Ode to My Father was a box office smash with over 10 million cinema admissions in 2015. As a child, Deoksu experiences and lives through the Korean War. His parents take a boat heading south, but he is separated from his father at the port in Heungnam. In Busan, with his father’s last words to him—“Look after your younger siblings”—constantly in mind, Deoksu shoulders the responsibility of being his parents’ first son, while his mother raises the family by running a store at Gukje market in Busan. As an adult, Deoksu goes to Germany to work as a miner. He has a near death experience in the mine, and then he marries a Korean nurse there. They then return home, but life in Korea proves too much for him, so for money he goes to Vietnam during the war there. Following Deoksu through major events in Korean modern history, Ode to My Father looks back at our fathers’ and grandfathers’ generation, evoking sympathy on witnessing the hardships they endured. (NAM Dong-chul)