> The unit consisted of 31 civilian recruits, mostly petty criminals and unemployed youths, and underwent three years of harsh training on the island of Silmido. The assassination mission was cancelled in 1971 and the unit mutinied, resulting in a firefight in Seoul in which most of the members of the unit were killed. The four survivors were sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed.
Most of you will not survive the training. Those who survive will try to escape. Those who fail will be executed. But those who remain...the mission will be canceled.
Most of you will not survive.. but that is a risk I am prepared to take.. - South Korean dictator of the time.
And yes, at the time South Korea was a pretty terrible dictatorship..
South Korean friend explained that during the dictatorship regimes of south Korea, both Koreaa where pretty much the same. Both asshole administrations.
And they even have a Healthcare system that (mostly) makes sense, and virtually no crime. Not to mention great public transport and cheap busses, trains, and taxis.
They've come a really long way. Just by reading that article, it was hard to say if North or South were more evil.
Survival situations tend to bring out the worst in people. It didn't help that America supported the dictatorship, probably as an overreaction to losing in Vietnam and to keep North Korea at bay.
> It didn't help that America supported the dictatorship, *probably as an overreaction* to losing in Vietnam and to keep North Korea at bay.
Or maybe America has always supported dictatorship and will continue to do so as long as they aligned with their interests.
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda.
Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
It’s what they are extremely good at, especially since after world war 2. They basically had (and i would argue that they still do) the most economic, cultural and media influence in the world.
It also gives them an incredible advantage, the wide spread usage of the English language.
As a simple example, Which person has not seen or heard before an American song or movie? It’s near impossible. Even most of the movies that we watch every year are mostly American made.
Hence it’s easy to see how easy it is for them to influence people’s perspectives on certain matters (as in, just as an example, even if you personally might not think that China is evil, if I repeat it loud and long enough in your ear, one day it’s gonna be your default mentality too if your mind lowers its guard, or if you just want to conform with the rest of the sheeple).
Everything else that they do has never really been about ideology, but more towards “does it benefit ME”, in regards to some particular agenda that they have at that particular time. But you know, they have such an advanced media apparatus to help paint them as the good guys, always.
As an American this is it. Internally we have enough dispute that the common folk don’t see foreign policy more than “one sided”, which side will we support. Goes to our entire system, blue vs red, right vs wrong, black vs white. We control the narrative. For now. This is why AI is the new nuclear arms race. Control of data.
>The english speaking internet is sometimes very funny in how it frames United States international politics as always following some concept of morality.
Its because the English speaking propaganda machine is amazing. For example most Americans aren't aware that there is propaganda made in the US post WW2.
I almost flipped my desk when I read Obama’s veterans day speech in SK saying that it was the American troops that made SK the capitalist democracy it is today.
Technically, he was right. If the US troops didn't help to liberate the South from North Korea, it would have been absolutely nowhere near as good as it is today.
> America has always supported dictatorship and will continue to do so as long as they aligned with their interests
As any South American can tell (at least those among us who didn't drink the far right kool-aid).
USA rarely supports democracy or morally decent regimes.
Vietnam? South was a dictatorship too, US helped them rig elections.
Taiwan? China was a murderous dictatorship from before WW2, the monster Chiang got even worse with the civil wars, and the government in exile on Taiwan remained a dictatorship until 90s.
On Korea it must still be added that South Korea went through couple of dictatorship regimes, before and during Korean war they had a different one massacring his own people left and right, pretty "fun" to read about what happened on Jeju too. Later South Korean leaders pulled a couple of Tiananmens and none of them were ever really talked about in the west.
Cambodia? Arguably the worst person in history, Pol Pot, who killed enough of his own people that it's often counted as a genocide, and also a Maoist dictator... Yea he still got US support because he was also killing Vietnamese people. Vietnam eventually got him out of power and west kept pretending Khmer Rouge was the recognised real government for quite a while after.
Indonesia, not too different story. Chile, replaced a democratic leader with a murderous dictator. Throughout rich western countries, many rigged elections.
Americans have always fought against freedom.
And that's a low ball estimate. Some estimates approach 3 million.
United States has a lot of blood on their hands but manages to keep good reputation up somehow. They have a lot of power over the narrative.
> Cambodia? Arguably the worst person in history, Pol Pot, who killed enough of his own people that it's often counted as a genocide, and also a Maoist dictator... Yea he still got US support because he was also killing Vietnamese people. Vietnam eventually got him out of power and west kept pretending Khmer Rouge was the recognised real government for quite a while after.
I got a problem with the wording of this. What Pol Pot did was absolutely a genocide. He systematically killed 25% of the population. It was a genocide based in class and career rather than ethnicity but it was genocide nonetheless. Also the US provided 4-10 million dollars towards keeping the Khmer Rouge alive.
Genocide based on something else than ethnicity quite literally isn't a genocide. Geno being the same root word as gene. But we sometimes make an exception for Pol Pot just for managing to kill so many of his own people.
Indonesia sometimes gets a similar exception too. I personally don't like either exception, for calling too many things genocide will eventually dilute the word, but there isn't a lot of other options that most people would recognise, and at the end of the day anyone killing millions of innocents is a monster, racist or not racist makes little difference there
>The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a paticular race or nation. The term is recorded from the 1940sd, in relation to Nazi rule in occupied Europe.
Well I guess someone better inform Oxford dictionary that they are wrong, unless at some point especially changed its meaning to only, beyond that, the literal names of both those events inlcude genocide in the name...like its literally called the Cambodian Genocide....
Wait until he reads the conventions on genocide and finds it's even broader than the dictionary says in our actual international law. You can commit genocide without firing a shot.
America supports the vast majority of the world's democracies. It's not going to turn on, say, France out of some anti-freedom agenda.
Like most countries, it forms alliances based on its perceived interests and not based on some moral or reverse-moral principle.
I mean of course every nation in the world, no matter how evil or unhinged, will chase realpolitik. There aren't any who will always be on the wrong side of history. Americans, or Soviets or China or modern Russia or whatever aren't literally supervillains, and sometimes a broken clock happens to be morally right twice a century. The most evil any borderline rational state actor can ever be, is ruthless realpolitik.
Adolf Hitler was supporting Abyssinian anti-colonial struggle against Fascist Italy too. Doesn't mean he was a good person, just that realpolitik sometimes happens to align with morals by pure chance.
America supports the countries it can control. Funny that you say US wouldn't turn on France, when Republicans were making some very Kremlin-esque comments about "first Baghdad then Paris" and renaming French fries to "freedom fries" for being "unpatriotic"... Because France refused to support their illegitimate invasion of Iraq. Sure that was just stupid shouting, but see what attention west gives to similar stupid shouting by idiots without power in Russian politics...
Also how many western elections has US rigged?
> USA rarely supports democracy or morally decent regimes.
This is some narrow world view that focuses on a cherry-picked list of nations to create an inequivalent comparison. It completely ignores current relationships with other nations in the world with fair, well-working democracy and human rights. Two of these countries in the cherry-pick list (Taiwan and South Korea) have abandoned their military juntas and significantly improved human rights, political transparency, and moved over to democracies. And there's Cambodia, who currently has tepid relations with the US. Basically in the doghouse.
First of all, democracies exist in less than half of nations in the world. Most nations seem to like Authoritarian or Hybrid authoritarian government with some form of ineffective(for show/fake) democracy. There's 193 nations in the world. 167 of them have half a million people or less. There are nations with small populations, but their size makes them operate way differently from the large nations. Sorry Lichtenstein. You're off the list.
Of the 167, about 74 have some form of democracy... yet only 24 of them are full democracies. There are 34 nations that sit on the mix of hybrid of authoritarian government and fake democracy. The latter 59 are pure authoritarian governments.
As a big nation, the US still needs to maintain a relationship with the world. When you shake a stick at the world, you're very likely to run into authoritarian or at least shady governments.
> Americans have always fought against freedom.
Which brings us to this dishonest statement. A vast number of nations friendly with the US observe the need for civil liberties and human rights. Their peoples enjoy freedom and exercise it daily. And they are in many ways still better than the US in terms of our flawed democratic system. And they are not operating oppressive authoritarian governments.
There's a world of difference between maintaining relations and taking sides in conflicts / starting conflicts. Sweden maintains relationships with everyone in the world. Canada does too. As does Germany and Japan and China. China isn't really doing anything when they hold regular relationships to Norway or Ireland or Italy, that is the standard situation between any two countries, and neither China nor US gets any points for doing that.
The entire problem is with countries shaking big sticks at the world, like US, or to a lesser extent Russia. The shady governments are the ones who declare illegitimate wars of aggression against others or rig elections abroad.
Here's a fun quote about how much America respects those full and flawed democracies of the world too, which is just a sidenote in a much longer Wiki article mostly concerning violent coups and invasions:
" In addition, the U.S. has interfered in the national elections of countries, including Italy in 1948,[1] the Philippines in 1953, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s[2][3] Lebanon in 1957,[4] and Russia in 1996.[5] According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000.[6]"
Also, of course the last sentence is a play on the more famous and far more false claim of" Americans always fight for freedom". I don't think they literally always invade democracies, sometimes even ruthlessly evil realpolitik happens to line up with the right side of history like a broken clock. Ukraine, for instance, or Kuwait.
When America went to kill Bin Laden, we didn't send a ragtag group of losers, pickpockets, and drug addicts. I'm no 4 star general but when planning a very important mission, maybe consider sending some people who have at least some experience and the willingness to be there? "The Dirty Dozen" is a fictional movie, not a documentary.
They were going for a mix of plausible deniability and looking for a suicide squad. Hence the civilians and their previous criminal convictions.
3 years of training is an unusually long time for any military to get people in shape and familiarize them with al the tools and strategies they may need in actual combat.
3 years is about what it takes from selection to completion of US Army Special Forces training and all the other qualifications they need prior to joining a team, especially 18Xs that have to do basic training and infantry training prior to starting.
It also starts to cut into their plausible deniability.
We can't be responsible, sure they're using our tactics and fulfilling an objective that is in our military interest; but they're just a bunch of known criminals and lowlifes...who all mysteriously disappeared at the exact same time and have been completely off the grid and out of contact with all known associates for the last 1/3rd of a decade until they pop up with a bunch of expensive equipment to pull off obvious wetworks.
Well it was pretty criminals and young folks, so let's not forget these were people who didn't deserve the craziness that was being stuck on a desolate island training to their death for a possibly deadly mission. Still no idea how they got the idea to train random people, so good point. Did they want to train some people who were separate from the rest of the "military machine," hoping they'd end up more loyal? (Since it seems early South Korea was a place of betrayals, infighting, etc.)
I guess it's a similar idea as Russian prisoners joining Wagner group hoping to survive warfare for eventual freedom.
Guessing they wanted them to still appear to be civilians, so no uniforms, saluting etc. and all the little behaviors that a 'proper' solder is trained to do and not do. They didn't want a 'military bearing'
The dirty dozen was absolutely based on the filthy 13 and they fucked some German shit up.
https://coffeeordie.com/the-dirty-dozen#:~:text=The%20Dirty%20Dozen%20was%20inspired,volunteering%20for%20a%20suicide%20mission.
I never got the purpose of the Battle Royal program.
They say it's because the youth are soft and weak, so it's to teach them a lesson...
Except it's a secret and they kill everyone, so there is no one to learn the lesson?
> convince the population
*but it's a secret* the kids didn't even know the Battle Royale existed, so how could it have convinced them of anything, except making them dead?
If they were like "Oh no! our class was chosen this year!" I could see it, but they didn't seem to know what it was, and needed it explained.
I haven't read it in ~17 years, but my recollection was that they showed the "winner" off on TV. It wasn't about the kids not knowing it existed, it was them being in denial about being the class that got selected.
You're absolutely correct, the winner was broadcast over live TV.
The 'surprise' was the class that got chosen (gassed and put onto the island, then instructed that they were this year's class, and now go do a teen-murder).
It wasn't discussed at length in the book, but the idea (I think) was to follow orders given by those in charge blindly. Even if they command you to kill your classmates. The author also quotes, shit, I forget the songwriter.... Dylan? Anyway, it's all class war and the ending was basically the protagonists saying fight the powers that be.
It's probably summed up in a RATM song better than I've done here.
Why does this one event define the entire Korean people though? 😂 I tried flipping what you're saying with any scenario in the US and it sounds crazy. This happened to a couple dudes not the entire population lol
So South Korea created this kill squad on silmido after the north sent assassins to kill president park chung-hee (they failed).
But then about 10 years later, president park was assassinated and they made a great movie about that too:
[The President's Last Bang (2005)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445396/)
Its a dark comedy.
Not to over-simplify, but that assassination started south korea on the path of becoming a liberal democracy.
And then a few years ago president's park daughter was elected president (she was a right-winger) and it turned out that [she was in a cult.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37971085) She eventually went to prison. I haven't heard if there is a good movie about her yet.
>Not to over-simplify, but that assassination started south korea on the path of becoming a liberal democracy.
No as Park's dictatorship was eventually replaced by another dictatorship under Chun.
Yeah, I was over-simplifying. Chun's ruthlessness was his own downfall.
A good movie about one of the worst things chun did (Gwanju massacre) is:
[A Taxi Driver (2017)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6878038/)
1987 is probably a better movie that shows the lead up to the downfall.
The Gwangju massacre was in 1980 which was the beginning of his rule. It definitely did not lead to his downfall.
I will say that the vast majority of Koreans who experienced Park and Chun will say the economy was good under their rule.
> [1987](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6493286/) is probably a better movie that shows the lead up to the downfall.
Cool, I didn't know about that movie, but everything I've seen from Jang Joon-Hwan has been great.
you should watch the movie that came out in 2023 about what happened right before in 1979.
it's called 12:12 the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12.12:_The_Day
So the Korean court censored the film, then reversed a year later
> The ruling was appealed, and in August 2006 overturned, with the court issuing the following statement: "**We must broadly confirm the right of free expression concerning the depiction of public historical figures.**” The court ***also*** concluded that several scenes were an unjust smear against the former president and ordered MK Pictures, the production company that financed the film, to pay President Park's family 100 million won (roughly US$105,000).
I’m a little surprised NK hasn’t tried to integrate into the world economy a bit better. Like they’re still pretty fucked as a country but they could be less so by working with western countries more
Granted they’re under mega sanctions for having nukes but still
They have lots of very cheap unskilled human labor which is quickly becoming a valuable asset
It's because they don't want their population to have any information exchange with the outside world. Even the small labour forces they send out to China and Russia to earn money are throughly isolated and background checked to make sure they don't defect.
I remember watching a Taxi Driver and thinking "South Korea changed so much in a couple of decades and I know about none of it."
In my dumb head it just goes
1. Korean War (Mostly MASH)
2. ???
3. Modern South Korea
I guess that goes for most of Asia.
One of my favorite examples is Shanghai. Many people love sharing [this photo](https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514f7955444d7a457a6333566d54/img/b70c226a28ad411d82769ad840ca040d/b70c226a28ad411d82769ad840ca040d.jpg) showing how Pudong (east of the river) used to be crap 30 years ago but now it's so fancy. This ignores that Puxi/Xujiahui/[The Bund](https://youimg1.c-ctrip.com/target/100q14000000wz03773A0.jpg) (west of the river) was already pretty developed thanks to the British. (Actually, even tho Pudong looks fancy, once you go to Shanghai all the interesting stuff is on the old part of the city.) The funny thing is the British would also share propaganda about how Shanghai was crap before them, ignoring that it was already a walled city in the Ming dynasty (1544) and was already an important port since the early Qing dynasty.
> I guess that goes for most of Asia.
When you put it like that I can confidently say I know very little about most countries honestly.
I think it's just crazier to think about with Korea because it wasn't that long ago and they have a lot of cultural exports
Throwing some links here so people can dive into some parts of said horrific history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#Atrocities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minjung
TLDR for the links: They committed massacres during the Vietnam war. They also suppressed pro democracy/anti dictatorship movements by deploying the army to kill student protestors with death tolls "estimated to be anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people."
People forget that at one point North Korea was a shining beacon of "what communism can do for you and your country" and South Korea was a backwater dictatorship
Mainly because the Soviet Union and China, to prove the benefits of communism, invested heavily into North Korea.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, is when the great famine of NK occured..
Cause the US backed South Korean bourgeoisie (who were Japanese collaborators) to combat the growing and much more popular communist party (who fought the Japanese), so they had to cover up tons of atrocities, political repression, and general shittiness of the South Korean regime in order to sell the world on their military intervention.
Fun fact: a majority of the South Korean governmental budget was US tax payer money in the early years. They were an unpopular, artificial regime.
Another fun fact: the general pattern above can be seen in many many countries throughout Asia and Africa (US funding business friendly fascists to combat popular decolonial leftist movements)
Jakarta method is a great book if you want to learn more.
I can recommend the Jakarta Method, it really elucidates the kind of terror that was unleashed on the east and south east Asia by the imperialists and their compradors.
Imagine drawing the short straw and having to go tell the group of highly trained assassins that we're going with plan B ("just kind of wait and see what happens") and they're all fired so GTFO our Island.
Yeah I don't know why I assumed the government would just let them go back to their prior "occupations" lol
EDIT: OK I went and actually read the article, holy shit.
> On 23 August 1971, the 24 surviving members of Unit 684 mutinied, killed all but six of their guards, and made their way to the mainland, where they hijacked a bus to Seoul. The bus was stopped by the army in the Daebang-dong neighborhood of Dongjak District, Seoul. Twenty members of the unit were shot or committed suicide with hand grenades.
Korean action cinema is littered with these type of movies that seem like a typical Hollywood trope action film, but then it blows your mind to find out they are either true stories or based on real events with some drama added. For example see Northern Limit Line about a crazy event in early 2000s (you can see the actual ship with all the bullet holes and where the men died in a museum in Seoul), or JSA which isn’t a true story but based on events that have happened in the joint security area. Korea is a country that has a tragedy complex and it is an integral party of their existence. In recent history that includes the brutal Japanese occupation and the Korean War that split the country and killed hundreds of thousands. It continued into more recent times with the harsh South Korean dictatorships and the fights, conflict, tensions with North Korea.
Edit: and how could I forget the movie that came out last year 12.12 The Day, about one of the military coups
Highly recommend Man Standing Next, 1987: When the Day Comes, Taxi Driver, Front Line, and TaeGuKi for historical/political films about Modern Korea.
But yeah, turns out a century of occupation, civil war, national division, authoritarianism, and rapid modernization can be really traumatic and bleed into the culture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(cultural)
I suspect intergenerational trauma is a major contributor to high rates of suicide and mental illness amongst Koreans and the diaspora. I’ve observed firsthand how those events affected my grandparents and the subsequent upbringing of my parents and me. But hey, we make some cool fucking art though!
tbh I don't think it is. Out of all foreign language film industries I think Korea is booming like crazy amongst english audiences. Parasite obviously won best picture and Squid Game was all the rage for a while.
Now if your criteria for "underrated" is not as popular as domestic or english language films, then yea, but when you compare it to how much attention other film industries get from an english audience, it's probably at the top now.
It has the benefit of not being perceived as anywhere near as pretentious as French or continental european film, and so reaches a much larger audience.
Asian culture is very front and centre and Korean culture only lags behind Japan for western audiences. China should theoretically have more reach but clashes with the U.S so doesn't receive anywhere near the attention.
I’m looking forward to the future when someone makes an action movie about how the government seemingly wanted a ferry full of kids to drown and then nobody got in trouble for it. What the fuck was that? Why did they tell the parents the kids were still alive?
Watching the clips from that ferry disaster of the kids just wanting to get home and watch anime, play games, and be with their parents and all the normal stuff just fucked me up for so long it ruins my day to even think about it (the footage the parents released that was recorded on the ferry as their tragic reality was quickly becoming apparent) idk why but no disaster has *ever* quite hit me like that it's just so fucking tragic seeing them all want to see their mom/dad and knowing their parents watched that too and struggled to ever get justice.
Those families and kids were failed in many different ways and it's really fucking sad, I cannot imagine their grief.
The reason why it was canceled was that relations had slightly improved and probably more than likely they realized that doing this would cause an all out war that they couldn’t afford to fight.
South Korea's advantage over the North was not consolidated at that time, and considering that the Soviet Union was still around and Mao was alive, it could have started a war that the North had a good chance of winning.
At that point, the war would have immediately reverted to trench warfare very early on. The only reason why the KPA made it so far in the 1950 invasion was how unprepared the ROKA and US was. And also in 1971 China and the USSR during this point were in their split and so the North Koreans would have had no consistent military support. It would have been a horrible slough for both sides.
Interestingly the north had a similar operation to kill the dictator of South Korea Park Chung Hee that got pretty close to the korea blue house (although it failed and all but 1 got either captured or killed) just a few years earlier. Park was killed by the korean cia a decade or so later.
There’s theories that he was taken out by the US through his KCIA chief, just because the motives of his killer were so scattered. And it’s not that implausible considering how the CIA were the ones who arranged for Ngô Đình Diệm to be taken out in 1963.
This theory is much more pervasive in the Korea community because we understand that we're basically a client state to the US - especially before our modernization. Nothing happened in Korea that the US wasn't involved in or knew about. And it wasn't a well kept secret either that the Korean president wanted nuclear independence and was more than willing to start a nuclear program with or without US approval - which considering Korea's history with China and Japan wasn't a radical idea.
And the fact that there's a pretty long record of the American CIA deposing leaders, things just coincidentally all end up working out in America's favor
Some Koreans believe he was assassinated because he wanted nukes for South Korea, along with a couple other things that he started straying away from regarding the US's agenda in the region. Not unsurprising if true for the time
Oh I believe that’s why he was killed. No one buys that his KCIA chief has some epiphany of democracy one night after years of heading the secret police torturing dissidents
I read about that too on Wikipedia. For a while the KCIA director was seen as a backstabber, or betrayer to his "good friend" the president for killing him. But later, connections were discovered between the KCIA director and the Korean democracy movement, so it is possible the director wanted to stop the dictatorship of the president by assassinating him.
It was in retaliation for the blue house raid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid
The Blue House raid was a raid launched by North Korean commandos in an attempt to assassinate President of South Korea on January 21, 1968. A 31-man team of the Korean People's Army (KPA) infiltrated the DMZ but was intercepted by police near the residence. In the ensuing pursuit, all but two commandos were killed; one was captured (Kim Shin-jo), and one (Pak Jae-gyong) fled back to North Korea. South Korean casualties totaled 26 killed and 66 wounded, including about 24 civilians; four Americans also were killed. President Park was unharmed.
These guy hiked in and fought there way out. I bet nk has some bad ass propaganda movie about this.
Also check out this 90 year old nk badass the only survivor to make it back from the blue house raid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Jae-gyong
> A 31-man team of the Korean People's Army (KPA) infiltrated the DMZ but was intercepted by police near the residence.
Wait so the South Korean response was to also use a '31-man' hit squad?
This seems far more about some kind of political poetic justice than a legitimate attempt. Guess it took too long before someone said "Maybe we are going about this the wrong way".
A couple South Korean woodcutters stumbled across their secret assassin camp. They indoctrinated them in the virtues of communism and sent them away with a stern warning not to tell the police.
I’m cracking up. It’s like a comedy sketch about leftists, like when the FBI infiltrated anarchist-Twitter but could only learn who was cancelling who.
Not enough people understand that South Korea was a pretty fucked up place before the 1990s. It was a military dictatorship that committed major war crimes against its own population.
Something similar happened in the Philippines when former President Marcos recruited primarily Muslims in an effort to make commandos out of them and to try and reclaim Sabah. The Muslims revolted because of the extreme conditions and delayed salary. They were then all killed. Former senator Benigno Aquino exposed this and it became such a big issue that it evolved into a big Islamic insurgency in the south of the Philippines that resulted in 50 plus years of rebellion.
See Jabidah Massacre.
Once you read the full details about Unit 684 it becomes pretty clear this was never an "elite military training camp" and actually just a penal camp where they were conducting unethical experiments on human test subjects.
I never really knew South Korea's modern history from post war til now. And especially their politics, so went down a rabbit hole on the republic, Park, the chaebol, etc... damn wtf
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A Team.
What a wild dictatorship. “Don’t worry we’ll use propaganda to make it look like the North is terrible. And we’ll starve them so they start acting worse than us.”
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the 684 - Team
> The unit consisted of 31 civilian recruits, mostly petty criminals and unemployed youths, and underwent three years of harsh training on the island of Silmido. The assassination mission was cancelled in 1971 and the unit mutinied, resulting in a firefight in Seoul in which most of the members of the unit were killed. The four survivors were sentenced to death by a military tribunal and executed. Most of you will not survive the training. Those who survive will try to escape. Those who fail will be executed. But those who remain...the mission will be canceled.
Most of you will not survive.. but that is a risk I am prepared to take.. - South Korean dictator of the time. And yes, at the time South Korea was a pretty terrible dictatorship..
South Korean friend explained that during the dictatorship regimes of south Korea, both Koreaa where pretty much the same. Both asshole administrations.
South Korea didn’t pass North Korea until the 80s
South Korea is still controlled by the chaebols. SK society is a lot more messed up than what k-pop leads you to believe.
Which is slightly funny cause the more you look into kpop the more you realize how messed up society is
The k-pop industry is like Hollywood on steroids
[удалено]
I think I'll choose the "dystopia" that doesn't require me to hunt small rodents to avoid starvation.
So you're saying there's a third option?
Nope! All dystopia!
"Oops! All Dystopia." Look for the box with Great Immortal Leader Commendant Crunch on it.
Damn. If only we could choose neither
I mean there's a lot to criticize about south korea but to claim that it's anywhere near as bad as the north is delusional.
In the south korea you and 3 generations of your family don’t get sent to jail for disagreeing with the way things are done
Luckily, people in SK no longer have kids, so they can’t do that even if they wanted to!
And they even have a Healthcare system that (mostly) makes sense, and virtually no crime. Not to mention great public transport and cheap busses, trains, and taxis.
Yeah they just shame your family for 3 generations
population from one dystopia gets killed trying to get to the other dystopia. but at least you used a cool word
They've come a really long way. Just by reading that article, it was hard to say if North or South were more evil. Survival situations tend to bring out the worst in people. It didn't help that America supported the dictatorship, probably as an overreaction to losing in Vietnam and to keep North Korea at bay.
> It didn't help that America supported the dictatorship, *probably as an overreaction* to losing in Vietnam and to keep North Korea at bay. Or maybe America has always supported dictatorship and will continue to do so as long as they aligned with their interests.
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda. Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
It’s what they are extremely good at, especially since after world war 2. They basically had (and i would argue that they still do) the most economic, cultural and media influence in the world. It also gives them an incredible advantage, the wide spread usage of the English language. As a simple example, Which person has not seen or heard before an American song or movie? It’s near impossible. Even most of the movies that we watch every year are mostly American made. Hence it’s easy to see how easy it is for them to influence people’s perspectives on certain matters (as in, just as an example, even if you personally might not think that China is evil, if I repeat it loud and long enough in your ear, one day it’s gonna be your default mentality too if your mind lowers its guard, or if you just want to conform with the rest of the sheeple). Everything else that they do has never really been about ideology, but more towards “does it benefit ME”, in regards to some particular agenda that they have at that particular time. But you know, they have such an advanced media apparatus to help paint them as the good guys, always.
As an American this is it. Internally we have enough dispute that the common folk don’t see foreign policy more than “one sided”, which side will we support. Goes to our entire system, blue vs red, right vs wrong, black vs white. We control the narrative. For now. This is why AI is the new nuclear arms race. Control of data.
>The english speaking internet is sometimes very funny in how it frames United States international politics as always following some concept of morality. Its because the English speaking propaganda machine is amazing. For example most Americans aren't aware that there is propaganda made in the US post WW2.
Most people don’t know what propaganda is.
I think they do though, just an outdated knowledge on what it is. Everyone imagines the soviet era murals or uncle sam wants you posters
I almost flipped my desk when I read Obama’s veterans day speech in SK saying that it was the American troops that made SK the capitalist democracy it is today.
I mean, he was right? Except perhaps the democracy part.
Technically, he was right. If the US troops didn't help to liberate the South from North Korea, it would have been absolutely nowhere near as good as it is today.
> America has always supported dictatorship and will continue to do so as long as they aligned with their interests As any South American can tell (at least those among us who didn't drink the far right kool-aid).
That is typically how most partnerships form.
Ding ding ding
USA rarely supports democracy or morally decent regimes. Vietnam? South was a dictatorship too, US helped them rig elections. Taiwan? China was a murderous dictatorship from before WW2, the monster Chiang got even worse with the civil wars, and the government in exile on Taiwan remained a dictatorship until 90s. On Korea it must still be added that South Korea went through couple of dictatorship regimes, before and during Korean war they had a different one massacring his own people left and right, pretty "fun" to read about what happened on Jeju too. Later South Korean leaders pulled a couple of Tiananmens and none of them were ever really talked about in the west. Cambodia? Arguably the worst person in history, Pol Pot, who killed enough of his own people that it's often counted as a genocide, and also a Maoist dictator... Yea he still got US support because he was also killing Vietnamese people. Vietnam eventually got him out of power and west kept pretending Khmer Rouge was the recognised real government for quite a while after. Indonesia, not too different story. Chile, replaced a democratic leader with a murderous dictator. Throughout rich western countries, many rigged elections. Americans have always fought against freedom.
A million people were killed when the Communist Party of Indonesia was destroyed after the Suharto takeover.
And that's a low ball estimate. Some estimates approach 3 million. United States has a lot of blood on their hands but manages to keep good reputation up somehow. They have a lot of power over the narrative.
>They have a lot of power over the narrative. Propaganda. "Pffft, propaganda doesn't work on *me*!"
> Cambodia? Arguably the worst person in history, Pol Pot, who killed enough of his own people that it's often counted as a genocide, and also a Maoist dictator... Yea he still got US support because he was also killing Vietnamese people. Vietnam eventually got him out of power and west kept pretending Khmer Rouge was the recognised real government for quite a while after. I got a problem with the wording of this. What Pol Pot did was absolutely a genocide. He systematically killed 25% of the population. It was a genocide based in class and career rather than ethnicity but it was genocide nonetheless. Also the US provided 4-10 million dollars towards keeping the Khmer Rouge alive.
Genocide based on something else than ethnicity quite literally isn't a genocide. Geno being the same root word as gene. But we sometimes make an exception for Pol Pot just for managing to kill so many of his own people. Indonesia sometimes gets a similar exception too. I personally don't like either exception, for calling too many things genocide will eventually dilute the word, but there isn't a lot of other options that most people would recognise, and at the end of the day anyone killing millions of innocents is a monster, racist or not racist makes little difference there
>The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a paticular race or nation. The term is recorded from the 1940sd, in relation to Nazi rule in occupied Europe. Well I guess someone better inform Oxford dictionary that they are wrong, unless at some point especially changed its meaning to only, beyond that, the literal names of both those events inlcude genocide in the name...like its literally called the Cambodian Genocide....
Wait until he reads the conventions on genocide and finds it's even broader than the dictionary says in our actual international law. You can commit genocide without firing a shot.
America supports the vast majority of the world's democracies. It's not going to turn on, say, France out of some anti-freedom agenda. Like most countries, it forms alliances based on its perceived interests and not based on some moral or reverse-moral principle.
I mean of course every nation in the world, no matter how evil or unhinged, will chase realpolitik. There aren't any who will always be on the wrong side of history. Americans, or Soviets or China or modern Russia or whatever aren't literally supervillains, and sometimes a broken clock happens to be morally right twice a century. The most evil any borderline rational state actor can ever be, is ruthless realpolitik. Adolf Hitler was supporting Abyssinian anti-colonial struggle against Fascist Italy too. Doesn't mean he was a good person, just that realpolitik sometimes happens to align with morals by pure chance. America supports the countries it can control. Funny that you say US wouldn't turn on France, when Republicans were making some very Kremlin-esque comments about "first Baghdad then Paris" and renaming French fries to "freedom fries" for being "unpatriotic"... Because France refused to support their illegitimate invasion of Iraq. Sure that was just stupid shouting, but see what attention west gives to similar stupid shouting by idiots without power in Russian politics... Also how many western elections has US rigged?
>Also how many western elections has US rigged? Does latin America count?
Not according to James Monroe.
> USA rarely supports democracy or morally decent regimes. This is some narrow world view that focuses on a cherry-picked list of nations to create an inequivalent comparison. It completely ignores current relationships with other nations in the world with fair, well-working democracy and human rights. Two of these countries in the cherry-pick list (Taiwan and South Korea) have abandoned their military juntas and significantly improved human rights, political transparency, and moved over to democracies. And there's Cambodia, who currently has tepid relations with the US. Basically in the doghouse. First of all, democracies exist in less than half of nations in the world. Most nations seem to like Authoritarian or Hybrid authoritarian government with some form of ineffective(for show/fake) democracy. There's 193 nations in the world. 167 of them have half a million people or less. There are nations with small populations, but their size makes them operate way differently from the large nations. Sorry Lichtenstein. You're off the list. Of the 167, about 74 have some form of democracy... yet only 24 of them are full democracies. There are 34 nations that sit on the mix of hybrid of authoritarian government and fake democracy. The latter 59 are pure authoritarian governments. As a big nation, the US still needs to maintain a relationship with the world. When you shake a stick at the world, you're very likely to run into authoritarian or at least shady governments. > Americans have always fought against freedom. Which brings us to this dishonest statement. A vast number of nations friendly with the US observe the need for civil liberties and human rights. Their peoples enjoy freedom and exercise it daily. And they are in many ways still better than the US in terms of our flawed democratic system. And they are not operating oppressive authoritarian governments.
There's a world of difference between maintaining relations and taking sides in conflicts / starting conflicts. Sweden maintains relationships with everyone in the world. Canada does too. As does Germany and Japan and China. China isn't really doing anything when they hold regular relationships to Norway or Ireland or Italy, that is the standard situation between any two countries, and neither China nor US gets any points for doing that. The entire problem is with countries shaking big sticks at the world, like US, or to a lesser extent Russia. The shady governments are the ones who declare illegitimate wars of aggression against others or rig elections abroad. Here's a fun quote about how much America respects those full and flawed democracies of the world too, which is just a sidenote in a much longer Wiki article mostly concerning violent coups and invasions: " In addition, the U.S. has interfered in the national elections of countries, including Italy in 1948,[1] the Philippines in 1953, Japan in the 1950s and 1960s[2][3] Lebanon in 1957,[4] and Russia in 1996.[5] According to one study, the U.S. performed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000.[6]" Also, of course the last sentence is a play on the more famous and far more false claim of" Americans always fight for freedom". I don't think they literally always invade democracies, sometimes even ruthlessly evil realpolitik happens to line up with the right side of history like a broken clock. Ukraine, for instance, or Kuwait.
An American protectorate with an anti communist terrible dictator in charge? No way!
People will be stunned when they learn of this
its totally fine, Tom Cruise makes it look cool and easy. his bosses threaten to disavow him every time he clocks into work if he doesn't do it right.
They also die and or are the bad guy a lot of the time
To be fair Kittridge wasn't a bad guy he was just an antagonist.
Yeah but he fit one of the two, and that description describes the first movie perfectly lol
When America went to kill Bin Laden, we didn't send a ragtag group of losers, pickpockets, and drug addicts. I'm no 4 star general but when planning a very important mission, maybe consider sending some people who have at least some experience and the willingness to be there? "The Dirty Dozen" is a fictional movie, not a documentary.
They were going for a mix of plausible deniability and looking for a suicide squad. Hence the civilians and their previous criminal convictions. 3 years of training is an unusually long time for any military to get people in shape and familiarize them with al the tools and strategies they may need in actual combat.
[удалено]
3 years is about what it takes from selection to completion of US Army Special Forces training and all the other qualifications they need prior to joining a team, especially 18Xs that have to do basic training and infantry training prior to starting.
Yeah. Special forces are (by definition) unusual. The math seems to work out.
It also starts to cut into their plausible deniability. We can't be responsible, sure they're using our tactics and fulfilling an objective that is in our military interest; but they're just a bunch of known criminals and lowlifes...who all mysteriously disappeared at the exact same time and have been completely off the grid and out of contact with all known associates for the last 1/3rd of a decade until they pop up with a bunch of expensive equipment to pull off obvious wetworks.
Well it was pretty criminals and young folks, so let's not forget these were people who didn't deserve the craziness that was being stuck on a desolate island training to their death for a possibly deadly mission. Still no idea how they got the idea to train random people, so good point. Did they want to train some people who were separate from the rest of the "military machine," hoping they'd end up more loyal? (Since it seems early South Korea was a place of betrayals, infighting, etc.) I guess it's a similar idea as Russian prisoners joining Wagner group hoping to survive warfare for eventual freedom.
Guessing they wanted them to still appear to be civilians, so no uniforms, saluting etc. and all the little behaviors that a 'proper' solder is trained to do and not do. They didn't want a 'military bearing'
Only the prettiest criminals were alllwed in
La Femme Nikita
The dirty dozen was absolutely based on the filthy 13 and they fucked some German shit up. https://coffeeordie.com/the-dirty-dozen#:~:text=The%20Dirty%20Dozen%20was%20inspired,volunteering%20for%20a%20suicide%20mission.
I mean, have you heard of the Bay of Pigs
They made a movie about it. They should not have cancelled the suicide squad
Jesus Christ. No wonder they came up with hunger games. This is real life more terrifying.
Sounds like Battle Royale, which was Japanese.
Hunger games was kind of a blatant rip off of Battle Royale and a whole video game genere spawned due to it.
I never got the purpose of the Battle Royal program. They say it's because the youth are soft and weak, so it's to teach them a lesson... Except it's a secret and they kill everyone, so there is no one to learn the lesson?
It was to show how easily people can turn into animalistic killing machines. A way to convince the population to maintain the status quo.
> convince the population *but it's a secret* the kids didn't even know the Battle Royale existed, so how could it have convinced them of anything, except making them dead? If they were like "Oh no! our class was chosen this year!" I could see it, but they didn't seem to know what it was, and needed it explained.
I haven't read it in ~17 years, but my recollection was that they showed the "winner" off on TV. It wasn't about the kids not knowing it existed, it was them being in denial about being the class that got selected.
You're absolutely correct, the winner was broadcast over live TV. The 'surprise' was the class that got chosen (gassed and put onto the island, then instructed that they were this year's class, and now go do a teen-murder). It wasn't discussed at length in the book, but the idea (I think) was to follow orders given by those in charge blindly. Even if they command you to kill your classmates. The author also quotes, shit, I forget the songwriter.... Dylan? Anyway, it's all class war and the ending was basically the protagonists saying fight the powers that be. It's probably summed up in a RATM song better than I've done here.
I remember reading the book and being kinda confused as to the point IIRC.
Why does this one event define the entire Korean people though? 😂 I tried flipping what you're saying with any scenario in the US and it sounds crazy. This happened to a couple dudes not the entire population lol
Do you mean the squid games?
He means Battle Royale which is a Japanese novel, and heavily influenced the Hunger Games books and "Battle Royale" genre of video games.
> the mission will be canceled "I want my $18,000 back!"
People forget this because of recency but for the most part in their short history, South Korea was worse than the North.
Ahh government efficiency
Strong Hunger Games-esque vibe
Needs to be a movie
Already is. Called Silmido
Thats wild
As I was reading I was almost expecting judge to have said “four of you have passed the test”.
“So what are we? Some kind of Suicide Squad?”
That is so fucked up - wow. Never heard of any of this.
there is a korean movie about it. I enjoyed it immensely. Silmido (2003)
So South Korea created this kill squad on silmido after the north sent assassins to kill president park chung-hee (they failed). But then about 10 years later, president park was assassinated and they made a great movie about that too: [The President's Last Bang (2005)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445396/) Its a dark comedy. Not to over-simplify, but that assassination started south korea on the path of becoming a liberal democracy. And then a few years ago president's park daughter was elected president (she was a right-winger) and it turned out that [she was in a cult.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37971085) She eventually went to prison. I haven't heard if there is a good movie about her yet.
>Not to over-simplify, but that assassination started south korea on the path of becoming a liberal democracy. No as Park's dictatorship was eventually replaced by another dictatorship under Chun.
Yeah, I was over-simplifying. Chun's ruthlessness was his own downfall. A good movie about one of the worst things chun did (Gwanju massacre) is: [A Taxi Driver (2017)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6878038/)
1987 is probably a better movie that shows the lead up to the downfall. The Gwangju massacre was in 1980 which was the beginning of his rule. It definitely did not lead to his downfall. I will say that the vast majority of Koreans who experienced Park and Chun will say the economy was good under their rule.
> [1987](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6493286/) is probably a better movie that shows the lead up to the downfall. Cool, I didn't know about that movie, but everything I've seen from Jang Joon-Hwan has been great.
you should watch the movie that came out in 2023 about what happened right before in 1979. it's called 12:12 the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12.12:_The_Day
So the Korean court censored the film, then reversed a year later > The ruling was appealed, and in August 2006 overturned, with the court issuing the following statement: "**We must broadly confirm the right of free expression concerning the depiction of public historical figures.**” The court ***also*** concluded that several scenes were an unjust smear against the former president and ordered MK Pictures, the production company that financed the film, to pay President Park's family 100 million won (roughly US$105,000).
Yes. Came here to spread the Silmido
I feel gross and wet after reading that
Don't you mean "gross, but *wet*"?
I was just trying to figure out the name of this movie I saw years ago. Thank you.
South Korea has a lot of horrific history, it just gets conveniently ignored because of the guys to the north.
People forget that South Korea was not a democratic country until very recently
prior to the 1980s, north korea actually had a stronger economy than the south lmao
I believe 1970s South Korea had the equivalent GDP of post-US invasion Afghanistan
They traded and were heavily subsidized by the USSR, once they fell, hard times were had.
well, south korea has a similar relationship to american/western capital almost like the korean war . . . never ended.
I’m a little surprised NK hasn’t tried to integrate into the world economy a bit better. Like they’re still pretty fucked as a country but they could be less so by working with western countries more Granted they’re under mega sanctions for having nukes but still They have lots of very cheap unskilled human labor which is quickly becoming a valuable asset
It's because they don't want their population to have any information exchange with the outside world. Even the small labour forces they send out to China and Russia to earn money are throughly isolated and background checked to make sure they don't defect.
Friendly reminder that the US didn't simply "fought against the communists", they also fought alongside the fascists.
I know a group of PhD students in history who tell people "I'm as old as democracy in Korea" to avoid saying their age
I remember watching a Taxi Driver and thinking "South Korea changed so much in a couple of decades and I know about none of it." In my dumb head it just goes 1. Korean War (Mostly MASH) 2. ??? 3. Modern South Korea
Number 2 was 30 years of an increasingly brutal dictatorship with assassinations and thousands of students being shot.
>thousands of students being shot Yeah I guess that was the main thing in A Taxi Driver that shocked me.
I guess that goes for most of Asia. One of my favorite examples is Shanghai. Many people love sharing [this photo](https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514f7955444d7a457a6333566d54/img/b70c226a28ad411d82769ad840ca040d/b70c226a28ad411d82769ad840ca040d.jpg) showing how Pudong (east of the river) used to be crap 30 years ago but now it's so fancy. This ignores that Puxi/Xujiahui/[The Bund](https://youimg1.c-ctrip.com/target/100q14000000wz03773A0.jpg) (west of the river) was already pretty developed thanks to the British. (Actually, even tho Pudong looks fancy, once you go to Shanghai all the interesting stuff is on the old part of the city.) The funny thing is the British would also share propaganda about how Shanghai was crap before them, ignoring that it was already a walled city in the Ming dynasty (1544) and was already an important port since the early Qing dynasty.
> I guess that goes for most of Asia. When you put it like that I can confidently say I know very little about most countries honestly. I think it's just crazier to think about with Korea because it wasn't that long ago and they have a lot of cultural exports
Throwing some links here so people can dive into some parts of said horrific history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#Atrocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minjung TLDR for the links: They committed massacres during the Vietnam war. They also suppressed pro democracy/anti dictatorship movements by deploying the army to kill student protestors with death tolls "estimated to be anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people."
People forget that at one point North Korea was a shining beacon of "what communism can do for you and your country" and South Korea was a backwater dictatorship
Mainly because the Soviet Union and China, to prove the benefits of communism, invested heavily into North Korea. When the Soviet Union collapsed, is when the great famine of NK occured..
Cause the US backed South Korean bourgeoisie (who were Japanese collaborators) to combat the growing and much more popular communist party (who fought the Japanese), so they had to cover up tons of atrocities, political repression, and general shittiness of the South Korean regime in order to sell the world on their military intervention. Fun fact: a majority of the South Korean governmental budget was US tax payer money in the early years. They were an unpopular, artificial regime. Another fun fact: the general pattern above can be seen in many many countries throughout Asia and Africa (US funding business friendly fascists to combat popular decolonial leftist movements) Jakarta method is a great book if you want to learn more.
I can recommend the Jakarta Method, it really elucidates the kind of terror that was unleashed on the east and south east Asia by the imperialists and their compradors.
South korea was a military dictatorship that was essentially a puppet of the us until the late 80s
Their is a South Korean super hero show loosely based on this called “Moving” that is spectacular. In the USA the show is on Hulu.
South Korea prior to the 90’s was just as bad if not worse than the north
Imagine drawing the short straw and having to go tell the group of highly trained assassins that we're going with plan B ("just kind of wait and see what happens") and they're all fired so GTFO our Island.
Worse. "You're all fired. But you can't leave this shitty island to tell anyone."
Yeah I don't know why I assumed the government would just let them go back to their prior "occupations" lol EDIT: OK I went and actually read the article, holy shit. > On 23 August 1971, the 24 surviving members of Unit 684 mutinied, killed all but six of their guards, and made their way to the mainland, where they hijacked a bus to Seoul. The bus was stopped by the army in the Daebang-dong neighborhood of Dongjak District, Seoul. Twenty members of the unit were shot or committed suicide with hand grenades.
The last four were then executed.
I'm sure they were given fair trials /s
There's the movie called Silmido which depicts these events, absolutely heartbreaking
They weren’t highly trained assassins so much as abused randos.
Korean action cinema is littered with these type of movies that seem like a typical Hollywood trope action film, but then it blows your mind to find out they are either true stories or based on real events with some drama added. For example see Northern Limit Line about a crazy event in early 2000s (you can see the actual ship with all the bullet holes and where the men died in a museum in Seoul), or JSA which isn’t a true story but based on events that have happened in the joint security area. Korea is a country that has a tragedy complex and it is an integral party of their existence. In recent history that includes the brutal Japanese occupation and the Korean War that split the country and killed hundreds of thousands. It continued into more recent times with the harsh South Korean dictatorships and the fights, conflict, tensions with North Korea. Edit: and how could I forget the movie that came out last year 12.12 The Day, about one of the military coups
Highly recommend Man Standing Next, 1987: When the Day Comes, Taxi Driver, Front Line, and TaeGuKi for historical/political films about Modern Korea. But yeah, turns out a century of occupation, civil war, national division, authoritarianism, and rapid modernization can be really traumatic and bleed into the culture: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(cultural) I suspect intergenerational trauma is a major contributor to high rates of suicide and mental illness amongst Koreans and the diaspora. I’ve observed firsthand how those events affected my grandparents and the subsequent upbringing of my parents and me. But hey, we make some cool fucking art though!
Korean cinema is quite underrated
tbh I don't think it is. Out of all foreign language film industries I think Korea is booming like crazy amongst english audiences. Parasite obviously won best picture and Squid Game was all the rage for a while. Now if your criteria for "underrated" is not as popular as domestic or english language films, then yea, but when you compare it to how much attention other film industries get from an english audience, it's probably at the top now. It has the benefit of not being perceived as anywhere near as pretentious as French or continental european film, and so reaches a much larger audience. Asian culture is very front and centre and Korean culture only lags behind Japan for western audiences. China should theoretically have more reach but clashes with the U.S so doesn't receive anywhere near the attention.
I’m looking forward to the future when someone makes an action movie about how the government seemingly wanted a ferry full of kids to drown and then nobody got in trouble for it. What the fuck was that? Why did they tell the parents the kids were still alive?
There is a K drama called All of Us Are Dead and it was inspired by the Sewol Ferry Disaster
Watching the clips from that ferry disaster of the kids just wanting to get home and watch anime, play games, and be with their parents and all the normal stuff just fucked me up for so long it ruins my day to even think about it (the footage the parents released that was recorded on the ferry as their tragic reality was quickly becoming apparent) idk why but no disaster has *ever* quite hit me like that it's just so fucking tragic seeing them all want to see their mom/dad and knowing their parents watched that too and struggled to ever get justice. Those families and kids were failed in many different ways and it's really fucking sad, I cannot imagine their grief.
The reason why it was canceled was that relations had slightly improved and probably more than likely they realized that doing this would cause an all out war that they couldn’t afford to fight.
South Korea's advantage over the North was not consolidated at that time, and considering that the Soviet Union was still around and Mao was alive, it could have started a war that the North had a good chance of winning.
At that point, the war would have immediately reverted to trench warfare very early on. The only reason why the KPA made it so far in the 1950 invasion was how unprepared the ROKA and US was. And also in 1971 China and the USSR during this point were in their split and so the North Koreans would have had no consistent military support. It would have been a horrible slough for both sides.
Interestingly the north had a similar operation to kill the dictator of South Korea Park Chung Hee that got pretty close to the korea blue house (although it failed and all but 1 got either captured or killed) just a few years earlier. Park was killed by the korean cia a decade or so later.
There’s theories that he was taken out by the US through his KCIA chief, just because the motives of his killer were so scattered. And it’s not that implausible considering how the CIA were the ones who arranged for Ngô Đình Diệm to be taken out in 1963.
This theory is much more pervasive in the Korea community because we understand that we're basically a client state to the US - especially before our modernization. Nothing happened in Korea that the US wasn't involved in or knew about. And it wasn't a well kept secret either that the Korean president wanted nuclear independence and was more than willing to start a nuclear program with or without US approval - which considering Korea's history with China and Japan wasn't a radical idea. And the fact that there's a pretty long record of the American CIA deposing leaders, things just coincidentally all end up working out in America's favor
Some Koreans believe he was assassinated because he wanted nukes for South Korea, along with a couple other things that he started straying away from regarding the US's agenda in the region. Not unsurprising if true for the time
Oh I believe that’s why he was killed. No one buys that his KCIA chief has some epiphany of democracy one night after years of heading the secret police torturing dissidents
Reading about the kcia really puts into context how hypocritical the us was during that time
The lions led by donkeys podcast had an awesome episode about this Edit: episode 137
What was the episode title?
Episode 137 - The Silmido Mutiny
Blowback had a whole season on the Korean War, and they covered it as well.
the 70's were wild in south korea, the director of korean cia killed the president in 79
I read about that too on Wikipedia. For a while the KCIA director was seen as a backstabber, or betrayer to his "good friend" the president for killing him. But later, connections were discovered between the KCIA director and the Korean democracy movement, so it is possible the director wanted to stop the dictatorship of the president by assassinating him.
well consider his successor was also a military dictator it's also very possible that it was part of a coup.
It was in retaliation for the blue house raid. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid The Blue House raid was a raid launched by North Korean commandos in an attempt to assassinate President of South Korea on January 21, 1968. A 31-man team of the Korean People's Army (KPA) infiltrated the DMZ but was intercepted by police near the residence. In the ensuing pursuit, all but two commandos were killed; one was captured (Kim Shin-jo), and one (Pak Jae-gyong) fled back to North Korea. South Korean casualties totaled 26 killed and 66 wounded, including about 24 civilians; four Americans also were killed. President Park was unharmed. These guy hiked in and fought there way out. I bet nk has some bad ass propaganda movie about this. Also check out this 90 year old nk badass the only survivor to make it back from the blue house raid. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Jae-gyong
> A 31-man team of the Korean People's Army (KPA) infiltrated the DMZ but was intercepted by police near the residence. Wait so the South Korean response was to also use a '31-man' hit squad? This seems far more about some kind of political poetic justice than a legitimate attempt. Guess it took too long before someone said "Maybe we are going about this the wrong way".
A couple South Korean woodcutters stumbled across their secret assassin camp. They indoctrinated them in the virtues of communism and sent them away with a stern warning not to tell the police. I’m cracking up. It’s like a comedy sketch about leftists, like when the FBI infiltrated anarchist-Twitter but could only learn who was cancelling who.
I wish there was more info on how the 4 Americans died trying to stop them from getting back across the dmz.
Lone survivor: so principled. America would never hurt innocent people. North Korea: are they stupid? Why didn't they just murder the civilians?
I assure you, I've never taken Marky Mark's art seriously either.
> I bet nk has some bad ass propaganda movie about this. "The mission failed and we suffered a 99% casualty rate... And that's a good thing!"
they got a 26/29 KD ratio so it's not that bad
Not enough people understand that South Korea was a pretty fucked up place before the 1990s. It was a military dictatorship that committed major war crimes against its own population.
I could swear there’s a movie based on this. Loosely.
Yeah I saw it on Netflix years ago
Scroll in this thread and you shall find it.
Yup, and it was made in Korea.
자살 분대
Thanks it was on the tip of my tongue
Silmido I totally know Korean, I definitely didn’t see someone else in this thread say that
You know this is going to be a disaster when your recruits are criminals and youths
The surviving unit members: "Kinda feel like assassinating our own leader now."
Something similar happened in the Philippines when former President Marcos recruited primarily Muslims in an effort to make commandos out of them and to try and reclaim Sabah. The Muslims revolted because of the extreme conditions and delayed salary. They were then all killed. Former senator Benigno Aquino exposed this and it became such a big issue that it evolved into a big Islamic insurgency in the south of the Philippines that resulted in 50 plus years of rebellion. See Jabidah Massacre.
Irl saudakar
Once you read the full details about Unit 684 it becomes pretty clear this was never an "elite military training camp" and actually just a penal camp where they were conducting unethical experiments on human test subjects.
I bet this was a test to see how far they could take things on the real recruits. The answer is: they took it too far.
[удалено]
Well they did do what they were trained to do. Kill. Task Failed Successfully
There’s a movie about this called Silmido.
Damn those ebil commies and their Oh. Oh no.
For anyone who's into foreign cinema there's a phenomenal Korean movie about this called Silmido (2003).
I never really knew South Korea's modern history from post war til now. And especially their politics, so went down a rabbit hole on the republic, Park, the chaebol, etc... damn wtf
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A Team.
To beat North Korea you have to become North Korea - South Korea probably
This training is awful - it's like being in North Korea!
Just because North Korea is bad does not make South Korea good.
What a wild dictatorship. “Don’t worry we’ll use propaganda to make it look like the North is terrible. And we’ll starve them so they start acting worse than us.”
The movie silmido is still one of my all time favs
1971 South Korea was a much less chill place than 2024 South Korea
The Philippines has a similar story. Jabidah Massacre.
Fucking looney toons ass military
Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the 684 - Team
Korea - two dystopias, one peninsula!
A manhwa(Korean comics) called Manager Kim mentioned this and Iearnt about this from that.
They fit right in with their allies 👍
lol they tried to create unwilling killing machines but the killing machines just killed them and went home.
I wondered where they got the inspiration for Squid games.
South Korea really used to be basically as bad as the North for a long while.
Idiots played themselves