The University of Pittsburgh chapter of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) will present the 2000 Korean movie Joint Security Area (공동경비구역 JSA) on Friday, March 20. The movie stars Kang Song-ho (The Host, Secret Sunshine), Lee Young-ae (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, TV drama Jewel in the Palace), and Lee Byung-hun (All In, G.I. Joe series), and was the highest-grossing Korean film of all time until the following year. A 2005 New York Times review writes of the movie:
Set in a particularly tense area of the demilitarized zone between the Koreas, it is a fairly straightforward whodunit with a pointedly political theme and an unapologetically humanist message. Major Jean (Lee Yeong-ae), who grew up in Switzerland, comes to South Korea, her father's homeland, to investigate an incident that took place inside the Joint Security Area, administered by Swedish and Swiss peacekeepers.The movie starts at 7:00 pm in room G8 of the Cathedral of Learning (campus map). The event is open to the public, and tickets range from $1 to $5.
Collecting depositions from both sides, she encounters two predictably opposed accounts of the shooting, which left two North Korean soldiers dead. Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byeong-heon), the South Korean officer who has admitted to the shooting, says he shot his way out of an attempted kidnapping. The Northerners insist it was an unprovoked attack. With the specter of nuclear hostilities hovering, Major Jean's investigation is a lot more than routine police work.
And "Joint Security" itself departs from routine as the real story behind the skirmish emerges in a series of long, cleanly filmed flashbacks.