By Min Sun Lee
The movie version of “Les Miserables” is a huge in South Korea — and now so is a parody by some of the conscripts in the Korean Air Force.
The 13-minute movie, called “Les Militaribles,” was released Tuesday by the Media and Contents team of the Air Force and features a few dozen airmen and an amazing performance by the Air Force Band. In just two days, the video has racked up almost 300,000 hits on YouTube.
It opens with troops shoveling snow off a runway and singing “Dig down, dig down, raise your shovels high” in place of the “Look down, look down, don’t look them in the eye” that the slaves sing at the start of the musical version of Victor Hugo’s story.
- Courtesy South Korea Air Force
- A poster created by the Air Force for the parody of Les Miserables.
An airman named Jean Valjean, the same as the main character in Les Miserables, gets a visitor while shoveling. But his minder, a lieutenant named Javere, won’t allow Valjean extra time to meet with his girlfriend Cossette. Valjean is late for meeting and gets disciplinary punishment from Javere for being delayed in reporting back.
The video ends with the cast singing of the expectation for springtime, when the snow is gone.
“Do you hear the people sing? Say, do you hear the distant drums?” from the musical becomes “Do you hear the soldiers sing, singing the song of the fighter wing?”
And the triumphant final words “Tomorrow comes’ becomes “For spring will come!”
First Lt. Chung Da-hoon, director of the video, said, “When the movie Les Miserables became popular, we talked about it and, when there was series of heavy snows, we thought of connecting the two and making a video.”
He said the planning, writing, singing lessons and rehearsal took a month. The actually filming was done in three days.
Meanwhile, the movie “Les Miserables” through Sunday had grossed $39 million in the seven weeks it has been showing in South Korea, the biggest-selling movie of the moment, slightly ahead of the action thriller “The Tower,” which had grossed $35 million in five weeks, according to Box Office Mojo.com.
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