Historical action film The Battleship Island marks So Ji-sub’s return from enlistment and back onscreen. He recently had a chat with Yonhap News for the promotion of his first movie after two years, and shared that filming was “mentally intense.”

The actor revealed that he was not aware of what he was getting into when he signed up for the movie. Rather, his major concern was that he would have a chance to collaborate with his filmmaker idol, director Ryoo Seung-wan. When he received the screenplay though, So Ji-sub realized that he was going to be in an epic war movie about the atrocities faced by hundreds of forced Korean coal miners and sex slaves at Japan’s Hashima Island during World War II.

Ji-sub described making the film as physically difficult, but what made it grueling was that it was about the real-life Battleship Island. The actor is, of course, referring to the controversies surrounding the island, when in 2015, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Hashima Island was where Koreans were taken captive as slave laborers in mines during the Japanese colonization of Korea.

“Can I serve this movie, can I deliver my character well?” Ji-sub asked himself this as he played the role of Choi Chil-sung, a former gangster who ends up on Hashima Island as one of the Koreans forced to mine coal. With a two-year hiatus from acting, the 41-year-old Hallyu star said that his character in the movie resembles him in real life, describing Chil-sung as having fiery emotions. Ji-sub usually plays characters that are quiet and cold-hearted.

[Image by CJ Entertainment]

“It was cathartic to deliver a burning performance, but it seems as if there’s not much left inside of me. It’s as if I’ve coughed out everything that was inside.”

Acting alongside So Ji-sub is South Korea’s man-of-the-moment Song Joong-ki, who would seem to reprise a similar role to his last drama, Descendants of the Sun. In The Battleship Island, he will be playing the role of Moo-young, a Special Forces agent from the Korean Liberation Army, who infiltrates the island to rescue a key independence movement figure.

At the helm is Hwang Jung-min, who plays Kang-ok, a talented musician who boards a ship to Hashima with his young daughter So hee (Kim Soo-ahn) and his bandmates, while believing that he is on his way to Japan with dreams of making it big in the music scene there.

Song Joong-ki plays a Special Forces agent in "The Battleship Island." [Image by CJ Entertainment]

According to Yonhap News, production for The Battleship Island is highly detailed and intricate. Production company CJ Entertainment created a full-size set, spanning 66,000 square meters in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. The structural layout of Hashima Island was reconstructed 1:1 to the actual site, including its coal mines, a dock, and a school building for young Japanese children.

The Battleship Island is reported to be one of the most expensive South Korean films to date, with a budget of US$22.3 million. The film was penned by Ryoo and co-writer Shin Kyung-il, and while based and inspired by records of the island, the story is entirely a work of fiction.

The Battleship Island opens in North America on July 28 with OnDemand Korea as media partner of the film. The complete list of theaters and release dates can be found here.

[Featured Image by CJ Entertainment]