Joint Security Area: Friends Without Borders

The Joint Security Area (also known as the “Truce Village”) is the only portion of the Korean Demilitarized Zone where South and North Koreans actively stand face to face without direct armed conflict. The Joint Security Area is used for the two Koreas primarily for diplomatic arrangements and meetings and until 1991 was the location used for multiple military negotiations between North Korean and the United Nations Command. Since it’s establishment in 1953 with the informal end of the Korean war and the Korean Armistice Agreement it allowed for the exchange of prisoners of war between the two nations through the “Bridge Of No Return” which crosses the Military Demarcation Line between the two Koreas. The name originates from the final ultimatum that was given to prisoners of war brought to the bridge for repatriation: they could either remain in the country of their captivity or cross the bridge to return to their homeland. However, once they chose to cross the bridge, they would never be allowed to return, even if they later changed their minds.

Given all of that necessary background and history, Park Chan-wook’s 2000 film “Joint Security Area” might suggest a tense, political thriller in which the opposing forces come ever so close to engaging in armed conflict before cooler heads prevail. A moral and geopolitical stew of varying ideas of the cost of war and the fragility of global peace. When in truth it is far more small scale, even considering the contentious backdrop of North and South Korean relations and how they balloon to encompass the global stability of the world. It’s far closer to an investigative mystery whose elements lean more in the way of humanistic drama as opposed to the edge of nuclear armageddon. And it is all the more smarter for the angle that it takes. 

On November 2nd, two North Korean soldiers are murdered just across the Northern side of the Joint Security Area. A South Korean soldier, Lee Soo-hyeok, limps across the Bridge Of No Return. He is met by a platoon of Southern soldiers who briefly exchange fire with the North. Two days later, in an effort to ease the new tensions between the Koreas, Swiss Army Major Sophie E. Jean is dispatched by the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission to conduct a special investigation in order to discover the truth of the matter and which side could ultimately be considered the “aggressor.”

Its dramatic structure and non-linearity lend its dramatic irony a truly gripping quality that elevates it beyond the conventional expectations of a standard mystery thriller. Flashing back to April of that year, we learn of the crime and to a large extent how it transpired fairly early on. The majority of the second act is spent fleshing out the major players in the crime and how they arrived at their ultimate point of conflict. After a clandestine military operation of reconnaissance leaves Sergeant Lee stranded in the DMZ stuck on a land-mine, he is met by a North Korean soldier, Oh Kyeong-pil, doing a sweep with his Corporal Jeong Woo-jin. What begins as a tense encounter, gun barrels clumsily pointed at each other, ends with Sergeant Oh disarming the mine, giving him the fuse as a memento, and allowing Lee to run back to his squad, tail between his legs.

Over the next few weeks Sergeants Lee and Oh maintain contact through letters thrown between the Bridge Of No Return, learning more and more about what life is like on each respective side, how they came to their current positions and what they hope life is like in the years to come. Through a miscommunication, Sergeant Lee confusedly and trepidatiously makes his way to the Northern security station where Sergeant Oh and Corporal Jeong are stationed. And the three, including a fourth, Lee’s friend Private Nam Sung-shik, eventually become trusted friends, sneaking out and meeting up overnight, sharing stories, engaging in hijinks, and finding space to trust each other.

It is in how the friendship develops between the group and for each respective character that sells the idea that these “sworn enemies” would even be willing to make this risk to communicate once let alone hundreds of times over a 7 month span. The isolating job of being a soldier on the front lines of what is, technically speaking, a war that is still active. It would be hard to have genuine communication that stimulates and refreshes with different people from different walks of life. Not least of which feeling a sense of duty to communicate with a soldier for the “enemy” who not only didn’t kill when he had the chance, but went a step further and actively saved life. When making first in-person contact with the North Korean soldiers, there is a tension borne out of confusion. A Mexican standoff that none of the parties genuinely want to engage in, but must due to their sworn duty, and even after this brief flashpoint subsides, the “jokes” being made feel more like thinly veiled threats between them, the trust lacking in the belief that this is not only not a genuinely good idea but a bond that cannot endure.

But endure it does as Lee brings over his only friend on the South side, Private Nam, to meet the other two of which he is none too excited at the prospect of. And it is in that growth of relationship going from strangers, to acquaintances with doubts, to genuinely inseparable friends that not only feels earned through the trials in which their friendship had to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, but through how naturalistically it grows into something far more than meets the eye. Going from pointing guns at each other, to engaging in high school level silliness and juvenility while staring each other down in the Joint Security Area under the noses of their superiors all while giving winks and nods to each other. Even giving each other birthday presents. The tempo and pace through which they become more safe with each other all the more believable given the backdrop of global conflict potential should they ever be found out. They are careful, but once their bond is established, not overly careful because they don't eventually feel that they need to be. A very human mistake to make. In matters such as these, being on the front lines and fairly desensitized to the global ramifications, these such considerations would believably fade over time.

“If war ever broke out, would we really have to shoot each other?”

And it is in that reminder of what will eventually happen, the drama of the why’s and how’s is put into focus again. We know how this ends, we saw fragments of it in the first third of the film. This cannot last. It won’t last. And the worst part is, we didn’t even have to experience war to get there. A sense of dread sets in as we remember that these four friends from diametrically opposed points of the compass of life will ultimately end in blood and death. Wanting nothing more than late October and early November to never come. It is in the structure of the narrative that Joint Security Area earns its stripes. Not merely content with laying out the facts in a sequential order, but giving you the beginning of its conclusion and ripping your heart out in showing you how it arrived at that point. The muted color palette of grays,  faded greens, of bare trees and heftier breezes all starts to give way to a backdrop of reality, of uncertainty that we had conveniently forgotten about through these four friends journey to simply experience human connection, forged against the tides of national interest and duty, just because they wanted to smile and laugh with each other in a fairly thankless and stressful job.

At its heart, Joint Security Area imagines a world, even if that world is impossible, where genuine connection of human souls are allowed to exist unbound by geopolitical borders and the acrimonious histories between peoples and nations. That without all of this outside influence, threat of violence, and global instability we could be so much more than our flags demand of us, and that the positive history we share between each other should always outweigh the collective history of strife we begrudgingly hold onto. That there is more inherent value between the inarguable brotherhood of four who, against all odds, drank, sang, and laughed alongside each other than the bloodshed of millions of their shared histories. Even when we know that gut-wrenchingly, this is the only way it ever could have ended. Nothing so beautiful could exist in the cold hard reality of armed conflict and mutually assured destruction. But we’ll remember that it did.