Tae Guk Gi (The Brotherhood of War) was a movie directed by Kang Je-Kyu. It is a movie that shows the lives of two brothers who are forced to fight in the Korean War- Lee Jin-tae and Lee Jin-seok. Lee Jin-tae vows to protect his younger brother from the war. He believes he can send Jin-seok back if he wins the Medal of Honor. So he tries everything he can to win it, even if that means that he has to do bad things to achieve it. Jin-seok becomes upset that his brother will not let him fight. He also resents Jin-tae for the crimes he had committed. The brothers in the movie represent the changing relationship between North and South Koreans during the Korean War.
The Korean peninsula was forcibly divided by the Soviet Union and the United States and their foreign ideologies. The North was claimed by the Soviet Union and the South was claimed by the United States. So the North was influenced by the communist ideology and the South became influenced by the capitalism. Before the war, the two parties were trying to establish a single national government. This became a power struggle. These ideology differences caused tensions between the North and South. The tension is shown when the brothers meet a …show more content…
Both sides committed crimes that permanently damaged their relationship. Jin-tae forced North Korean soldiers to fight each other to death. This disgusted Jin-seok because he was seeing his brother torture his former friends. The North Korean soldiers were accused of slaughtering civilians and setting traps on their corpses. However, South Koreans killed people that are deemed as communist sympathizers. Jin-tae’s girlfriend was shot and Jin-tae believed that Jin-seok was killed as well. He could not forgive the South Koreans so he joined the North Korean army to get revenge. Both sides committed crimes that could not be forgiven