Director: Kim Sung-su
Country: South Korea
Award: none
Movement: none
The semi-historical story follows the adventures of a Korean peace delegation as they try to get back to Korea through the inhospitable deserts of northern China. The film is regarded as being one of the biggest motion pictures in the history of South Korean cinema. At the time of its production, its budget was the largest ever for a Korean film. It features a high degree of historical accuracy in period customary, props, settings and most unusually, language; that is, everyone speaks in their native tongues or through an interpreter conversant in a lingua franca. The film was the eighth highest-grossing film of 2001 with over two million tickets sold. The film presents a fictionalized account of a real Korean diplomatic mission sent to China in 1375. Chun-Yong Son was to present a herd of horses as gifts to the Hongwu Emperor but he and his party were reported to have been exiled and there was no record of their return to Korea. At the time, the Ming government was unhappy with Korea as the Korean government continued to acknowledge the Mongols as the legitimate rulers of China (this was true until 1378). Eventually the Koreans managed to gain favour with the Ming government and the relationship became very cordial. The film also portrays the political conflicts in China at the time, between the fading Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty and the new Ming dynasty that returned China to Han Chinese rule.
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