Yoon Duk-soo twice found himself trying to outrun a rampaging communist army, but he was never a secret commando. He was an average Korean who just witnessed a lot of history from an uncomfortably close vantage point. With Yoon’s sweeping life story, director Youn JK pays tribute to his parents’ generation throughout “Ode to My Father.”
Yoon and his family were originally from Hungnam in the North, but they had to flee the Chinese forces that had broken through the Allied defenses. Somehow, 14,000 Koreans found refuge on the SS Meredith Victory, captained by Leonard LaRue, after the Merchant Marine freighter dumped all of its munitions cargo to accommodate them.
'Ode' is currently a massive Korean box-office hit, so you know it will not be afraid of a little sentimentality.
