Welcome to Dongmakgol ( Welkkeom tu Dongmakgol ) ( Battleground 625 )

Welcome to Dongmakgol (DVD) (*)

~~$20.99~~ $14.97

Original Title: Welkkeom tu Dongmakgol
Alternate Title: Battleground 625
Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
Korean ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
133 min + 60 min extras

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Collectors Edition
Featurette
Interactive Menu
Making Of
Scene Access
Trailer(s)

Movie filmed in 2005 and produced in:
South Korea ( India, Eastern Asia )

Directed By:
Kwang-Hyun Park

Written By:
Jin Jang
Joong Kim

Actors:
Jae-yeong Jeong ..... Chief Comrade Lee Su-Hwa
Ha-kyun Shin ..... 2nd Lt. Pyo Hyun-Chul
Hye-jeong Kang ..... Yeo-il
Ha-ryong Lim ..... Jang Young-hee (North)
Jae-kyeong Seo ..... Army Medic Mun Sang-sang (South)
Deok-Hwan Ryu ..... Seo Taek-ki (North)
Steve Taschler ..... Smith
Jae-Jin Jung ..... Special Forces Commander
Young-yi Lee ..... Attack Pilot Last Scene
Nam-Hee Park
Deok-hyeon Jo
Seung-mok Yoo
Won-cheol Shim
David Joseph Anselmo
Michael Arnold

Synopsis:

At the height of the Korean War, the remote community of Dongmakgol remains sheltered from the brutal conflict raging in its midst. But when two deserters from the South arrive at the same time that a naïve girl leads a small Northern unit to the village, a terrible conflict looks set to shatter its peaceful existence. Yet Dongmakgol is an almost magical place. A haven where the beauty of nature and the simplicity of life encourage the warring visitors to set aside their differences and join together in a desperate bid to defend the innocence of its people. Starring Hye-Jeong Kang (Old-Boy), Welcome to Dongmakgol is a beautifully shot war epic. Set to a sweeping score, it is both moving and uplifting, providing a cinematic experience guaranteed to live long in your memory.

A U.S. Navy pilot, Neil Smith, is caught in a mysterious storm of butterflies and crash-lands his plane whilst flying over a remote part of Korea. He is found by local villagers who nurse him back to health. Within the small village(Dongmakgol), time appears to stand still. They have no knowledge of modern technology, such as guns and grenades. All villagers are unaware to the conflict within Korea.Meanwhile, not far from the village, a platoon of North Korean and South Korean soldiers have an encounter, and the ensuing gunfight leaves most of the North Koreans dead. The surviving soldiers from the North manage to escape through a mountain passage. The North Korean soldiers, Rhee Soo-hwa (Jeong Jae-yeong), Chang Young-hee (Lim Ha-ryong), and Seo Taik-gi (Ryu Duk-hwan) are found by an odd girl Yeo-il (Kang Hye-jeong) who acts crazy. She leads them to the village, where to their astonishment, they find two South Korean soldiers Pyo Hyun-chul (Shin Ha-kyun) and Moon Sang-sang (Seo Jae-kyung). The South Korean soldiers who, have both deserted their units had also been lead to the village which is housing the injured U.S. Navy pilot, Smith by a different villager.The unexpected encounter causes an armed standoff that lasts for several days. The villagers have no idea what the stir is about, and wonder why the two sides are standing there pointing those 'sticks' at each other. The confrontation ends only when a soldier holding a grenade is worn by fatigue and accidentally drops it. Another soldier heroically throws himself onto the grenade, but it does not explode. He discards the 'dud' over his shoulder in contempt, and it rolls into the village storehouse and blows up the village's stockpile of corn for the winter. The remnants fall down from the sky surrealistically as popcorn.The two groups of Korean soldiers and Smith now have to face the fact that their quarrel condemned the village to starvation in the following winter. They help the villagers in the fields to make up for the damage they have caused, and even work together to kill one of the wild boars that trouble the village. Tensions between the two groups of Korean soldiers gradually lessen, though members of both sides are haunted by the memory of terrible things they have experienced during the war.While this is happening, Allied commanders, who have lost several other planes in the area, are preparing a rescue team to recover Smith, whom they mistakenly believe has been captured by enemy units and is being held at a hidden base. The plan: when the rescue team finds and recovers Smith, a bomber unit is to fly in and destroy the anti-aircraft guns they presume are sited in the village, which means that the innocent villagers are now in grave peril.The rescue team, led by their commander (David Joseph Anselmo), drops in by parachute at night, suffering heavy casualties from the rough terrain. They enter the village, and under the assumption it is a cover for an enemy base, begin roughing up toward the villagers. Despite the efforts of the villagers to conceal the Korean soldiers by disguising them as villagers, a firefight breaks out in which all the members of the rescue team but one are killed and Yeo-il is fatally wounded by a bullet. The only survivor of the rescue team, the Korean translator, is hit over the head by Smith and is captured by the villagers.Through the translator, the people in the village find out about the bombing plan. The North and South Korean soldiers realize there is no time for Smith to make it back to his base to stop the bombing. The only possible way to save the village, they decide, is to create a decoy 'enemy base' using equipment from the rescue team parachute drop, so that the bombing unit will attack them instead of the village. Smith is sent back along with the surviving rescue party member so that he can tell the Americans that there is nothing in the village to bomb, in case they decide to send more bombers. Meanwhile, the decoy is successful, and the remaining North and South Korean soldiers die smiling while a barrage of bombs explode around them. The village is saved, but at the cost of the lives of the former enemies who had later become friends.

This movie shows an extremely remote mountain village in a very small country. These folks are almost nymphs. There came a group of North Korean stragglers who are kind and full of humanism. South Korean deserters who feel guilty about massacre committed by cold-blooded South Korean Army join them. The U.S. Air Force sends devilish commandos and they beat and try to kill innocent villagers. Stragglers and deserters prevent this and they heroically met their death against the U.S Air Force who is hell-bent to annihilate villagers. A propaganda against South Korea and its ally by a South Korean film maker. You can make pop-corn snow with hand grenades if you believe.

This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 19 May, 2011.