JSA Joint Security Area
<Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok JSA>
Director: Park Chan-wook
Writings: Jeong Seong-san, Kim Hyeon-seok, Lee Mu-yeong, Park Chan-wook, Park Sang-yeon
Music: Bang Jun-seok, Jo Yeong-wook
Cinematography: Kim Sung-bok
Cast: Lee Yeong-ae, Lee Byung-hun, Song Kang-ho, Kim Tae-woo, Shin Ha-kyun, Gi Ju-bong, Christoph Hofrichter
After the reunification of Germany and Yemen, South Korea remains the only country in the world divided in two: yet an open and bleeding wound. The reunification, though discussed and awaited, is yet to come. And also in contemporary cinematography, the representation of North Koreans as merciless infiltrated terrorists ( see Shiri by Kang Je-gyu) and the reasoning about the brotherhood beyond political borders alternate. The brotherhood among nations was the theme of the intense Park kwang-hyun’s Welcome to Dongmakgol, which, at the 2006’s Udine Far East Film Festival, won the audience prize. It tells the story of two groups of soldiers, one South Korean and one North Korean, which face each other and then make common front in the neutral and fairy-tale village of Dongmangkol, a quiet and timeless place where the oppositions come to an end. Indeed, because of the two countrys’ mutual impermeability, the cinematographic imagery needs a medial point to represent the possible meeting between the two sister nations: Yi Mun-yol, the greatest living Korean writer, chooses a Korean autonomous district in China to portray the meeting with his North Korean half-brother ( in Auwai Mannam, 1994; An appointment with my brother, 2002). Drawing inspiration from Park Sang-yeon’s novel called DMZ, Park chan-wook sets the movie in the geographically and historically medial point between North Korea and South Korea: Panmunjeom’s Demilitarized Zone, or “Joint Security Area”, placed sixty kilometres north of Seoul along the Military Demarcation Line. A place where Korean civilians cannot enter. And, actually, the whole film is the story of a mediation, between the North and South Korean soldiers, made by Sophie Lang (Lee yeong-ae), a female officer, whose task is to investigate the causes of an accident which took place in the security area. It’s a hard and tragic mediation, as the hard and “serious” guard to the symbolic and tangible line, which since 1976, is traced between the Military Armistice Commission Buildings, and that is overseen by the soldiers, who face each other in martial position. On that line, photographed by some heedless American tourists, the movie begins and ends. Park chan-wook reflects on that line, and he puts together and oppose to it at the same time, another symbolic place of the Joint Security Area: as the major general has to explain an obscure event, the crossing of the Bridge of No-Return by two South Korean soldiers, whose unacceptable friendship with the enemies/brothers of the North appears little by little, is opposed to the impassable line which is overseen by the soldiers. The inquiry is similar to Oedipus’ tragic one: the will to get the truth only kills other people. More wounds which can’t be healed. The truth is unsustainable: the two protagonists of the accident from which all began, Nam, a weak soldier, and Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun), a determined sergeant, who survived the massacre thanks to the solidarity of Oh Kyeong-Pil, a North Korean sergeant, can’t bear the fact that this friendship could be considered a treason.
Actually, Joint Security Area is the story of a removal. The friendship among the opposing soldiers is such indescribable because it is first of all unthinkable for themselves. The movie’s untruthful flashbacks, which the major general relentlessly tries to dismantle, are the representation of that unconceivability. The Koreans clash against a taboo which is, first of all, inside of them. Nobody is spared, not even the mediator: as Oedipus finds out his tragedy pursuing the truth, Sophie, while proceeding with the inquiry, meets her father which she doesn’t even allow herself to think about, a man who didn’t choose neither the North nor the South, forsaking all his Korean brothers. The Joint Security Area is a place where the wounds come to light, and they can be borne only through their representation. Finally, along with Sophie’s reassembled family picture, there’s the photograph of the boundary line which reveals, frame by frame, and with a wonderful graphic virtuosity, the amiable presence, in the North and in the South, of the five men united for a while by their long-awaited brotherhood.
Sabrina Stroppa.
