Movie Review : Powerful ‘Badge’: South Korean Bitterness About Vietnam War

“White Badge,” the first Korean film to receive a regular run at a major Westside theater, confronts American audiences with the little-known role of the South Koreans in the Vietnam War. Chung Ji-Young’s prize-laden, unswervingly powerful film, from Ahn Jung-Hyo’s novel, unfolds much like our best films on Vietnam as we watch Korean soldiers caught up in a war that became to them as treacherous and meaningless as it did for so many of their American counterparts. The tone of the film is especially bitter, for it is a condemnation of the South Korean government for sending 300,000 soldiers to Vietnam as mercenaries merely to curry favor with the U.S. government.

The film opens with the 1979 assassination of dictatorial President Park Chung Hee. Now at last South Korea’s experience in Vietnam can be discussed in print. A hard-drinking writer Han Kiju (“Two Cops’ ” Ahn Sung-Ki), a disaffected Vietnam vet, agrees to write an autobiographical novel for a journal, where it will appear in weekly installments.

It is an immediate sensation, but writing it swiftly becomes a nightmare rather than a catharsis for Han, who is contacted by his long-lost war buddy, Pyon Chinsoo (Lee Kyung-Young), still deeply traumatized by his war experiences.

We are soon caught up in a series of battlefield flashbacks, which culminate in the specific incident that explains why these two men are so haunted by their pasts. Moving to the present, where anti-American, anti-martial law sentiment, especially among students, is boiling over in the wake of Park’s death, this extraordinary film proceeds to its devastating finish.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes graphic battlefield violence and bleak, complex adult themes.

‘White Badge’

Ahn Sung-Ki: Han Kiju

Lee Kyung-Young: Pyon Chinsoo

A Morning Calm Cinema release. Director Chung Ji-Young. Producer Cook Chong-Nam. Executive producers Kim Hak-Hun, Ahn Don-Kyu. Screenplay by Gong Su-Young, Jo Young-Chel, Shim Seung Bo, Chung Ji-Young; from a novel by Ahn Jung-Hyo. Cinematographer Yu Young-Gil. Editor Bark Soon-Duck. Music Sin Byung-Ha. In Korean, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours, 31 minutes.

* In limited run at the Royal, 11523 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles. (310) 477-5581.