Here is the latest South Korean movie that is expected to rekindle anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea:
The shape of Hashima Island resembles a warship from a distance as shown in this photo taken by South Korean photographer Lee Jae-gab in July 2008. The photo was provided by Lee. (Yonhap)
When Choi Jang-seop left for Japan more than seven decades ago, the 16-year-old did not know that the journey would change his life.
He was one of hundreds of Koreans who were conscripted into forced labor on Japan’s Hashima Island as part of the country’s mobilization of Koreans during World War II. Korea was under Japan’s colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.
Choi — wearing only underwear — toiled eight hours in a hot, cramped undersea coal mine with the constant fear of death. Other survivors said they worked for 12 hours at a time as three eight-hour shifts gave way to two 12-hour shifts with the rising demand for coal during the war.
What’s worse is that forced laborers, mostly in their teens and 20s, were given food that was mostly remnants of beans after the vegetable oil had been extracted, a situation that led to malnutrition and starvation among some forced laborers.
“I was hungry all the time and life was miserable beyond description,” Choi recalled of his days on the island between 1943 and 1945 in a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency at his small apartment in Daejeon, some 160 kilometers south of Seoul. [Yonhap]
You can read much more at the link, by the way has anyone seen the movie yet?
Saw it last weekend. Very dynamic, several homages to other war movies along the way, generally well-acted, and action scenes, as often in K-films, very well done. I couldn’t help but wonder at the degree of fictionalization. The climax of the film is an attempted breakout, as prisoners, realizing the end of the war is near, and having heard that they will be murdered by the guards, try to get on a docked coal ship, steal it, and link up with US forces, I think on Saipan. There’s also a battle between the prisoners and the guards in the prison yard, which obviously owes a lot to Saving Private Ryan. Once the evil commandant is killed, the lead Korean soldier simply yells out to the Japanese remaining, That’s it, there’s no more reason to fight, the war is over and we’re going, — and they accept it. Seemed a bit odd, and I would really love to know the actual details of what happened, as this seemed to obviously “dramatic” to be believeable. The appalling conditions of work in the coal mine, however, seem all too credible, as do the details of thousands of ordinary Koreans being conscripted for forced labour. I enjoyed it, but, like I said, I wonder how true the movie is to life. If anyone has seen Taxi Driver, about the Busan uprising (?) a review of that would be welcome.
Saw it last weekend. Very dynamic, several homages to other war movies along the way, generally well-acted, and action scenes, as often in K-films, very well done. I couldn’t help but wonder at the degree of fictionalization. The climax of the film is an attempted breakout, as prisoners, realizing the end of the war is near, and having heard that they will be murdered by the guards, try to get on a docked coal ship, steal it, and link up with US forces, I think on Saipan. There’s also a battle between the prisoners and the guards in the prison yard, which obviously owes a lot to Saving Private Ryan. Once the evil commandant is killed, the lead Korean soldier simply yells out to the Japanese remaining, That’s it, there’s no more reason to fight, the war is over and we’re going, — and they accept it. Seemed a bit odd, and I would really love to know the actual details of what happened, as this seemed to obviously “dramatic” to be believeable. The appalling conditions of work in the coal mine, however, seem all too credible, as do the details of thousands of ordinary Koreans being conscripted for forced labour. I enjoyed it, but, like I said, I wonder how true the movie is to life. If anyone has seen Taxi Driver, about the Busan uprising (?) a review of that would be welcome.
@Jon Paul, thank you for sharing your review. It sounds like the movie had a lot of fiction in it.