Late Blossom (그대를 사랑합니다)

Love is always an open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself and relish love in the old age is like an aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!

Late Blossom (그대를 사랑합니다) is a 2011 South Korean film written and directed by Choo Chang-min about the love story of two elderly couples who live in the same neighborhood.

Four senior citizens, Kim Man-Seok (Lee Soon-Jae), Song Ee-peun (Yun So-Jeong), Jang Kun-Bong (Song Jae-Ho) and Jang's wife Jo Soon-yi (Kim Soo-Mi) living in a hillside village.

Kim is a widow and a cranky milkman with a short fuse and a foul mouth. He wakes the village early each morning with his noisy, battered motorcycle to deliver the milk in the neighborhood. One day when he goes up a slope, he meets Song, a lonely woman who scavenges for scrap paper to sell for her daily expenses while roaming around the town at daybreak. Both of them had a tragic post-love story; Kim had a loving wife but he neglected her and eventually led to her death due to an unattended cancer; Song believes she is getting bad karma for leaving her mother and not being able to save her sick child when her husband left them. As two of them meet again and again each days, Kim feels something special towards Song and they slowly develop the kind of love which makes Kim smile from ear to ear just at the thought of Song.

Song parks her handcart at a junkyard and gets to know Jang, the caretaker of the parking lot next to the scrap yard. Jang has a wife who suffers from Alzheimer's after their three children left them to start their own families. Jang works from dawn till late at night and takes care of his wife after work when he comes home. One day, Jang wakes up late to work and forgets to lock his house door and asks Song to fasten it for him. Meanwhile, Jang’s afflicted wife, Jo walks out from the unlocked house and wanders around in the town. Fortunately, Kim sees her in the playground and drive her around to find her home. Jo happily sitting on the back of Kim’s motorbike and thinking that is Jang who driving her in a blossom garden.

The film revolves around four of them, a simple yet truly endearing tale of beautiful twilight love. You will smile for the sweetest moments between Kim and Song and laugh for the funniest friendship times between them until the bittersweet ending of the two couples that makes you cry.

Towards the end of the film, Jang gathers all his three children, daughter-in-laws, son-in-law and grandchildren in his house just to see them the last time before he griefs to make the decision to commit suicide together with his wife after he finds out that she is suffering from a terminal illness. In an enclosed room with charcoal burning stove, Jang says to his wife, "I will still want to be with you again in our next life ... ..." The next morning, they were found died on the bed holding each other hands.

After attending the funeral, Song decided to leave Kim as she realised that death will happen to them in the near future too and she will not be able to bear the bitterness of separation with Kim. She wants to keep the sweet memories of them in her heart.

The film ends with a doctor removing the oxygen mask from Kim in the hospital while he smiling and imagines of driving Song on his back in his old motorbike ... ...

Life's greatest happiness is to have someone hand in hand in life. 

Movie Trailer:

               

The Crucible (Silenced)( 도가니)

The Crucible (도가니) is a 2011 South Korean film directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk based on the novel of the same name by Gong Ji-young published in 2009. It is based on actual events that took place at Gwangju Inhwa School for the hearing-impaired, where young deaf students ages seven to twenty-two were the victims of repeated sexual assaults by faculty members over a period of five years in the early 2000s.

Kang In-ho (Gong Yoo) is the newly appointed art teacher at Benevolence Academy, a school for hearing-impaired children in the fictional city of Mujin, North Jeolla Province. His wife was a high school student who committed suicide and he has a daughter who is staying with his mother suffers from asthma. Kang has to earn money for his daughter's surgery and on his first day at school, Kang meets the school's principal and director of administration who are an identical twins. The director of administration asks for a bribe from him to work at their school. Kang's mother delivers the 50 million WON (US$50,000) by taking out the deposit money for their home.

One day, on his way home, Kang notices one of his students Yoo-ri (Jung In-seo) sitting on the ledge of her dorm room window, he rushes into the dorm building and pull her back from the window. Yoo-Ri then leads Kang to a door down the hall where he sees the dormitory superintendent, Yoon Ja-ae (Kim Joo-ryung) dunking the head of orphaned male student, Yeon-doo (Kim Hyun-soo) inside a washing machine and discovers an ugly horrifying truth about the school. The children are being physically and sexually abused repeatedly by their teachers.

Kang decides to fight for the children’s rights and expose the crimes being committed at the school. He teams up with human rights activist Seo Yoo-jin (Jung Yoo-mi) but they soon realize that the school’s principal and teachers and even the police, prosecutors and churches in the community are actually trying to cover up the truth. Even after the court proceedings, the faculty members were only given light penalties and some even got their jobs back.

Being based on a tragic real-life story of sexual abuse at a school for hearing-impaired children, The Crucible is a haunting, brutal, visceral and ultimately heartbreaking tale that literally shocked the nation which raised public awareness and outrage about lenient laws and court rulings on sexual violence against minors.

Two months after the film's release and resulting controversy, Gwangju City officially shut down the school in November 2011. In July 2012, the Gwangju District Court sentenced the sixty-three years old former administrator of Gwangju Inhwa School to twelve years in prison for sexually assaulting an eighteen years old student in April 2005. He was also charged with physically abusing another seventeen years old student who had witnessed the crime (the victim reportedly attempted to commit suicide afterward). The administrator, only identified by his surname Kim was also ordered to wear an electronic anklet for ten years following his release.

Sometime real life can be far more cruel than the fiction.

Movie Trailer:

      

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):

      

J.S.A.: Joint Security Area

Joint Security Area (공동경비구역 JSA) is a 2000 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook and is based on the novel DMZ by Park Sang-yeon. The film, which was shot on location in South Korea, concerns an investigation into the circumstances surrounding a fatal shooting incident within the DMZ, the heavily fortified border that separates North and South Korea.

The film opens with a shooting along the heavy militarized border between North and South Korea, which leaves a North Korean soldier Pvt. Chǒng U-jin (Shin Ha- Kyun) dead and a South Korean soldier Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun) on border duties, attempts to flee back to the South Korean side.

Hoping to reduce the potentially explosive political fallout by solving the crime quickly, both countries agree on a special investigation conducted by Major Sophie E Jang (Lee Yeong-Ae) on behalf of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.

In a politically-sensitive place where safety is ensured by covering-up the truth, the young lady investigator learns that things are often not what they seem. As she methodically sifts through the evidence, Sophie learns that the testimony of two other soldiers, North Korean Sgt. Oh Kyeong Pil (Song Kang-Ho) and South Korean Sgt. Lee Soo Hyeok (Lee Byung-Hun) are completely contradictory. Another witness Pvt. Nam Sung-shik (Kim Tae-Woo) tries to commit suicide rather than divulge information.

In her ardent desire to uncover the details of the bizaare incident, she risked the eruption of a serious conflict and discovers a tragic story of friendship.

Movie Trailer (With English Subtitles):