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Welcome to Dongmakgol

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Welcome to Dongmakgol

Welcome to Dongmakgol (Korean웰컴 투 동막골), also known as Battle Ground 625 (UK), is a 2005 South Korean war comedy-drama film. Based on the same-titled long-running stage play by filmmaker/playwright Jang Jin, Park Kwang-hyun's debut film was a commercial and critical success.

The story is set in Korea during the Korean War in 1950. Soldiers from both the North and South, as well as an American pilot, find themselves in a secluded village, its residents largely unaware of the outside world, including the war.

It was South Korea's official entry for the foreign language film category of the Academy Awards in 2005, and at the time the fourth highest grossing South Korean film of all time.

In September 1950, during the Korean War, a U.S. Navy pilot named Neil Smith (Steve Taschler) is caught in a mysterious storm of butterflies and crash-lands his plane in a remote and mountainous part of Korea. He is found by villagers from the nearby mountain village of Dongmakgol, who nurse him back to health. Dongmakgol is cut off from the outside world – its inhabitants have no knowledge of modern technology and are blissfully unaware of the massive conflict raging across Korea. Smith hands a Korean-English primer to Teacher Kim (Jo Deok-hyeon), the village scholar, in an effort to communicate, but Mr Kim effectively gives up when Smith begins a barrage of complaints after being asked in English, "How are you?" as an introductory greeting.

Meanwhile, not far from the village, a platoon of North Korean soldiers is ambushed by a South Korean unit, and the ensuing skirmish leaves most of the North Koreans dead. The surviving North Korean soldiers manage to escape through a mountain passage. The North Korean soldiers, Rhee Soo-hwa (Jung Jae-young), Jang Young-hee (Im Ha-ryong), and Seo Taek-gi (Ryu Deok-hwan) are found by an absent-minded girl from Dongmakgol, named Yeo-il (Kang Hye-jung). She leads them to the village where, to the North Koreans' alarm, they find two South Korean soldiers, Pyo Hyun-chul (Shin Ha-kyun) and Moon Sang-sang (Seo Jae-kyung). The South Korean soldiers, both of whom had deserted their units and escaped into the mountains, had also been led to Dongmakgol by another villager.

The unexpected encounter triggers a Mexican standoff that lasts until the next day. Initially, the villagers are rounded up between the North and South Koreans, but having no idea what the fuss is about they slowly drift away to go about their own business (despite some of the soldiers' efforts to intimidate them into submission). The villagers, who are unfamiliar with the soldiers' weapons, continue to watch on the sidelines and wonder why the two sides are waving "sticks" and "painted potatoes" at each other (which are actually rifles and grenades, respectively). In fact, Yeo-il gleefully pulls out the pin from Taek-gi's grenade (mistaking it for a ring), sending the soldiers into further panic.

The confrontation ends only when Taek-gi, worn by fatigue, accidentally drops his now-armed grenade. While everyone else ducks for cover, Hyun-chul heroically throws himself onto the grenade, but it does not explode. Believing it to be a dud, he throws the grenade behind him in contempt, and it rolls into the village storehouse. It then explodes, incinerating the village's stockpile of corn for the winter. The remnants fall down from the sky, surrealistically, as popcorn.

The two groups of Korean soldiers are now forced to face the fact that their quarrel has condemned the village to starvation in the upcoming winter. They reluctantly agree to a truce and divert their efforts to making up for the damage they have caused. Together, the soldiers undertake work across the village, and help harvest potatoes in the fields.

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