A Korean college student, his name japanised as Masumoto, feels compelled to join the Imperial Army and do his bit for the war. To his fellow Korean recruits, he seems a martinet, much too eager to try to prove himself as the equal of the Japanese. He gets promoted and rejoins the unit as officer in charge. They are despatched to Burma where they are visited by a group of young Korean women of a ‘teishintai’: comfort women. On the way to the front, their truck is attacked, on the road again, they encounter a beautiful Burmese woman with her child. They give her a lift, and she drops a note about their movements to waiting guerrillas of the new independence army. She and Masumoto fall in love, while her guerrilla husband swears revenge for the death of their son at the hands of Japanese soldiers led by our hero. Only one of the triangle will be standing at the film’s end.

By Mark Morris