we'll play the role of more than a division and a corps.
In other words, we are waging and advantageous
and victorious struggle whether we win or lose in the fighting. Hakdong Valley in Mt. Chiri
How is the time for us offer
even the last drop of our blood for the nation and for the people!
Damn! Our secret leaked out!
All to combat position!
Rascals are indeed desperate with bombardment!
It's clearly a full-scale offensive! Seeing the scale of bombardment,
it must be a full-scale offensive by division-level artillery!
How about a temporary retreat?
Comrade of political section! Hand out an order for dispersion and retreat to all units notifying emergency lines!
First emergency line in chilsun valley, second emergency line in Korim valley!
Tell all units to disperse and retreat by each unit so that the rascal's offensive be weakened!
Hey, you guys, don't move back! Keep your positions!
Battalion commander, we are ordered to retreat to Chilsun valley.
Damn! How can we retreat in this situation!
We can hardly resist any longer with our present manpower and firing capabilities.
Let's hurry up!
Strategic retreat
Comrade Choe!
You've fulfilled your duties. Now, go to your mama.
Notify the rascals that they are all encircled by making a bonfire from all hills!
As soon as morning breaks, we'll block the road to Korim valley and Chilsun valley and compress valley
and compress the encircling net.
We are completely encircled!
We'll be totally crushed if we don't get out of here by tomorrow morning.
What's the status of damages?
Since all retreating units are mixed up, we can't find out
the precise situation of our unit but apparently the majority was either killed or missing.
Blazes fade in that cliff.
We must move out along the cliff. Let's go!
A full-scale offensive was waged jointly by Paek sun-yup's field army
and Southwest district combat command under the Capital Division.
The total number of punitive troops mobilized into Mt. Chiri was more than 40,000.
After retreating by each unit, we had to go through plains
and mountains covered by snow to reassemble in Korim valley, the first emergency line.
Pluck up courage!
Comrade Hui-suk, take courage!
Hui-suk! Keep up your nerve!
I'm hopeless!
Blood sheds in your face...
I am alright. Hui-suk, pluck up courage!
You should survive and meet your mother!
Mama...
Hui-suk!
Pass word 'turn around! '!
Get Up! The "yellow dogs" have withdrawn!
Get up!
- Get up! - Get up!
Hurry up!
Comrade Kim Young!
Oh, you are alive!
Is this the Cheonju unit?
No, I was forced to join your unit while retreating.
You may make a fire. After warming up for a while,
you'll head for Korim valley crossing the Samsinbong hill.
We'll have rice secretly stored there.
We'll have hot, steaming rice food.
We've been chased for more than a week amid starvation.
Furthermore, most of soldiers are frostbitten and cannot walk.
Unless some measures are taken by the North...
Hey, you!
You are an indoctrination guide.
How can you make such reckless defeatist remarks?
I mean to urge the people to look straight at reality.
We waged the struggle even in the worst condition
and are totally exhausted amid coldness and hunger.
During Bolshevik revolution
the Siberian partisans transported supplies by truck, and during the period of Japanese
imperialist rule, the antis-Japanese partisans in Manchuria struggled
while engaging in farming and cultivating fields.
Now, what is our situation?
They say Mt. Chiri is the best stronghold for partisans in South Korea.
But it is confined within a circle with only 15-kilometer radius,
and even communications with the North are being completely severed apart from dialogue.
You should have iron-clad consciousness of history before becoming a slave to defeatism.
No matter what difficulties may lay before us, the history is on our side.
We'll win the final victory!
Sure.
The neither side will be victorious.
Our tragedy begin with the fact that we failed to
repel the Japanese imperialist aggressors by our own strength
and that the nation was liberated by outside forces.
Both the South Korean people's tenacious resistance struggle
and this tragic fighting called Fatherland Liberation War have a troublesome tinder-box
caused by such a fact.
Either side of North and South of Korean will win a victory.
The victory in merely on the side of the United States or the Soviet Union not on the side of the Korean people.
You, Comrade!
If you say that again...
Let's calm down!
Don't get excited! You, Comrade guide should not waste time by arguing the issues that go beyond the principle.
Let's work out some plans to boost
the morale of exhausted fighters.
Why don't you get a moment's sleep.
I was listening to arguments in the political section.
I met Lee Bong-gak, political member in Hakdongol.
I heard that you recommended me to be a political member.
But you refused. You said you wanted to remain a plain fighter.
I wanted to seek, when I am confronted with the enemy,
coming into the mountain with me
and in having to part with the "white lily".
I thought I could seek such significance when I am confronted
with the enemy with a gun in hand the genuine significance of the war.
Look at those comrades!
Our enemy at this point is
this terrible cold, hunger and sweeping sleepless. Don't you agree with me?
Yes, I do. What is more unbearable is that the colder, more hungry
and more painful I become, the stronger the instinct of survival dominates me...
the very instinct of mere survival, forgetting about the significance of war
and "white lily" that I wanted to seek.
It's an air-raid! Air-raid!
The enemy's airplanes!
The offensive was waged persistently by the punitive forces with the support of aircraft.
Every corner of the first assembly site was seized by the punitive forces
and we were all as exhausted as we could be.
How come you look so shabby?
Whose leg do you think it is and why do you handle it so recklessly?
It's the leg of the Republic and very leg of the people.
The ranks were severed in the middle.
Some fellows lost their own ranks while dozing.
You, Comrade guide, link the line while we reduce our speed.
I see.
When we move, we'll leave a sign by breaking off a branch of tree to show the direction of our advance.
I'll go with you.
Taesong Valley in Mt. Chiri
Platoon leader!
Comrade guide!
I was taking care of an exhausted nurse...
Where are the other members?
The other members?
Not only you but the ranks were disconnected in the middle.
We came to link the line.
Comrade! Comrade nurse!
We'll get Korim valley crossing that mountain. We'll meet our comrades there.
Take courage!
They are comrades!
Comrades! Have I really survived?
Where are the men? Where is the emergency line?
The site where weapons are concealed...
You mean, the storage house of weapons?
To the direction of Bomyabong lt'll take a full day...
You mean, we have to cross the main ridgeline?
My feet are frostbitten and getting rotten.
It'll take two full days.
Let's go!
We've been starving for more than 10 days. We couldn't sleep for many nights.
But we must link the ranks!
Otherwise, we'll all die in vain!
How about going there detouring Yonso rock and lmgol hill?
That's right. That's less arduous.
We may get some food at brand-tillers' huts before crossing the lmgol hill.
We can get there to night.
They say my life would be saved if I surrender with this note.
Seems that they would not kill me...
Nothing is here, either.
We can't find even a rotten potato.
The "yellow dogs" must have ordered brand-tillers
not to leave a grain of rice.
Let's get going!
Comrade Ha is hopeless!
His leg is decaying up to the knee.
He fainted at seeing his leg
as I pulled up his trousers.
He should not know this...
It's rather miraculous for him to follow up to this point.
He will die soon if we leave him alone.
No! My leg! Where is my leg!
My leg! My leg!
My leg!
Comrades Kim and Ha! Look after him for a while.
I'll be back soon.
Comrade Kim! Where is my leg?
You can't possibly go to Bamyabong in this condition.
You can go to the village even by rolling your body.
Show it to the punitive forces if you meet them. They will not kill you.
No, No! I don't want go. I'm scared!
I want to go with you.
Do as I am telling you! That's the only way to survive for all of us!
No, I won't!
Platoon leader and nurse went down last night.
So, they ran away!
I won't do so.
You are different. You are only forced to surrender.
Comrades!
Please take me with you, please!
Please!
Comrade Kim!
Please!
We don't want to be frozen to death while staying with you. Well, let's...
go down or...
Comrade!
Comrade Kim!
Comrade guide! Comrade Kim!
I hope not he will blow himself up.
Let's go.
Don't move!
Platoon leader must have told them on us!
I feel rather resigned! Will you take Comrade Ha with you?
Let's get out!
Don't come!
Don't come any closer!
Dangerous!
Don't come any closer!
Put back the safety pin!
You'll survive if you surrender with the certificate!
Hurry up!
Oh, it's me who killed Comrade Ha...
Search the house!
No one is there!
Platoon leader!
Chief!
I'm hopeless!
Chief!
Stop firing!
No more footprints...
He can't have fled far. Search every nook and cranny!
I'll leave a sign with a branch of tree when I move.
I was arrested by the punitive forces in Oegongni village, Sichon-myon on 9 March 1951
16 month later, the Armistice Agreement was signed.
This agreement stipulated evacuation of equipment left in the rear areas of both sides,
as well as discovery and delivery of the war dead.
But no one has paid attention to the men who were alive and wounded
about the mountains in the South in the midst of despair.
The total number of soldiers, police and partisans who died in the guerrilla warfare
in the areas of Mt. Sobaeke and Mt. Chiri from 1949 to 1954 is approximately 20,000.
The total number of victims from both North and South Korea
during the 3-year long Korean war reached approximately 2.4 million,
including 1.3 million dead and 1.1 million of missing.
This film is dedicated to their souls.