My Way (2011) is a Korean movie inspired about a story told by , a Korean American, for which there is no direct evidence. Nevertheless, it is an interesting story. According to Yang, he grew up in Korea and was impressed into service in the Imperial Japanese Army by the Japanese who occupied Korea at the time.
According to, Yang Kyoungjong he was captured by the Red Army in the battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and sent to the Gulag. When the Red Army faced a serious shortage of manpower, prison camp inmates were impressed into service. He is later taken prisoner of war by the Germans.
The Germans offer Yang and his surviving comrades an opportunity to join Wehrmacht, which he did. He was sent to Normandy to fight against the Allied during the invastion. He was captured by the Allied and became an POW until he was released in 1947.
By Unknown author or not provided - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22166002
The young Asian man in a Wehrmacht uniform is alledgedly Yang Kyoungjong.
He stayed in the US and later became a citizen.
What is known is that some Asian men fighting in Wehrmacht were captured in Normandy.
The movie is only inspired by Yang Kyoungjung's story.
In it, the main character is a marathon runner who grows up with the grandson of a Japanese general. The two develop a rivalry and practice together. When the general is assassinated by Korean terrorists, his grandson begins to hate Koreans. The relationship between the two develops into mutual animosity. When Yang is impressed into service he is sent to Mongolia to fight the Red Army and his old rival is his commanding officer.
The years in the Gulag causes the Yang's Japanese nemesis lose his patriotic brainwashing. Kang and his former friend rekindle the friendship during their time in the Soviet Union. I won't reveal what happens in the end. But there is an interesting twist.
The visuals of My Way are impressive. The Battle of Khalkin Gol is impressive as is the Battle of Kharkov. The acting is melodramatic as I've found to be the case in many Korean movies. The languages spoken are Korean, Japanese, Russian, German and English.
The main theme of My Way is the absurdity of taking ideologies and identities too seriously. It is best described by this scene where in the middle of the execution of rioting Japanese prisoners of war, a message is delivered to the Gulag containing orders from Stavka, the Red Army supreme command, to recruit as many soldiers from the Gulag as possible. The Soviet Union actually did this.
Another fantastic scene that highlights this theme is the impossible situation the main character and his comrades find themselves in Kharkov where they have Soviet machine guns ready to fire upon anyone who retreats and Germans on the other side.
The music in the scene is the Russian patriotic song Священная война Svyashchennaya Voyna ("Sacred War") written in 1941.
Despite the veracity of the story inspiring the film being unknown, the My Way still tells an interesting story. My Way looks and sounds impressive. I haven't seen a movie for a while that better conveys the absurdity of the mass movements that caused one of the greatest disasters of the modern era better than My Way.