"After halting its anti-North propaganda, South Korea's Unification
Ministry has agreed to begin showing some North Korean news programs on its
own Web site for local audiences. In recent weeks, the two Koreas have
established a new telephone hotline linking their militaries.
"North and South Korean athletes will march together under one flag next
month at the Athens Olympics. And South Korean economic investment in the
North, once mostly limited to a tourism resort near the border region of
Mount Kumgang, is now expanding into industry."
Washington Post, "As Tensions Subside Between Two Koreas, U.S. Strives to
Adjust; Thaw Strains South's Alliance with Washington", July 25, 2004
Given these new realities, it should not come as a big surprise that South
Korean movies have begun to look at the North in a new way. Evidence of
that was on display in "Welcome to Dongmakgol," a film set during the
Korean War and shown as part of this year's excellent Asian Film Festival
in New York.
Like this year's "Joyeux Noël", "Welcome to Dongmakgol" is a pacifist film
about fraternization. What makes it unusual is that it reconciles the
opposing sides of the Korean War, a plot that would have been inconceivable
in decades past. It also depicts the U.S, as an intrusive bully bent on
causing civilian casualties to achieve its geopolitical ends. Obviously,
the audience might make the connection with a more recent war as first-time
director Park Kwang-hyun does:
It was through the Iraq war that I saw the cruelest violence of war. In
this film, I don't favor one side over another and do not hate anyone. I
just want people who create war and violence to know the most important
thing. Even in the smallest villages, which can easily be ignored, people
live there who have hot blood running through their hearts.
--The Desert Sun (Palm Springs), January 11, 2006
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/06/22/welcome-to-dongmakgol/
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