I've been posting about a lot of films lately, but I think they are one of the best mediums we have to convey intangible feelings, so I tend to watch a lot of them. Yesterday, I watched one called "Joint Security Area," at once both profoundly endearing and disturbingly tragic, it hammers home the ubiquity of human compassion, and the tragedy of manufactured distinctions.

Lately I had been thinking about how similar Japanese and Korean culture and language really are, but I still know little about the situation between North and South Korea except what I've gleaned mostly from textbooks and magazines over the years. I think I actually did a paper on the whole situation in Junior High, but it was mostly a rehashing of conveniently categorized events: skirmishes, border clashes, violations...

But the situation is vastly more complex, because the humans involved are complex creatures. No one serving alongside Americans day after day can look across the border at a North Korean soldier, and not feel some sort of kinship, and some sort of strange unsettling twilight-zone discomfort at how strange the situation is. I'd like to learn more about it, but it's hard without going there.

This movie conveys very well some of the more complex human aspects of this cold conflict. It's about 4 border troops who fall into an unlikely friendship which inevitably ends in tragedy. Unfortunately, it's tragedy of the worst kind, so don't watch this movie unless you're ready for something heavy. But I do recommend you watch it, if you're at all interested in one of the most important aspects of Korean society since WWII.