TAE GUK GI

When Kang Je-gyu, director of the watershed hit Shiri (1999), announced his next project, some people wondered if he was overextending himself. Tae Guk Gi was to be set during the Korean War, and would be the most expensive Korean film ever at US$13 million. The production involved 10 months of shooting with 200 crew members and 25,000 extras. However by the time the film was completed and released in theaters this February, the doubters were silenced. Tae Guk Ki sold over 11 million tickets to become the best-selling Korean movie of all time. Named after the South Korean flag, Tae Guk Gi tells the story of two brothers from Seoul who are forcibly conscripted into the army shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The older brother, played by top star Jang Dong-gun, decides that he must try to win a Medal of Honor in order to secure the discharge of his bookish younger brother, played by Won Bin. As the war progresses from the outskirts of Busan to the northern reaches of the peninsula, however, Jang’s character starts to lose himself in the passions of war. Certainly this film is unique in Korean film history for its large scale, its battle sequences and the intricate reconstruction of war-torn Seoul and Pyongyang. The director and crew deserve strong praise for the tremendous amount of effort they put into the look and feel of the movie. The scenes of war are shocking in their violence and immediacy. Many Koreans were also deeply moved by the tragic story of the brothers. Significantly, the movie received a warm response from elderly viewers who had lived through the War, many of whom visited the movie theater for the first time in decades. Like Shiri that came before it, Tae Guk Gi is destined to become a milestone in Korean commercial cinema.