'Silmido' Subtitles Revised 23 Years After Release: "Agents Were Civilians, Not Death Row Inmates"

*This content was translated by AI.

The guide subtitles in the film 'Silmido', which depicted North Korean infiltration agents from the Silmido unit as criminals such as death row inmates or life prisoners, have been revised 23 years after its release.

On the 23rd, the Ministry of National Defense announced that it requested the distributor CJ ENM in July to revise the guide subtitles following a request from the 'Silmido Victim Families Association', and that the distributor accepted the request, beginning use of the revised subtitles on the 4th of this month.

Directed by Kang Woo-seok, the film 'Silmido', released in December 2003, broke through ten million viewers based on the true story of the Silmido unit (Unit 684) under the Air Force established in 1968. Although the agents in the film were portrayed as coming from criminal backgrounds such as death row inmates and life prisoners, subsequent investigation by the Ministry of National Defense's Committee for Truth and Reconciliation on Past Incidents revealed that most actual agents were ordinary civilians.

Consequently, a guide subtitle was added to existing screenings stating: "The background or situational setting of the trainees in the film is unrelated to other North Korean infiltration units or agents from the past or present." However, there was no mention of the agents' origins in the film itself, leading to widespread misunderstanding that they were former criminals.

The newly revised guide subtitle reads: "In the film 'Silmido', depicting unit agents as special criminals, death row inmates, or life prisoners is a fictional setting inconsistent with historical facts. The Ministry of National Defense's Committee for Truth and Reconciliation on Past Incidents and the Committee for Truth and Reconciliation have clearly determined that there were no death row inmates or life prisoners among the Silmido unit agents, and that most were ordinary civilians. We offer our condolences to the Silmido unit agents and their families who suffered due to 'Silmido'."

The Ministry of National Defense stated, "We expect this measure will accurately convey to the public that the Silmido unit agents were not death row inmates or life prisoners but ordinary civilians, and contribute to restoring the honor of the victims and their families."

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*This content was translated by AI.