Signis

Welcome to Dongmakgol

(JPEG) (Korea, 2005, d. Kwang-Hyun Park)

A big-budget Korean war film that is strongly anti-war. It combines realism (especially in the combat sequences and the troops stranded in the mountains trying to survive) with touches of the fey and magic realism. This latter is evident right from the start, a focus on a mentally simple village girl and hosts of butterflies or moths (who reappear at crucial times to protect the villagers).

The setting is the Korean War just at the time the Americans become involved. They appear in takeover style and take a rather ruthless stand (which seemed the big thing in its day but, with citizen deaths in collateral damage, with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the experiences of Guantanomo Bay, audiences these days will be much more wary).

However, the point of the film is that underlying the ideologies that soldiers fight for there is a common humanity which is the basis for peace. Like Hell in the Pacific decades ago, where an American and a Japanese find themselves stranded together on an island and they have to forget their war in order to collaborate and survive; like Joyeux Noel, that picture of German, French and Scots troops laying down arms and joining together to celebrate Christmas 1914 in the trenches, Welcome to Dongmakgol highlights some of the futilities of war and urges peace.

Dongmakgol is an isolated village in the mountains where genial villagers live in harmony. For those who have seen James Clavel’s The Last Valley (1971), there is a similar theme with a peaceful Alpine village the last outpost of peace at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, only to be invaded. Their peace is first interrupted by the crash landing of an American pilot whom they look after. Next, three North Koreans and two South Koreans find themselves there confronting one another with weapons drawn (and standing all night trying to outstare the other until their eyelids droop). This is all a bit mystifying to the villagers who really don’t know too much about the war at all.

As we might guess, barriers break down between the three military groups. They help with the harvest, join in the celebrations and find life in the village congenial.

We know each of the soldiers has a back story, with combat experience as well as personal moral challenge, some of which we have seen in the earlier part of the film. Friendship leads to confiding in one another and discovering what each has in common. This becomes important when the troops land, assuming that this area is a hotbed of Communism and the valley has to be strategically destroyed.

These developments are not quite as predictable as one would have imagined on the way through. There is both tragedy and hope. This film, coming from a Korea, divided for more than fifty years, is a plea for meeting on the human level and for peace.

Peter Malone