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2007｜125 MIN | Drama

DIRECTOR KIM Ji-hoon

CAST KIM Sang-kyung, AHN Sung-ki, LEE Yo-won, LEE Joon-gi 

RELEASE DATE July 25, 2007

CONTACT CJ Entertainment 

Tel: +82 2 371 8147 

Fax: +82 2 371 6340 

Email: filmsales@cj.net

May 18 (2007) is about ten days of the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980. Taxi driver Min-woo (KIM Sang-kyung) lives with his younger brother Jin-woo (LEE Joon-gi) in Gwanju after their parents died. Min-woo hopes his smart brother will enter the Seoul National University to become a prosecutor. And he crushes on Shin-ae (LEE Yo-won), a nurse who belongs to the same church of his. 

His happiness ends when the soldiers suppress the citizens’ non-violent protests. The airborne troops indiscriminately kill innocent civilians. When one of the Jin-woo’s classmates is killed by the military, Jin-woo leads his friends out into the streets but is shot to death. People of Gwanju who lose their friends, brothers and lovers organize citizen militias against the military, and Shin-ae’s father as well as retired military commander Heung-soo (AHN Sung-ki) becomes their leader. 

In October 1979, President PARK Chung-hee was assassinated so his dictatorship came to an end, but soon the military regime held on power. May 18 depicts how Gwangju citizens’ protests against expanding martial law turn into a terrible tragedy. However, the film does not look at the event from political and societal perspective. It mourns innocent people who were killed 30 years ago while it shows peaceful lives of Min-woo and people around him are changed into terrible scenes of carnage in a moment. The citizens of Gwangju took guns with anger and grief, but the film is full of the latter. 

However, it is true that the film is valuable because it shows the faces of nameless individuals in the Gwangju Democratization Movement, which used to be dealt with one of the political events. The movie’s viewers will never forget Shin-ae’s voice of saying “My fellow citizens, please remember us!” when she goes around downtown of Gwangju holding a microphone in her hand.