WELCOME TO DONGMAKGOL (2005), dir. Kwang-Hyun Park

If former enemies could somehow learn to work together, there’s no limit to what could be accomplished. That’s the lesson to be learned from “Welcome to Dongmakgol,” a charming and warm South Korean movie that not only opposes war, but strongly supports reunifying North and South Korea.

Thanks to a village secluded by mountainous terrain, men sworn to kill each other find they are not so different after all. Five soldiers, three representing the north, two from the south, intend to pass through Dongmakgol when an armed standoff breaks out. After accidentally destroying the village’s food supply, they seek to make amends by working the fields alongside the locals, who to the soldiers’ initial bafflement, appear to be living in a kind of time warp, ignorant to both the Korean Conflict and modern war itself.

“What is that? It looks like some kind of potato,” one Dongmakgol-ian remarks when seeing a grenade for the first time.

It turns out, although the villagers are hardly country bumpkins, they are too preoccupied with the minutiae of daily life to be bothered with anything else, even the arrival of a crash-landed U.N. pilot. But this disregard of geopolitics and nationalism slowly wins over the soldiers, some of whom have become disenchanted by war. They trade in their uniforms, start making friends, and ponder whether to leave behind “modern” civilization for good.

When the war machine inevitably arrives at Dongmakgol’s doorstep, the outsiders – even the English-speaking pilot – decide to stand up for something more important than international borders. Scenes of intense, war-related violence follow, but on the whole, Kwang-Hyun Park directs with a sure sense of whimsy, and there are such memorable touches as a downed plane sitting alone amidst green hills, a wild boar attack as Alfred Hitchcock would have directed it, and a slow-motion rain of popcorn when a food shed gets blown up.

These are all magical moments for sure, but sometimes the movie tries too hard to make us feel something, and frequently the score is downright obtrusive. Meanwhile, perhaps it’s because I am viewing “Welcome to Dongmakgol” from a westerner’s point-of-view, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the depiction of rustic village life was a little too idyllic, whether in reality the white man would not have been viewed with more fear, the crazy girl treated with less kindly.

But that would have resulted in a different kind of movie, and the point of this one is convincing people across the world to look past their differences, including North and South Koreans. I don’t pretend to be an expert in the Korean Conflict, and the how’s and why’s are virtually ignored by the film, only touched upon when two soldiers are arguing whether the north invaded the south. Ultimately, the commanding officer of the North Koreans confirms it. “We did?” the other soldier says with some surprise. After a beat, he says, “I only went because I was ordered to.”

If so many Koreans can’t even remember why they fought, all the more reason, the movie seems to argue, for a fresh start.

Overall rating: *** (out of ****)