Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War

After hearing my comment about the lack of "classroom film footage about the Korean War", several of my AP students who are of Korean heritage suggested that we, as a class, watch "The Brotherhood of War" because it is a film about the Korean War made by a South Korean film maker. After asking them repeatedly if was a good film or did they just want to watch a movie, they assured me it was a good film. It was, if you could get by the graphic battle scenes, on the order of storming the beaches in "Saving Private Ryan". The story itself concentrated on two brothers who get "conscripted" into the SK Army in 1950 and what the older brother did to protect his younger brother. The battle scenes show the horror and brutality of war, and how war affects different men differently. The movie also showed how civilian life, both north and south, was affected by the war. If showing this to a class, I will show select scenes, most likely those concentrating on the difficulties of getting food, how they conscripted men, and the protrayal of the Communist Party in the North. Even though I did find the movie somewhat confusing (I was watching in English subtitles) and I had to stop it several times and have the students explain what was happening, I thought it was a good anti-war movie.