The Front Line (고지전)

The final battle of Korea war that determined the border between North and South - The Front Line (고지전). A 2011 South Korean war film directed by Jang Hun set during the 1953 ceasefire of Korea war.


Despite the ceasefire negotiations which began on July 10, 1951 at Kaesongon, the fighting continues around the Aerok Hills on the eastern front to determine the future dividing line between the North and the South. The hills continue to change hands so frequently that the generals at the negotiation table can't even keep track of it.

First Lieuenant Kang Eun-pyo (Shin Ha-kyun) of the Defense Security Command is sent to the front to investigate the murder of a South Korean officer commanding Alligator Company who is found dead by a Southern bullet and also to discover if there is a mole in the unit when mail from a North Korean soldier to his family in the South is found.

Upon arrival, Kang is immediately shocked at the state of the soldiers, the conditions on the front and the presence of a former friend, Kim Soo-Hyeok (Go Soo) who he believed to be dead early in the Korea war. A disarray unit led by Kim because of the high kill rate in the dangerous region. With a truce promised for years but no end in sight, one man struggles to make sense of a crime in the face of countless lives sacrificed for war.

Though the characters in the film are fictional and the symbolic hill called Aerok in the film is form by the word "Korea" in backwards but the war between the North and South Korea is real and it shows the seriousness as it comes to the consequences of the war for a small, strategic hill on the front. Like what Kim in the film said, "Our enemy wasn't commies, but the war itself."

The film ends with Kang walking down the hill among the corpses of all the fallen soldiers, leaving the fate of Aerok Hill unknown.

Full Movie (With English Subtitles):

      

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