Silmido - the hidden story of Unit "684"

The movie "Silmido" is famous for various things. It was the first one throughout the Korean movie history, to drew 10 million audiences. Therefore this movie is kind of a monumental movie. (Not to mention the two top famous actors, Ahn Seong-gi and Sol Kyung-gu.) It's about a special Unit whose goal was to assasinate Kim Il-sung, the former ruler of North Korea. It is based on a true story -An army troop known as an armed Communist Squad, committed mutual suicides in the bus for Seoul. The story in the movie is pretty much edited and quite different with the facts, but still it aroused public attention toward this historical tragedy.

The movies plot goes like this. An army troop was newly recruited in order to go to Pyeong-yang in N.Korea and kill Kim Il-sung. However the circumstances has changed during their training and they were no longer needed. So the government wanted to eliminate their existence in order to maintain the military situation between S.Korea and N.Korea. The troop's members found out what was going on and they decide to make their moves first.

I cried over this movie. Well, in fact a lot of the audience did. It is a sad, tragic story. It shows how 31 of the innocent men died. There were a lot of documentary movies made right after the "Silmido" has been released. Those documentaries let me know that some were even kidnapped to be trained, and many of them were dead during the training. (In the movie, the recruits are all criminals who were sentenced to death-this is just a set up.) If you want to have a glance on the tragic part of Korean history, you'd better watch this movie.