Saw this movie at sundance and it opened my eyes to another human atrocity. I'd never heard about this event before, and the movie held my attention as I watched the horrifying scenes unfold. It was probably as low budget as any film I've ever seen at sundance, and at times it left me disoriented as scenes didn't quite fit together. The sets were super minimal and the subtitles needed work. But over all it still connected with me and made me sympathize with a group of people I had never thought about before. The director didn't attend the screening which was unfortunate, because as I left I really wanted to ask why he/she portrayed the United States negatively. Paraphrasing and working from memory here, but at the beginning, the movie said the US ordered every person within 5km of the peninsula to be killed. Later on it said the military has never acknowledged their involvement. So, where is the evidence they ordered it if they won't acknowledge it? Must be other eyewitness accounts, right? You would think the movie would cover this subject, but it didn't. There is not a single American solder shown in the film, as all the violence in the film comes at the hand of Koreans. While the US military has certainly done regrettable things over the years, I have never learned of an outright order to kill everyone, including civilians. So, that sounded pretty bogus to me, and it made me wonder who was funding the film, and for what purpose. So, after the film, I looked it up on Wikipedia (source of all knowledge), and sure enough, the whole thing went down a few years prior to the Korean war when the US did not control the South Korean army. The situation, though inexcusable, was far more complex than presented in the film in terms of how the conflict began and escalated, and I didn't see anything that led me to believe the US was involved. There were 5 US military personnel on the island who documented what went on there, and the US didn't intervene. But to not intervene is not akin to giving orders or even fully understanding what is happening on the ground. Certainly, the US was worried about the spread of communism, so is it really surprising that they didn't choose to stand up against the South Koreans, who were there to fight against communism? So, I thought that whole was a bit disingenuous and a distraction from what I think the point of the film should have been- to document the evil acts that happened on the island. If the film wanted to focus on why these acts occurred and who was responsible, it should have investigated the issue more thoroughly and illustrated it with facts, not conjecture or propaganda. Was this movie filmed in North Korea?
