Movie Review: Northern Limit Line - 연평해전

 

The Northern Limit Line is, accroding to South-Korea at least, the border in the Yellow Sea between North and South-Korea. The DPRK does not agree and every once in a while the North taunts the South and crosses the border. June 29th, 2002 was one of those days.

 

On that very same day South-Korea was playing in World Cup semi finals and what could have been a day of celebration unfortunately turned into a day of death. At 10.25 the North Korean vessel that had crossed the line first opened fire with its 85mm gun and scored a direct hit on the wheelhouse of one of the South Korean vesels causing several casualties. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there...

 

It sounds like the perfect movie plot right? An attack from North-Korea when the South least expect it. Even though it is,  it is unfortunately also a true story. On that day 6 South-Koreans died and even more were injured, many of them barrely even 22 years old.

 

This movie was one of the first movies to make me cry. Just that day was the first time I heard of this story, when I stood on a 1:1 replica of the  South Korean Battleship 357 at the war memorial museum in Yongsan, Seoul.  I saw the marks where the bullets hit, I stood where they stood. While watching the movie I kept on imagining how scared they must have been. Some thinking of their wives, their childeren. Others thinking about their fathers and mothers, their loved ones.

 

What made it even more dramatic, and for me even harder to watch, was how they mixed actually footage from news teams of that day in with the movie. Seeing the faces, and telling the stories of these people, that so bravely fought for their country made me realize, that even though South-Korea is a very save country, it is still a country at war.

 

My thoughts go out to the 15 North- Koreans and the six South-Koreans Lt. Cmdr. Yoon Young-ha petty officers, Jo Cheon-hyung, Seo Hoo-won and Hwang Do-hyun, Petty Officer Second Class Park Dong-hyuk and Chief Petty Officer Han Sang-guk, who losts their lives that day.

 

Love, Wietske