Shooting the neighbours

A movie about three North Korean spies dispatched to South Korea on a covert mission is slated to open in cinemas this month. 

“Eunmilhagae, Widaehagae” (“Discreetly, Greatly”) is a story of how elite agents from the hermit kingdom and people of the South coming to understand one another.

“I hope viewers will be moved by the human side of the movie – three North Koreans who connect with South Koreans,” says Park Ki-woong, who played one of the North Korean spies in the movie. 

The spies are depicted in a way that might seem unusual to cinemagoers in other countries. North Korea is often depicted as the home of faceless foes in American films, with “Red Dawn” (2012) and “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” (2013) two recent examples.

But the portrayal of Pyongyang’s secret agents in “Discreetly, Greatly” epitomises the mixed feelings many South Koreans have about their neighbours in the North, seeing them as both an enemy and a long-lost sibling.

The relationship between the South and the North is unlike other antagonists in that they view each other as part of the same nation, sharing a history and culture that reaches back more than 1,000 years. Due to the deep-rooted sense of connection and history, both Koreas focus on re-unification. Seoul even runs a government branch dedicated to that purpose, the Ministry of Unification.

Citizens also share the need to unite the two Koreas. In a recent poll by Gallup Korea, 74 per cent of South Koreans supported unification.

Since the 1950-1953 war, however, such sentiment has been clouded by open hostility between the countries, driven by mutual bitterness left by the war. Up until the 1980s, most South Koreans felt hatred and fear toward the reclusive communist regime. Seoul, recovering from the ashes of the Korean War, embraced strong anti-communist policies, with the human side of North Koreans largely ignored in public.

The animated movie series “Ttol-I Janggun” (“General Ttol-I”) was a prime example of the bid to dehumanise North Koreans among the South’s cinemagoers. In the popular series, General Ttol-I fights North Korean soldiers depicted as wolves. 

A turnaround came in the late 1990s when frozen inter-Korean relations slowly began to thaw. The late president Kim Dae-jung, who took office in 1998, pushed for what he called the “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea. Kim sought to end the era of confrontation between the two countries.

The Sunshine Policy sparked mixed reactions in the South but helped change the way Southerners viewed North Koreans.

Also accelerating the change in perspective was the blockbuster hit “Swiri”. Released in 1998, the film depicted the romance between a South Korean secret agent and a North Korean spy, highlighting the human side of Northerners for the first time. 

In the 2000 film “Joint Security Area” (JSA), soldiers standing watch at the heavily fortified DMZ overcome the hostility of the two countries to become friends.

Such friendship was taken to another level in the 2010 picture “Euihyeongjae” (“Blood-brothers”), where former spies of the South and the North, who have been tracking each other, become comrades and share brotherly feelings. 

In “Frontline” (2011), soldiers from each side of the divide share food and drinks via a secret stash during the Korean War. The soldiers even teach each other songs and share photos of their siblings.

Despite the temporary bonding, the characters eventually have to confront cold reality, whether it is being forced into an armed standoff with a lover or a shoot-out against a friend. 

The lack of a happy ending in such films illustrates a widespread perception of South Koreans: North Koreans are humans, not wolves – but it’s too early to call them friends.