Je-kyu Kang's film about brothers forced to fight in the Korean War, Tae Guk Gi is an excellent opportunity to teach about the horror and reality of war, while at the same time demonstrating important historical events and engaging with themes of brotherhood, virtue, and human nature. As a resource for a classroom setting, the film should only be utilized with parental consent (the film is rated R for extreme, graphic violence), and with students capable of appreciating and understanding the complex themes present within. Honors, AP, or IB students who study history would benefit, as well as students engaged in the history of warfare throughout the world.

Aside from some of the content concerns, students may be turned off from certain aspects of the film that don't translate well to Western audiences, such as a translated script that fails to capture the nuance of the spoken dialogue and some pretty severe over-acting at times. The beginning act of the film borders on cloying nostalgia, but is important for relationships later in the plot. I felt that the combat sequences were, at times, excessively graphic and too long extended.

The film shines in the thematically complex elements, and some of the more nuanced plot details and character development of Jin-tae Lee (the older brother) and Jin-seok Lee (the younger brother). As one begins to tire of the incessant, albeit impressively shot battle sequences, the mental stamina of the brothers is likewise waning. Both are changed by the war, but neither of them in positive ways. To some extent, they act as a foil to each other, although neither side is proven morally upright and empathy can be attributed to both sides. As actors and witnesses of the atrocities of the bloody Korean War, the brothers cope with these events and each other in differing and understandably human ways. This makes the movie interesting for its viewer and applicable to the classroom.

The historical relevance of the film related to the Korean War is intriguing. Tae Guk Gi captures the difficult reality that directly following the expulsion of Japanese colonizers Korea is engulfed in yet another bloody conflict, this time within its own borders, oftentimes between families. The film is successful in portraying how the civil war, antagonized by foreign powers in a proxy war, remains fresh in the memory of many Korean families, due to the severity of the divisions that ensued. Some of the most poignant moments of the film are also the most historically significant and interesting to see on screen. We are forced to watch repeated offenses by both the communists of the North and the anti-communist surveillance groups of South Korea. The character development of the brothers takes places within the gut-wrenching liminality of these morally unmanageable scenarios. This film, which is decidedly anti-war, and also intriguingly hinting at Korean reunification, was produced during the Sunshine Policy that occurred on the peninsula and is a superb example of a much-needed perspective today.