The Marines Who Never Returned

The Marines Who Never Returned is a Korean War film produced by Lee ManHee in 1963. This film contents the story of the marines try to survive in the War with the Chinese army during the Korean War. “The Marines Who never return not only gestures ahead to the future but returns to the visual tropes and trench iconography of World War II films, conjured in its opening minutes as thousands of marines spill out onto the barbed-wire beach at Incheon in a scene that recalls numerous landing at Omaha beach” (Scott, 42). Since the film was filmed ten years after the Korean War, it contains more realistic scenes. The film contains the heavy atmosphere, however, there were some comedic scenes in the film. In the film, Goo Bongseo was the most humorous solider who gives entertains to the other soldiers. Even though the film contains the heavy atmosphere, audience could watch the film not only as a heavy War film but also as comedic scenes since he played the humorous role in the film. As mentioned in the reading, “realism still retains its theoretical significance in its rejection of the trivialization of literature that occurs when it becomes alienated from society” (Park, 187). I was surprised about the fact that the film has attracted a domestic audience of 230,000 and won numerous honors at the third Annual rand Bell Awards (Park, 28). Since the title of the film foreshadowing not happy-ending story, personally thought there would had been many audiences watching the film, which would remind them of those days (War times). “Although the military enlightenment or anticommunist film was a fixture in the resumes of many South Korean filmmakers during this politically repressive yet textually playful era, few practitioners brought the same degree of nuance and explosive poetics to stories about heroic soldiers and brave pilots as did Lee Man hee” (Park, 23). The most pitiful scene of this film was the scene when YongHee lost her mom and followed the soldiers. This scene portrays that there were many orphans of the Korean War who lost their family on their way to evacuate. However, YongHee shows the positive characteristics in the film, which makes audience to feel more pitiful of her.

The Censorship Over the Movie

            Lee Man Hui’s Marines Who Never Returned is the first movie that we saw in black and white from the course. The film was released in 1963 only ten years after the official armistice of the Korean War. This film is analyzed as a unique movie the director’s “humanistic approach” was worth noting. I think this film is an archetypal war film that the Korean government encouraged filmmakers to produce in the sixties and seventies. However, the reason why the film was outstanding among other war films in South Korea at the time is that the soldiers in the movie were depicted as humane, loving and compassionate. This friendly depiction of soldiers could possibly be a decoy for the military regime to alleviate the tension and fear among the Korean citizens when President Park Chung Hee inaugurated in 1961 after May 16^th Coup-de-tat . During this period, the censorship over, the media and the cultural contents such as films, commercials and soap operas was strict. If there were anything to be seen as communist and anti-military regime, they were strategically censored by the government.

             Lee was smart enough to employ the innocent young girl who loses her family over the battlefield. The soldiers take good care of her and protect her. The young girl, Yong-hee plays an important role as and is in a position of the normal Korean citizens who lost their families during the war and encountered political turmoil after the Korean War. In the movie, Yong-hee feels very safe and comfortable in the male-dominated military. Even though her personality might be originally outgoing and active, it gives a bizarre impression to me how the girl could be so happy after the loss of her mother. She expresses her sadness of the loss in the narration a little bit; however, it is not dominant in the movie. The employment of the young and naïve girl and the depiction of how she socializes with the soldiers she hardly knows show how the war-themed movies of South Korea during the sixties was almost propagandistic of the military regime. It could be easily understandable due to the fact that the films were heavily screened at the time. 

Humanistic War Movie and Korean Heroes

The movie “The Marines Who Never Returned” is a war movie and the film was made right after the war when “the immediate and residual effects of the war on the indigenous population” (22. David) occurred. During 1950s and 1960s, “it should come as no surprise that the fratricidal conflict functioned as a plot element in dozens of military enlightenment films produced in South Korea” (22. David). According to the reading, the director Man-Hui Lee “stands out among his peer for his humanistic approach to the Korean War movies” and I had to agree with that sentence because “after saving the girl and rooting out the remaining foes, the marines hesitantly adopt the waif, named Yong-Hee thereby becomes both mascot” (38. David). Also soldiers take care of her in their military camp and they were being good father or brother to her which is impossible during the war period because battalion commander usually does not permit this kind of situation since she could be a fact that interrupts soldiers’ concentration. However, the commander actually permits her to become one of the soldiers and they also take care of her while their soldiers go out for the fight. Even though they are in chaotic situation which is war, I could feel caring and consideration in this movie.

When I heard that the bar is only permitted to the US soldiers in the movie. I thought that the director tried to show how Koreans described US soldiers as a hero during the Korean War because they came to fight for South Korea. However, when Korean marines go to the bar and destroy the bar until they get permission to drink, the director tried to send a message to the audience that they have to respect and thank to Korean soldiers first because they also fought against North Korea for protecting their country. Even these days, Korean marines are represented as strong and brave soldiers. When they get the command that have to defend a front-line against the massive Chinese attack which was actually happened in real, they fight bravely and well. Despite the fear of the death, the marines from the movie do not hesitate and killed many of them. Even though they know they are not going to survive from this massive attack, they fight with a patriotism and intrepidness; also, they die with an honor as a soldier. As a Korean, the soldiers who actually fought during the Korean War are hero because they protected my country despite the death. The director probably felt the same way and he wanted to depict them as a hero.

Lee Man-hee's Humanistic Approach

I liked what Tudor said about how towards the end of the film The Marines Who Never Returned Home, it was no longer the fighting for their nation that mattered but for the team/squadron to stick together through thick and thin. And I liked the observation Sybill made on how the film exercises “a soft psychological manipulation through media and emotional appeal”. My thoughts were aligned with this statement when I was trying to piece together the strong presence of a girl in the care and protection of the marines and the theme of war that pervaded all the montages. Why did the director choose to have a little girl as a major constituent? I jotted down in my notes that it had to do with adding an emotional side to the film, to show that the men had a compassionate attitude and were not men who always thought of violence. Indeed, this essential quality was a sort of trademark of this director, Lee Man-hee. Diffrient puts this quality in more thematic terms: “[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).

For those who aren’t too keen on old movies, the black-and-white nature of this film can be quite an upsetting feature. But this film should not be overlooked as there are only a handful of films out there that show Korean soldiers who do not fit into the Korean caricatures molded by Hollywood. Through these male characters, we see not just a “rarefied version of the ROK armed forces” (23) but also a glimpse into the more realistic and humanistic values of Koreans at war (which can be shared with any other group of enlisted men regardless of race). On another note, I wonder if it was the director’s intention to show that each person is capable of doing some good in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.

[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.  

The representations in the marines who never returned

It is rather interesting that in Diffirient’s article he mentions that the girl represents the “in between status of most civilians during the seesaw war… those who were put into compromised positions and force to take sides (39)” as well as one end of familial division. My knowledge on this topic is too limited to make efficient critiques – instead, I will just pose some questions that confuse me through the readings and the film.

At first I thought the girl was just a general representation of the familial connection lost/ambiguous to the marines – it might be a technical problem to show such affiliation of a group of macho men with

1.     a lover -distracting, easily falls into the melodrama kind;

2.     or an aging mother back home, which is rather banal during the fifties

Therefore, a close tie with an orphan is quite a smart manipulation – showing both the tender dynamic of the marines as well as the unpredictable future: what happed/will happen to the girl, one may ask?

But the problem – at least for me – is that the marines and Yong Hui are just too intimate, to a level of accumulating uncomfortable tension: more than enough touching!

So this bonding actually re-introduces the concept of “the compromised position of the civilian” – it seems that at surface Yong Hui accepts and accommodates the “family” with will and self-initiatives, but also it is a conditional compromise resulted from the enforced (by the particular war-time environment) warmth and human connections – she then at last takes a side, preferring the ROK. This is exactly what the film The Marines Who Never Returned is doing: change mentality by exercising soft psychological manipulation through media and emotional appeal.

There is a theory of citizenship being eroticized by the state – could the film be the cunning signal of that?

Anyway, he also talks about the gentrification, which to me is a bit of far stretching. If these two new comers are indeed intentionally characterized as “melodrama” and “comedy” then at least the other marines would have some genre representations as well so that it is systematically consistent?

Humanistic Behavior during the War

The movie “The Marines Who Never Return” is the first movie we saw that dealt with the Korean War. I expected the movie to be somber and bleak, but the director managed to introduce some great comical moments. The movie deals with a sensitive topic, and as David Scott Diffrient mentioned in his article, the director Yi Man-hui had a more” humanistic approach to the Korean War movie”. He didn’t create a gloomy set in which he portrayed the hardships through which the soldiers went through, and he also didn’t show the soldiers as tools to winning the war. Often, war movies show that soldiers must die and sacrifice for the greater good. However, Man-hui showed the soldiers as individuals, each capable of pro-social behavior. For example, they all try to save a young girl who is left orphan as a result of the war. Or even in the beginning of the movie we see the helmet of a soldier being pierced by a bullet, and a lower rank soldier decides to switch his own helmet with the broken one, so that the higher rank soldier can have a better helmet. Those good relationships between the characters are even more strengthened by the comical scenes, which make the audience feel more comfortable and probably closer to the soldiers.

Another scene that I felt was important was when the soldiers were denied service at the bar. Initially I felt bad for them because they were risking their lives for the Korean people and at the same time no one was recognizing that; even more they were rejected just because of that (or rather because they were not foreigners). But later I liked how they acted and I felt that what they did was probably the best they could have done. The bar staff is representing the Koreans or rather the people (in general) that give up their pride (including maybe patriotism) just because they have a chance to gain wealth. For them it didn’t matter that their country was divided and in turmoil as time as they can gain something out of it. This is emphasized by how the soldier asks: “As long as we pay it’s okay?” The destruction the soldiers did was paid for so the staff realized that having money is not always worth it if your “home” is no longer there for you. The soldiers showed that dividing the country like this is not really worth it, and that sticking together makes more sense especially during the war.