Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Welcome to Dongmakgol

This started as a homework from my Korean Language class. The teacher asked us to watch a movie called "Welcome to Dongmakgol". He didn't tell us much, he just said it was a movie related to the Korean War. As soon as I heard that I became so uninterested. I'm just not a fan of war movies because:
  • Most of the time I can't tell which side is which. They all basically look the same: soldiers.

  • I can't tell what's going on. There are a bunch of explosions, shootings, blood, body pieces everywhere. They are just jumbled up into one.

  • Most importantly, I can never understand how these people have to heart to kill each other, and sometimes it includes civilians.


Because of those reasons I procrastinated and didn't watch the movie on time. But I decided to be a good student, so I started watching it. The movie began with a scene war between the North and South. I couldn't remember much about it (and either way I didn't really get what happened), but then it transitioned into some weird scenes. I did get discouraged from finishing the movie so I stopped watching (and I felt bad when the teacher found out that I didn't do what he asked).

Anyway, this evening I decided to pick up where I left off last time. As I kept watching, the story developed further and further. Ah! Now it started to make sense! From enemies to friends, funny to heartwarming to touching. At some point I even thought of wanting to live in Dongmakgol. It seemed so peaceful there and the villagers were all happy.

I think all the actors and actresses did a very good job of portraying their characters (Yeo-Il was especially a cute character ^^). Although there were some weird scenes (like the one with the boar), I still feel it was worth my time. It's a good movie with a good message (to remind us to STOP THE WAR) so I definitely recommend you to watch it :)

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