Tae Guk Gi: Brotherhood Of War (DVD)

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Sadly, actress Lee Eun-joo committed suicide just a few days ago this month, right after graduating from college. Reviewing "Tae Guk Gi" has taken on uncomfortable dimensions, from watching the brutal war scenes to looking up the obituaries of a cast member.

The movie´s subtitles refer to the main characters as members of the "Lee" family. However, "Lee" is a common mis-transliteration of the Korean "Yi", just as "Park" is often used for "Pak" and "Roh" is often used for "Noh". I use "Yi" instead of "Lee" for authenticity and accuracy´s sakes.

Writer-director Kang Je-gyu single-handedly launched the contemporary world-wide awareness of Korean cinema with 1999´s "Shiri", an action thriller about North Korean spies operating in South Korea. "Shiri" was a decent movie, but it was a bit too loosely constructed for my tastes, and the slow-motion was a bit over the top. Actually, most of the last third was simply overblown to the point that I giggled inadvertently. I also wondered about Kang´s rather jingoistic approach to North-South relations. As much as those of us living in non-Communist countries have been conditioned to think of Communists as "the bad guys", knowing what I know about history made "Shiri" feel like alarmist propaganda from the 1970s.

As if to atone for whatever false or negative perceptions that "Shiri" might´ve raised about the Korean situation, Kang decided to make a movie about the Korean War for his next project. Gutsily, Kang even named his movie after the term used to refer to the South Korean flag--"Tae Guk Gi". This would be the equivalent of someone making a movie about the American Civil War and calling it "Stars and Stripes". Kang´s ambitious reach of making his Korean-War movie about the totality of the contemporary Korean identity could´ve yielded pretentious results, but "Tae Guk Gi" avoids disaster by smartly focusing on a small story that takes place in the middle of a grand affair. What happens to a single family during the Korean War is devastating enough to represent the horrors that plagued the Korean peninsula during the most direct conflict between the United States and the world´s communist powers.

Before watching this movie, I had always dismissed one-liners such as "You´re a pawn of American imperialists" as communist propaganda. However, after watching "Tae Guk Gi"--which isn´t an anti-American polemic, by the way--I finally understood that there is a lot of truth in anti-American slogans. The South Koreans were/are pawns of the American geopolitical struggle, just as the North Koreans were/are pawns of Chinese and Soviet communist schemes.

After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States each occupied half of the Korean peninsula, much in the same way that four countries carved up Germany into spheres of influence. Since the Soviets and the Americans could not decide on one form of government for Korea, they decided to keep the halves separate. The Soviets established a communist regime in the north, and the Americans established a fascist dictatorship in the south.

This was the American strategy throughout the world. After fighting a war to defeat fascists in Germany, Italy, and Japan, the United States set up and supported fascist governments--in South Korea, in Taiwan, in South Vietnam, in the Phillipines, in Panama, in Chile, in Brazil, etc. The U.S. even assassinated democratically-elected leaders in order to install military dictatorships that "sided" with America rather than with the Soviet Union or China. The U.S. is guilty of many crimes and atrocities committed in the name of defending "freedom", "democracy", and "justice". Ironically, social systems inherently ban "freedom", and the American form of government is a republic. Furthermore, why do we think that we are dispensers of "justice" when we allowed fascists to persecute and to execute dissidents in their countries as long as they told us that they were against the commies?

All this isn´t to say that North Korea was justified in invading South Korea. In fact, the invasion was instigated by the Soviets or the Chinese rather than motivated by a desire to unite Korea and to toss out all foreign devils. (After all, North Korea has continued to seek aid from the Soviet Union and Communist China throughout its existence.) In this way, North Korea was as much of a pawn in the global realpolitik struggle as South Korea was. Unnaturally divided, the Koreans fought a civil war that was a war-by-proxy between liberal republics ("democracies") and a communist coalition.

In 1950, North Korea attacked South Korea. The battle line was pushed almost all the way into the Pacific Ocean before the American military pushed the North Koreans almost all the way up to the Chinese border. Then, the Chinese poured so many soldiers into the Korean peninsula that the Americans and the South Koreans were almost tossed out again. The cease fire drew a squiggly-line border that approximated the original border (which was a straight line drawn on the 38N parallel).

"Tae Guk Gi" begins with brothers Yi Jin-tae (Jang Dong-gun) and Yi Jin-seok (Won Bin) enjoying a difficult but rewarding life in South Korea. Jin-tae is a cobbler, and the movie echoes Vittorio De Sica´s "Shoeshine", with Jin-tae shouting "Shoeshine!" in a busy city street much in the same way that the little boys do in De Sica´s movie. Jin-tae buys presents for his younger brother, who is a good high-school student carrying his family´s hopes for social advancement through education. When the Korean War breaks out, both Yis are forcibly drafted to fight even though each family is supposed to be allowed to keep one male in order to keep alive the family name.

Jin-tae hopes to win a medal so that he can ask for the favor of his brother being returned to safety. However, he becomes a killing machine, which disgusts Jin-seok to the point that the younger brother doesn´t want to have anything to do with Jin-tae´s immoral behavior. The two brothers drift apart, though Jin-tae still clings fiercely to the idea of sending his brother home even while becoming enamored with the idea of fighting for country and for personal glory.