This Is Korea!: No, This Is Propaganda!

There's something revolting about pretending the worse thing that happened to Korea in the 20th century was communism when the Chinese and Soviets were actually responsible for combatting Japanese occupation. But such is the myth-making of John Ford's This Is Korea!, an agit-prop film produced by the U.S Navy that's really more about American soldiers abroad than the citizens they're supposedly protecting. We hear of men from New York, Georgia, Maine, Idaho, and California; soldiers who haven't had a hot meal in two months come Christmas; fighters trekking across the hills while carrying their homes upon their backs; "...walking when they still can; carried when they can't."

What we hear about the Koreans is that they are refugees in their own country (a curious choice of words!), getting vaccines for typhus and smallpox (which they don't understand) and primarily homeless children taken care of by local nuns. More time is devoted to seeing bazookas in action and tanks and grenades and flame-throwers. Was there a time when people saw the weaponry and thought, "How cool is that?" Were people charmed by an orphan named Little Babe Ruth DiMaggio and moved by a silver star pinned on a uniformed chest followed by footage of napalm being dropped? It's tough to hear the narrator mispronounce the capital city or mutter "Fry 'em out, burn 'em out, cook 'em" and believe that Ford and company care about the Korean people at all in relationship to this war. Delusional, demented, Red scare cinema at its worst? Mission accomplished. What are they fighting for? As the film itself states: "Maybe it's just pure cussedness."