ChungMuRo Express: White Badge (Ha-yanjeonjaeng)
Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 6:30 PM
ImaginAsian Theatre
(239 E. 59th St., NYC)
JEONG Ji-Young, Grade 18, 124 minutes
Classic Korean Cinema presents White Badge (Ha-yanjeonjaeng)
Han Ki-Ju is a former army sergeant turned writer living toward the end of President Park Chung Hee’s rule in the late 1970s. Han leads a troubled if insubstantial life, that is, until he is hired to write his Vietnam War memoirs for a local magazine. A strange phone call from a long-lost war buddy triggers his repressed memories of the war. But the men’s recovered friendship, based on psychological wounds, is tested by an indifferent society ignorant to the fact that over 300,000 Korean soldiers were sent by the South Korean government during the Vietnam War to fight for the United States.
Novelist Han Ki-ju (AHN Sung-ki) is separated from his wife and lives a bleak life. Han begins publishing a serial novel about the Vietnam War in a monthly current events magazine, and the work stirs up his nightmarish memories of Vietnam. Then one day, Han gets an unexpected phone call from Byeon Jin-su (LEE Kyeong-young), a fellow soldier who fought alongside Han in the war. At first, the unit Han and Byeon were assigned to enjoyed several uneventful months with no enemy in sight; however, the peaceful environment changes in time with Han, Byeon, and their fellow soldiers come into increasing contact with the atrocities of war, and become infected by its insanity with each casualty.
This film is in Korean with English subtitles.
Film Curator Ms. Hyun-Ock Im will introduce the program and lead a discussion after the screening.
ImaginAsian Theatre (239 E. 59th St., New York, NY, Tel: 212-371-6682)
Free Admission: RSVP at 212-759-9550