The film "Welcome to Dongmakgol" is described in the United Kingdom's "The Times" as a movie representing Koreans' desire for peace and reconciliation between North and South. This week the global news channel CNN broadcasts an interview with director Bak Gwang Hyeon and actor Sin Ha gyun. Their interest in the film is more about the Korean people's views regarding peace than in its level of perfection.
Granted, the record it has already set is enough to ample reason to be interested. On August 4 it had sold 5 million tickets, 23 days after it opened. In terms of the speed with which tickets have sold the film ranks second, after "Taegeukgi," to tie with "Silmido." The biggest hit this year, "Malaton," sold as many after eight weeks. "Dongmakgol's" director is a newcomer, and none of the actors are considered top stars. Almost nothing was spent on it compared to what it takes to make your usual blockbusters.
We, however, are more interested in the film's dreamlike fantasy and the reaction of its million viewers, because we believe that the point where those two meet is where the dreams we were scared to reveal, the dearest dreams of our time, are able to exist. How can soldiers from the US, the ROK, and the North's People's Army join hands and risk their lives to maintain peace in a small village? How are they able to ignore rank, skin color, ideology, and socoeconomic status to live together happily?
When you consider how our society has chronic problems with ideology, region, age, and class, "Dongmakgol" is little more than someone talking in his sleep. You get yourself called crazy if you speak of certain dreams. Nevertheless, people line up to buy tickets to a movie that is like someone talking in his sleep, and in that there's reason for hope.
When one person dreams, it's just a dream. When enough people dream, it becomes reality. We praise the people who liberated the "dream of Dongmakgol," which had been suppressed under the country's overwhelming structure of conflict.
The Hankyoreh, 29 August 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Praise for 'Dongmakgol' |
