Most Koreans remember the 1968 incident when North Korean commandos infiltrated Seoul and attempted to assassinate then-President Park Chung-hee. They were killed in a gunfight that broke out just blocks away from Cheong Wa Dae, shocking and terrifying the public.
Not as many Koreans remember the South's secret project to deploy commandos to Pyongyang to "stick a South Korean flag in Kim Il-sung's neck" in retaliation. The new film "Silmido", which opened Wednesday, sheds light on this dark chapter of the national division when there was so much bloodshed and so little point to it all.
Director Kang Woo-suk, who has been a reliable commodity in the film industry with mainstream hits like "Two Cops" and "Public Enemy" under his belt, reaches deeper into history's scarred psyche to craft an ambiguous and tortured tale that teeters between the predictable and the existential.
In the film, criminals doomed to execution are whisked away and packed off to a remote island called Silmido where they endure two years of sadistic preparation for just one mission: To infiltrate Pyongyang and assassinate Kim Il-sung. (There are 31 men, the exact number as the North Korean unit.)
One of the soldiers is Kang In-chan (Sol Kyung-gu), whose father defected to the North, leaving him and his mother to survive as pariahs in the South. Directing the grueling training is warrant officer Choe Jae-hyun (Ahn Sung-gi), whose family was wiped out by communists during the Korean War.
"Silmido"(2003)
The effort to personalize the tragedy of national division through crisscrossing fates is one of the ways in which Kang tries to weave a more complex tale that avoids pat conclusions and easy resolutions, though it may not be his strong point. Beneath the broad stroke of history are the variegated lives of humans.
The remote island of Silmido serves as a microcosm of South Korean society itself as the 31 men are turned into red-hating beasts, who would rather see their friend die than see their enemy live, under relentless physical and psychological oppression.
When the fateful day arrives, the commandos sail out to sea for their mission, only to be ordered back to their barracks in a climactic scene. Riding the new mood of inter-Korean reconciliation, the South Korean government decides to scrap the operation and eliminate all traces of its existence by massacring the former convicts.
At this point, the film takes a turn for the existential as nothing is what it was before. It is kill or be killed for the commandos and their guards for a reason nobody understands.
Silmido becomes a war zone that mirrors the absurd situation of the Korean Peninsula as the two sides, divided only by their uniforms, are forced to hunt each other down and murder, only to break down and weep for their victims. (The comparison is made all the more obvious by the fact that the commandos are wearing North Korean uniforms.)
There are no longer good guys and Bad Guys. Are the raping and plundering soldiers at fault or the prim and clean-cut intelligence agency officials who order them exterminated? It is no longer possible to tell apart the beasts from the humans.
To be sure, the film is not perfect. Sometimes, the humor detracts from the gravity of the narrative, and the drama is squeezed a little too long at the end. Nevertheless, beneath the high-powered action, "Silmido" explores the difficult past through an agonized and hesitant lens that makes it one of the best films of the year.
By Kim Jin
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