Twenty-five years in the past, director Park Chan-wook risked jail to make a film about friendship between North and South Korean troopers, putting field workplace gold and starting his actors’ ascent to world stardom.
Relations between the 2 Koreas have since plunged, with Pyongyang renouncing its long-held objective of unification and final week destroying a venue that historically hosted reunions of households separated by a long time of divisions.
Park mentioned his smash hit “Joint Security Area” nonetheless strikes a chord 1 / 4 of a century later.
“It is a sad reality that this movie’s themes still resonate with the younger generation,” he advised reporters in Seoul this month. “I hope that by the 50th anniversary, we will be able to discuss it as just a story from the past.”
The movie is broadly considered a masterpiece of South Korean cinema and its solid members have gone on to wider success, together with “Squid Game” actor Lee Byung-hun and Song Kang-ho from Oscar-winning “Parasite”.
But when he got down to make it, Park — greatest recognized at present for motion thriller “Oldboy” and thriller romance “Decision to Leave” — was removed from a outstanding director. His first two characteristic movies flopped.
Desperate for achievement, Park delved into one of the vital delicate subjects: the decades-long division of the Korean peninsula.
At the time, Park feared that his story of inter-Korean bonding might fall foul of legal guidelines banning the “glorification” of the communist-run North.
“We prepared ourselves” for the prospect of being jailed, he advised reporters.
But historical past was on his aspect.
Three months earlier than the movie’s September 2000 launch, then-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung held a historic summit along with his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang.
Against the backdrop of that reconciliation, “Joint Security Area” swept nearly all home movie awards that 12 months. It was additionally nominated for greatest movie on the Berlin movie pageant and have become South Korea’s highest-grossing film as much as then.
Actor Lee, now considered one of South Korea’s largest stars, mentioned he was so thrilled by its success that he watched it 40 instances within the cinemas to see the viewers reactions.
Local media even reported that Kim Jong Il — a recognized movie buff — had seen it.
The movie is about within the eponymous Joint Security Area, situated contained in the Demilitarized Zone, the 250-kilometer-long strip of land that divides the Korean peninsula.
It is among the many most closely fortified areas on the planet — and the one place the place troopers from the North and South stand nose to nose.
The tragic movie tells the story of secret friendships that kind after two North Korean troops help a South Korean soldier who by accident steps on a landmine, main them to bond over South Korean pop music and chocolate desserts.
“Before ‘Joint Security Area’, portraying North Korean soldiers in South Korean cinema was somewhat considered taboo,” Nam Dong-chul, a movie critic and chief programmer on the Busan International Film Festival, advised AFP.
“This film broke that barrier by depicting ordinary and relatable North Korean soldiers,” he mentioned. “At the same time, it was a successful and well-crafted blockbuster, marking a significant advancement in the history of Korean cinema.”
South Korea has since established itself as a worldwide cultural powerhouse.
Some credit score “Joint Security Area” with laying the groundwork.
The movie was a “driving force behind the creation of films in the Korean cinema industry that combine the director’s artistic vision with commercial viability,” mentioned Jerry Kyoungboum Ko, head of movie enterprise for CJ ENM, the South Korean studio that distributed the film.
The real-life JSA has since been a website of each reconciliation and tragedy.
North Korean chief Kim Jong Un met with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in there in 2018.
The following 12 months, Kim additionally shook fingers with US President Donald Trump throughout the division line.
But it additionally noticed North Korean troopers open fireplace throughout a defection by considered one of their comrades in 2017.
And in 2023, troops had been re-armed on either side of the JSA, breaking an inter-Korean army pact signed throughout extra optimistic instances.
Park mentioned he’s usually requested when the movie is proven overseas if it was shot on the real-life JSA, also called Panmunjom.
“I would always respond by saying that if we could have filmed at the actual location, this film might not have been necessary at all.”
© 2025 AFP