국제시장 | Ode to My Father
개봉 Released
감독 Directed by
역사배경 History
주연 Cast
2014.12.17
윤제균 Yoon Je-kyoon
6.25전쟁 The Korean War
1950년 12월 흥남 철수작전 Hungnam Evacuation
베트남 전쟁 The Vietnam War
이산가족 찾기 Finding Dispersed Familes
황정민 Hwang Jung-min
김유진 Yunjin Kim
Ode to My Father depicts South Korean history from the 1950s to the present day through the life of an ordinary man, covering important events that occured along the way.
The Hungnam Evacuation
The Hungnam evacuation, also known as the Miracle of Christmas, was the evacuation of United Nations (UN) forces and North Korean civilians from the port of Hungnam, Hamhung, North Korea, between 15 and 24 December 1950 during the Korean War.
In December 1950, some 100,000 UN troops were trapped in the North Korean port of Hungnam, overwhelmed by Chinese forces four times their size. The sea was their only one way to get to safety, and they had very little time to do it before the Chinese closed in.
Around 100 US ships, including the SS Meredith Victory, had sailed to Hungnam to pick up the troops, supplies and ammunition and take them to the South Korean ports of Busan and Geoje Island. Rescuing the thousands of North Korean refugees had also fled to the freezing beach had never been part of the plan.
Colonel Edward Forney of the US Marine Corps worked with others to try to make it part of the mission. It took several days to get everyone aboard the ships. Refugees were crammed between vehicles, boxes of ammunition and supplies. There was no food or water. The biggest ship, the SS Meredith Victory, was designed to carry 60 crew at the most. Now it had 14,000 refugees - as well as the cargo.
All 200,000 - around half of them refugees, half of them troops - reached land alive. It was the largest sea-borne, military evacuation of civilians under combat conditions in American history.
And, as the SS Meredith Victory sailed into Geoje island harbour, there were five new lives on board.
Mass migration began in the 1960s, when West Germany invited nurses and miners from South Korea to come as Gastarbeiter; their recruitment of labourers specifically from South Korea was driven not just by economic necessity, but also by a desire to demonstrate support for a country that, like Germany, had been divided by ideology.
The first group of miners arrived on 16 December 1963, and nurses began arriving in large numbers in 1966. Though the South Korean workers came on limited-term contracts and most initially planned to return home, in the end, half of the workers enlisted ended up remaining in Germany.
Koreans in Germany
An is estimated total of about 20,000 Koreans came to Germany between the start of recruitment in the late 1950s and the end of recruitment activities in the mid-1970s, The migrant worker agreement was closely tied to South Korea’s later economic rise. Often called a “miracle,” but meticulously planned under the autocratic rule of President Park Chung-hee, the Korean economic boom depended on attracting an influx of foreign capital.
Today, South Korea is a developed industrialized country that itself relies on migrant workers from countries including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand to maintain its own prosperity. In the context of the intensifying debate about the conditions under which these migrant workers live and work in South Korea, it is appropriate to look at the experiences of Korean labor migrants in Germany.
South Korea in the Vietnam War
The South Korean government, under the regime of Park Chung Hee, took an active role in the Vietnam War. From September 1964 to March 1973, South Korea sent some 350,000 troops to South Vietnam. The South Korean Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force all participated as an ally of the United States. The number of troops from South Korea was much greater than those from Australia and New Zealand, and second only to the U.S. military force for foreign troops located in South Vietnam. Participation of Korean forces in the war included both non-combatant and combatant roles.
South Korea's decision to join resulted from various underlying causes, including the development of US-South Korea relations, political exigencies, and the promise of economic aid from the United States. Some Korean soldiers saw themselves as repaying the sacrifices Americans had made during the Korean War. Many also saw an economic opportunity for combat pay and took on service to support their families.
In return for deploying South Korean combat troops in Vietnam, the U.S. paid for the financial costs associated with South Korean troops in Vietnam; promised not to withdraw American troops from South Korea without prior consultation with the South Korean government; helped modernize the South Korean army; provided substantial military aid to South Korea; and gave economic aid to South Korea.
Sadly, the South Korean military's participation in the Vietnam war is not without atrocities, the Korean forces allegedly having perpetrated the Binh Tai, Bình An/Tây Vinh, Bình Hòa, and Hà My massacres. The Korean Ministry of Defense has denied all such accusations.
Finding Dispersed Families
Finding Dispersed Families is a special live broadcast created and aired by the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) from June 30 to November 14, 1983 aiming to reunite Korean families following the division of Korea and the Korean War.
Whilst the broadcast was originally planned with a duration of 95 minutes, it ran for a total of 453 hours and 45 minutes over 138 days as KBS was inundated with requests for help to re-connect individuals with their lost family members. As a result, 53,000 people were featured on air, uniting 10,000 families over its course.
Finding Dispersed Families received international acclaim and humanitarian praise, cementing its place in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015. Archives of the program can be accessed by the public via the KBS website. Segments of the broadcast are also available for streaming with English subtitles on Vimeo and YouTube.
