World Cup Picks: Joint Security Area

Seeing North Korea in the World Cup is a little disorienting.  The country's isolationist stance works both ways--it keeps them in but it keeps us out too, making it hard to know anything about simple aspects of life there like "do they have a good soccer team?"  As I watched one of the North Korean players weeping while his national anthem played, I couldn't help but be moved by that sense of pride that seems so strange and misguided to an observer from the west. 

This all reminded me of the early Park Chan-wook film, Joint Security Areathat revolves around a shooting in the DMZ between North and South Korea.  JSAisn't as much of a thriller as the box art might have you believe, but it's a fascinating look at the madness that is a single people divided by ideology.  The JSA is patrolled by forces from both sides of the border, and though they operate sometimes mere feet from each other, the soldiers are forced to see each other as enemies.  The building where meetings take place is particularly striking since there's a line running through it that literally marks the border.  Watching all of the formality and rigidity of the exchanges in the JSA, it's easy to see how artificial things like borders and nations really are at a personal level.  And that's what makes it so fascinating to watch people moved to tears by something like a national anthem at a sporting event.

When the two Korean teams were scheduled to play World Cup qualifying matches in the North, the matches had to be moved to China because official North Korean policy prohibits the display of the South Korean flag.  It's hard to understand just how difficult this must be for the Korean people, but Park Chan-wook's film is a good place to start an exploration of that struggle.