War changes the way we view people from the other side. On the most fundamental level, seeing an enemy combatant can mean death, but this eventually bleeds out into anger and hatred towards the enemy, because of the loss, the pain, and the fear war tends to wage. War drama Welcome to Dongmakgol understands this, but rather than delve into the painful separation of the Korean peninsula in ways that have been depicted before, the film instead plucks a few soldiers from both fronts and drops them into an isolated village far from the battleground. This scenario is quite unlikely, after all, the mountainside town without technology would probably not be as idyllic as portrayed. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting thought experiment to see the simple, straightforward peace that was forgotten with foreign intervention and global geo-politics. Welcome to Dongmakgol can be quite goofy at times– see the green screen wild boar scene– but the comedy is a standout anti-war film because of its optimism towards human nature.
Based on the long running play by Jang Jin, the story is set in Korea during the Korean War in 1950. Soldiers from both the North and South, as well as an American pilot, find themselves in a secluded and naively idealistic village, its residents unaware of the outside world, including the war.
The Korean peninsula, September 1950. Soldiers from both fronts of the Korean War find themselves in the mountain village of Dongmakgol, a village cut off from the outside world and blissfully unaware of the ongoing war.
It’s such an earnest film. Even in its goofiest moments, the film still works just because of the genuine belief that people are good, at least in the inside.
I watched this because Joe Hisashi, best known for Studio Ghibli’s music, scored this film, and hearing about how Park Kwang-hyun asked him to join was really heartwarming.
