Joint Security Area

Joint Security Area is a 2000 South Korean action thriller film starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Byung-hun and Lee Young-ae. It was directed by Park Chan-wook and is based on the novel DMZ by Park Sang-yeon. The film, which was shot on location in South Korea, concerns an investigation into the circumstances surrounding a fatal shooting incident within the DMZ, the heavily fortified border that separates North and South Korea. It was the highest-grossing film in Korean film history at the time and won Best Film at the 2000 Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 2001 Grand Bell Awards. Plot Two North Korean soldiers are killed in the DMZ in the Joint Security Area at a North Korean border house just across the Bridge of No Return, before Sergeant Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun), a wounded South Korean soldier on border duties, attempts to flee back to the South Korean side. The southern troops rescue him while gunfire erupts and, two days later, the fragile relationship between the two Koreas depends on a special investigation conducted by Swiss Army Major Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae) on behalf of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. As Sergeant Lee Soo-hyeok has confessed to the shootings, Sophie investigates why the two Koreas have contradicting accounts of events; Soo-hyeok's states he was knocked out and kidnapped while relieving himself and, waking tied up in the North Korean border house, secretly freed himself and shot three North Korean soldiers, leaving two dead. The North Korean survivor Sergeant Oh Kyeong-pil (Song Kang-ho) states to Sophie that Soo-hyeok barged into the border house and shot everyone before retreating when the wounded Kyeong-pil returned fire.