“WHEN the Qing army is surrounding the fortress, how come you are trying to kill one another within?”
The king is scolding his courtiers in exasperation as they call for punishing opponents in their argument over whether to make peace with the enemy and save their country or fight to the end and die gloriously. At a moment when their fate hangs by a thread, the court is divided between pacifists and militants. This is a scene from The Fortress, the critically and commercially acclaimed 2017 South Korean movie by Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of the hit Netflix TV series Squid Game.