[영화비평]Analysis of the movie “Tae Guk Gi”

First, the mother symbolizes our mother’s country. She is a mute person. She cannot speak anything because of the shock of losing her husband, who symbolizes national power. In reality, her condition shows the circumstances in Korea in 1950. Korea lost national power to the United States and the Soviet Union, and our people fought with our countrymen without knowing the reason. However, our country could not stop this war and just followed the two powerful countries’ decisions. Nevertheless, our county was a place where our people were born and would return after the war was finished, such as the mother, who gave birth to Jin-tae and Jin-seok, and the hometown where Jin-tae and Jin-seok will return to. Likewise, Yeong-sin, Jin-tae’s fiancée, has a similar symbolic meaning as the mother. She represents the people who have no power and are uneducated. She takes care of Jin-tae’s family members even though she has not married him yet. Moreover, she is being manipulated by both parties during the war; she is finally killed by Southern soldiers. That is, she would have to support the Democratic Party to live when the south side wins. In the opposite situation, she would have to support the Communistic Party.

Jin-tae and Jin-seok, two brothers, play crucial roles in this movie. Jin-tae symbolizes the North and Jin-seok reflects the South even though they all fight for the South at first. We only consider their personal aspects, and after time passes, Jin-tae actually changes his party. Jin-tae is a strong and brave man who fights very well, as the North does, but Jin-seok is a weak and studious person, and he likes material products from U.S.A, as the South does. However, although these main characters show the circumstances of Korea in 1950, this movie is not just showing Korean history. We infer that the director tried to express the national tragedy of the civil war and the greater importance of the family, not the nation. At this point, we can find a new view about this war movie in contrast to other ones, and the director lets us know that we have found irony.