A shot across the bow

THAT Heihachiro Togo, a Japanese naval hero, conceded that he could perhaps be compared for greatness to Horatio Nelson, but never to Korea’s Yi Sun-shin, has long delighted South Koreans. Admiral Yi fought 23 campaigns against the Japanese in the 16th century, and won all of them. The Battle of Myeongnyang in 1597 is his most celebrated: then, he beat them back with only 13 ships against a fleet of hundreds, using the eponymous strait’s treacherous currents to outmanoeuvre them.

Every South Korean pupil learns about Yi’s war diary. His pluckiness and self-sacrifice have made him a standard-bearer for the country. Park Chung-hee, a strongman who ruled the country for almost two decades, erected a statue of Yi in central Seoul, the capital, in 1968 and visited a shrine in the admiral’s memory on Yi’s birthday. South Koreans were mobilised to watch state-sponsored films on his life.

“Roaring Currents”, a new blockbuster on the victory of 1597, has none of their stodgy didacticism. Computer-generated images of an hour-long battle at sea are full of crashing waves and flaming cannon fire. It has become the most popular film of all time in South Korean cinemas, attracting since its release on July 30th almost 18m spectators: over one in four South Koreans.

Its success was not assured. After a ferry accident in April claimed 300 lives, Koreans shunned entertainment. Yi’s base was, to boot, in the south-west on Jindo island—where some of the families of the victims are still camped out in the hope of retrieving bodies. The battle itself took place not far from where the ferry sank. But viewers, says Darcy Paquet, a film critic in Seoul, may have found it soothing to see the same tract of water harnessed to defeat a longtime enemy.

The film is also, predictably, one in the eye for the Japanese whose right-wing prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has riled South Koreans in recent months by reopening war wounds. To their glee, the film portrays the Japanese as dastardly moustache-twirling villains who guffaw and chop off noses. (Their roles are played by South Korean actors with a poor grasp of Japanese.)

Yet Mr Paquet thinks the film’s chief success is in appealing to indignation over the ferry’s sinking. The steadfast admiral is in stark contrast to the captain of the ferry, the Sewol, who abandoned 250 schoolchildren; the government’s bungled rescue operation lacked Yi’s foresight. President Park Geun-hye saw the film and urged her grieving people to recall how the country had overcome national crisis before.