These days, fiction movies which are based on non-fiction history have been interesting. For example, there is ‘The Battleship Island’ that is popular among groups of people. There are people who watched ‘The Battleship Island’ and others who didn’t. When people watch movies that are based on non-fiction they sometimes make a mistake that they think the fiction is fact. On that point, it is important to classify between non-fiction and fiction in movies which are based on history. Now, we will learn about the distortion of Korean history in ‘The Battleship Island’.

  Battleship Island is one of Japan’s islands. Why did people call it Battleship Island? Because it looks like a Japanese naval vessel. Furthermore, Hashima Island is designated as a UNESCO world heritage site (there are people who don’t know that). From 1920 to 1945, compulsory Korean manpower draft happened there for twenty-five years. Most people worked bending their back for twelve hours in mine of 1000meters deep and they didn’t receive a salary. Even though the temperature inside the mines was over 45C degrees, they couldn’t get any safety equipments. Of course, their meal was only dried strips of sweet potato and leftover soybean oil. If they let fly at the Japanese or couldn’t meet a daily quota, they couldn’t get meal all day. For the Koreans last scene was either death or the cold sea water. How did ‘The Battleship Island’ supervisor express the torment on Hashima Island in the movie?

  As mentioned above, ‘The Battleship Island’ is a movie based on non-fiction, but not everything in the movie is true. There are always differences about the real Hashima Island when compared to the fiction movie. One of differences is its bad guy is focused on being Korean, not Japanese. Other historical movies’ bad guys are focused on many other people except for Koreans. In ‘The Battleship Island’, it shows us the split over the relation to the top and bottom from the inside of Korean. Even so, the relation between the top and bottom of Korean was unfamiliar to us still. Another difference is that in the movie Koreans joined forces to escape from The Battleship Island. Furthermore, there was an agent for Korea on The Battleship Island, but it was omitted in the movie.

  Actually, most Korean couldn’t escape from that island and became trapped on Hashima Island. A third difference is that the movie wasn’t focused on the background itself. When you watched ‘The Battleship Island’, the focus was on romance and escaping, father’s instinctive love. The background importance was no longer needed in ‘The Battleship Island’. Hashima Island history considers the lower mine and harsh environment, but ‘The Battleship Island’ did not. If you look at it, there are many differences between ‘The Battleship Island’ and the real Hashima Island. Finally, we will discover Korean history being distorted by Japan.

  The Japanese government admits an affair that many Korean worked in a harsh environment but the government also changes the language used so that it means not compulsory labor. If you visit Hashima Island for sightseeing, facts about compulsory Korean drafting are not found anywhere and only were written at the beginning of modernization. Japan is always doing things like this, but if Koreans know these facts, people have still lost interest. So, Koreans must show continuous interest and positive attitude about the distorted Korean history.

 L.L.F Reporter Ha Yeong-Yang