What Happens to North Korea?

Taegukgi is a film following two brothers, Jintae and Jinseok, who become divided during the Korean war. Discussed in Kim’s article is the distancing technique used in the film in order to better create a film that is more relatable to a ‘once-removed audience’, an audience that no longer has a lived relationship with the war.

At first, while reading the article, I had one question. Kim states that by placing a South Korean flag on the recovered bodies, even though the person may have been fighting for the North, it removes the “political complexities and shifts the focus on memorializing a tragedy that befell one nation, not a divided one”. Wouldn’t placing a South Korean flag exemplify the complexities of the situation and shouldn’t a flag be placed that was of the nation before the war? I understand that placing a flag that is not South Korean may bring up the issues that we discussed earlier concerning loyalty to the nation (eg. Blue Swallow), it’s just something I was thinking about.

And based off of other works that we’ve watched or read, there are still great ties to Choseon dynasty as it was the last time the peninsula was not only united, but also not under occupation by an external superpower.

Kim does end up addressing this question in a way at the end of the article. Kim calls South Korea a success story, and describes the film as a validation of the title. This title, in a way, demonstrates the evolution of the nations on the peninsula. Korea (Choseon) à Occupied Korea à South Korea. While demonstrating all the negatives that occurred from the southern side, the film still remains true to where it was produced. This brings up an important question, does the film essentially eliminate North Korea from a post-armistice perspective, especially considering the placing of South Korean flags on some North Korean coffins?

Tae Guk Gi: The destruction of War

Although, we have viewed several other war movies in this class and Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War was by far the most emotionally charged. The reason for the tear jerking quality of the film was due to the display of the sheer chaos and destruction of the war. The repeated scenes of bodies disintegrating and bursting into flames was both shocking and extremely disturbing. Although, we as viewers realize the production behind these choreographed scenes I can’t help but get emotional when thinking of the dismay that the people who lived through this terrible time had to endure.

In addition to the visually horrific battle scenes, the relationship of the two brothers, Jin-tae and Jin-seok, obviously played a major role in the tragedy. If placed in a genre, all wars are real life tragedies. It was extremely tragic watching Jin-tae’s and Jin-seok’s strong bond fall from grace. The situation of the extremely poor getting poorer is one that I expect was frequent during the time of war. The notion of the civil war must have been additionally painful due to the fight against Japan that had so recently passed. One quote from the film revealed the Korean perspective of the civil war. It went something like, “we fought against the Japanese to decent our nation but why are we fighting this war for.” Just after the end of the Japanese occupation in Korea probably one of the last things the Koreans were think about was a civil war.

Jin-tae’s transformation from a compassionate, playful sibling to a demonic, violent, glory seeking soldier was one of the more shocking aspects of the film. Watching as the war stripped Jin-tae’s humanity from him and at the end seeing him forget the person he used to be. The images of his crazed expression and whited out eyes revealed the monster that he had become, the monster that the war had created. This film captured it’s viewers and provided a haunting glimpse into the creature of war.

The Marines Who Never Returned vs Brotherhood of War: Order of Progression

Because I missed the MWNR post, I decided to combine these two posts and do a double-length response, contrasting the two films! 

It is difficult to watch Lee Man-Hee's 1963 film "The Marines Who Never Returned" without considering the place, and progression/change, of/in genre. In this film, genre seems to to be a sort of technique, to have an active role in the film, almost like a character itself. In the first half (-ish) of the film, we are introduced to the subjects of a company, and quickly fall in love with them. Each character develops a lot--much more than we see in the first half of the tragic "Brotherhood of War." One scene sticks out in particular: the little girl who the company has saved turns to each character, giving them a name and explaining how it fits into their personality. Naming something is classically related to the beginning of a deep relationship/caring for a subject (naming babies, naming pets, as a kid naming stuffed animals etc), so here marks the moment where we really begin to sympathise with the characters. Their actions are true-to-self, and their names are really the epitome of them.

Then, the much-discussed "familial division" as Diffrient puts it occurs. The soldiers must leave the girl--one who now feels especially part of their "family" since she has given each of them a role/purpose in her own life (it is also much more difficult to lose something or someone when we can name it or them)--and here the plot shifts. It is no longer a drama or comedy; a violent storm of a film ensues and we are pure war-film. I even found this latter half difficult to watch--not because it was so violent or graphic, but because I was losing any sense of hope that the first half of the film encouraged me to develop. There was no relief in latter half of the film; characters were relentlessly killed off without getting to say goodbye to the little girl or other loved ones. Perhaps moments of sympathy come through by other means. For example, Diffrient discusses how it was bold of Lee Man-Hee to make a film in which at one point, the troop is questioning the legitimacy of the war/crimes. While to me this is old news, that may be shocking and evoke sympathetic tears from people who saw this film in the 1960s. "Moments of song and dance," though present in instances like the bar scene, don't offer me much relief.

Perhaps, in a big way, "Brotherhood of War" is the inverse of this style...

The plot of "Brotherhood of War" is true to its name. The same familial division is amplified, because not only is the family separated, but turned against one another. But, a lot of the sympathy/character development happened in the latter half of the film. We start off with a few really gushy utopian scenes of the family eating ice cream, playing in the water, and laughing together. Things very abruptly go awry and the mood shifts entirely. Now we are watching what feels like endless scenes of brutal and realistic war violence. After a while I have completely forgotten about the family back home--until the end when everything shifts in a completely different direction (and the fiance is killed, the brothers are separated). Everything becomes complete chaos and Kim's chaotic "reserves of memory" comes to mind--here, "geography, time, memory, and history" are confused and confusing. The memory of the family fades for me as well as our characters, who struggle to remember the face of their own brother.

It is not until the end of "Brotherhood of War" that crying becomes a reality; in the first half, I was pretty resistant to the film because I did not feel engaged with any of the characters in particular. This style seems much more effective (if causing me to cry is the goal); the first film "lost me" by the end and I gave up feeling miserable after seeing half of the troop killed off.

There are many tropes to war films, but the order in which they are portrayed really mattered to me for these two movies.

Stuck in Limbo

Taeguki establishes feelings, times, and relationships very clearly in some cases either with repetition e.g. Chin-Seok and Chin-Tae close brotherly relationship, the latter fiercely protective and loving of the former and their relatively happy and idyllic family life amidst their relative poverty OR with an establishing shot and music e.g. the reverence with which the movie wants the subject matter to be treated (Kim, 2013) and the long shot introducing us to the past. These associations are consistent till the war breaks out and then things become progressively more ambiguous. Chin-Seok grows up and stops being the highly dependent dongsaeng; Chin-Tae becomes caught up in soldier mode and less family oriented (though it can be see as Chin-Tae considering the South Korean population his family and thus protecting them his duty as much as he considered protecting his brother his duty) and the distance between the brothers grow, from sharing ice creams and frantically looking for each other after battles to sitting further and further apart after battles and differing correspondingly in their reactions after battles.

            However, despite the detours and the feeling that nothing can bring things back to anything resembling the starting point, that is what happens. The brothers are brought back together on two different time lines: first on the battlefield, during the past, and then second, 50 years later, when Chin-seok finally finds out what happened to Chin-Tae. This circling back, this simultaneously cyclical and parallel feeling of time, can be commentary on how despite all the fall outs in between the start and end, they are still the same people. They are still hyung-jae despite being separated physically and ideologically by the war. This is also part of the ‘stuck in limbo’ feeling that armistice has contributed to – it’s a truce, not a decisive ending. Time and space connect and behave in non linear ways. There are still things to be resolved, things that hang in suspension (Kim, 2013).

            Chin-Seok reverts to being the little brother crying for his brother and the security and love he offered from being the head of a family for the past 50 years. The relationship between the brothers hasn’t been lost despite time and it has haunted him throughout his life, as has the lack of closure and knowledge of what happened. This speaks to the lack of closure the armistice has brought: despite the division, there is still active rivalry and tension that is very much the continuation of past issues that have not been resolved. And on top of that, even if there is closure, it will still be ugly. It’s not a peaceful acceptance but the full force of knowing for certain what has happened and the knowledge of the loss and pain, all related to events that is very much a living and present part of the lives of people who lived though the war.

            However, the movie moves quickly from the scene of mourning back to the past which is seen to be more hopeful, with the younger generation talking about going to school amongst the destruction wrought by the war. Kim says it can be a justification of path followed by South Korea and its economic prosperity, but it was more jarring for me and more evocative of what has been done to the people who still need closure – their loss is left behind and we head forward into new movements and eras while the struggles still exist below the veneer, as seen in Chin-seok who partakes in the talk of further education but who we’ve just seen, 50 years later, breaking down over his brother’s confirmed death.

[The Brotherhood of War]

Tagukgi, The Brotherhood of war, directed by Je-Kyu Kang ,is a 2004 Korean film about two brothers caught up in the national tragedy of the Korean war. The movie begins with a bright happy atmosphere of the South Korean ordinary people, but there is an abrupt change as the North Koreans attack at the 38^th parallel. The Korean War begins and everything drastically changes. When looked at the two main characters of the movie, it’s Jin-tae the older brother and Jin-seok, the younger brother. They were just plain folks in the sense that Jin-tae had always wanted to become a shoemaker while Jinseok desired to keep studying at college. However, even these small dreams of the brothers get soon broken down in the horror of the war. The most interesting thing to view through this turbulent time was the transition of the brothers themselves. While the brothers solely relied on each other during the war, Jintae makes it his life’s mission to keep his brother away from the harm, to protect him no matter what comes before him. This makes us the viewer well aware of their strong beautiful brotherhood. As Jintae continuously goes on risky missions, he gradually transforms into a well-trained soldier who’s brutal and aggressive. However, knowing the very story of him, I couldn’t simply blame him for his transformation into a monster, and this is where I found the message of the director.  The director made this tragic war a touching tale of the two brothers, which further served as a metaphor for the North versus South Korean conflict. If Jintae was a monster,  everyone who participated in the war was, since taking others’ lives was the only way to protect the ones they love. Emphasizing this side of the war, the story goes deep into the heart of Korean national identity and makes the subject not political, but personal as often depicted in other Korean War films. 

Does Idelogy Matter?

         “Does ideology matter?” this is perhaps a question that the director Kang might have been contemplating when he directed his two movies: Swiri and Brotherhood of War. As the director already produced the very successful commercial film Swiri in 1998, this movie sets in the border between South Korea and North Korea and depicts a love relationship between North and South Koreans; this I remember as a child caused a big stir among people and led the people to reconsider the relationship between the two Koreas. After a few years, the director produced another very successful film that he took it to another level. He then decided to depict the real graphic scene of warfare between the communist north and the US-led South. For this time, the director had employed the two brothers as main characters who are unintentionally drafted to participate in the war. I think it is a very relevant point to look at the severity of the Korean War. We could be grieved for a while by the fact that tremendous casualties, some estimated more than three million, occurred during the war. However, beyond appreciating the brutality and severity of the war, I focused on something that was more shocking than series of aggressive battles that were quite realistically depicted in the film. When Young shin is accused of being a communist member by just signing on the communist party organization and getting ration due to hunger, I, myself, asked the aforementioned question: “does ideology matter?” Politically speaking, I am a quite rightist in terms of political spectrum; in fact, I do not favor any of the socialist or communist political ideology for that matter. However, the reason why I asked this question is because during the war that killed over millions of millions people and the refugees had nothing to eat for sustenance of their lives, as a person, one could do anything to sustain his/her life. Young shin puts her signature on the communist party organization due to the fact that she and her family are starved to death during the warfare. Is that really a cardinal sin that one could be sentenced to death? Not only the director asks this question, but also Jintae and Jinseok are also screaming to ask this question after Youngshin’s death. The two brothers are tragically segregated. Jin-tae loses his mentality after asking the question that I have risen. Eventually, the two brothers reunite; however, the end result is also tragic enough to shed tears and also a metaphor for the division bewteen the two Koreas. When the two brothers are in the last battlefield in the movie, I think it leads to the original question that I put above: “does ideology matter?” I think this question is still relevent now and then during the actual warfare because North and South are still confronting; I also think this question is something that we need to consider when learning the history of the Korean War. 

Going home is not enough: The Brotherhood of War and partition consciousness

The conspicuous lack of a triumphant, resolved ending in "The Brotherhood of War" perfectly illustrates what Kim describes as "post-Armistice division consciousness." Throughout the movie, as the brothers butt heads over Chintae's desire to send Chinjok home, and the latter's refusal to do so alone, it becomes increasingly evident that going home is not enough: the war is not something that can be "left behind," as it permeates every particle of their former lives.  The reunion scene of Chinjok and his mother is touching to be sure, but dramatically underwhelming, as Chintae and Yongsin's absences are obvious, as is the devastation of the city that lies in rubble around them. What's more, when Chinjok finally finds Chintae's remains, instead of experiencing cathartic closure he breaks down and speaks of the long 50 years that it has been since they have been together.
The jarringly unresolved loose ends of the film speak to Kim's "schizophrenic temporal and spatial landscape that is Korea," and the two brothers themselves are a useful metaphor of this partition consciousness, as they act as interchangeable units that gradually come to be at odds with each other. Their similar names, and the excavating officer that mixes up Chintae's name with Chinjok's, illustrate their oneness, and serves to present Chinjok's loss of his brother as similarly a loss of himself that he will never be able to regain: something fundamentally changed in his very consciousness. The wedge driven between the brothers mirrors the wedge driven between North and South Korea, and which for neither did the Armistice bring peace or reparation. Postwar Korea is like a purgatory, replete with unresolved problems, and the film starkly presents how enduring and heavy this burden can be.