Returned is a Korean War film directed by Lee Man-hee. It talks about the marines trying to survive in a battle with the Chinese army during the Korean War. What stood out the most in the film were the war wounds, and through those injuries Director Lee emphasized love and comradeship shared between those suffering together for their home-country. This clear theme of the film could have aroused somewhat heavy atmosphere, but he added some comedic elements to the film which deeply moved the audience at the same time. For example, the character played by a popular comedian, Goo Bong-seo, was a humorous soldier who played a major role in entertaining his fellow soldiers. What he stated while he was dying was especially so touching: “who would make you guys laugh if I die..”

According to the reading by Sunyoung Park, the literary mainstream had been wary of taking an ideological stance during the two decades following the Korean War. The writers who endorsed socially engaged literature further articulated their position through the realism discourse in the 1970. Within the new discourse of national literature, realism was to be applied method of creation for truthful national literature, which would represent the individual lives of the Korean people as they pertained to the institutional problems specific to Korean society. Thus, The Marines Who Never Returned, as one of the national literatures, portrayed the struggle of not only the soldiers who fought for the country but also the Korean citizens as well. "War" kills numerous amount of soldiers, destroys villages, puts innocent people at risk, force those friends to point a gun at each other over a misunderstanding.  Many families get torn apart and many become war orphans. All of these occurred in the agony of the war.  Without having time to look back on those, soldiers had to make their pace to the front where they could never return and fight a war. In this way, the film captured every moment of the individual lives of the Korean people.