Minor gripes (spoilers)

When theres a few thousand south koreans and americans over there with tanks, mortars and planes dropping bombs on your head, one unarmed kid crawling arround in the mud, going in the opposite direction is the least of your worries.

Close combat was still a majour doctrine of most armies up until the 80s. Thats why every war film with a training section features the bayonet-sandbag bit. Remember during most of the battles in the film, the South are running low on ammo, retreating or assaulting a fixed position. Theres little point in trying to shoot someone with a rifle when the enemy is 3 feet away.

It did strike me kind of unusual that they were just letting him waltz around, but it did seem that until the south koreans actually jumped thier trenches they did seem more preoccupied with what was happening in front of them.

As for the other thing, not only was close combat a nessecity when they were so close but the directors chose to go for a more close combat type scene.

Movies: Unreality with a touch of reality.

Well, regarding the first problem, it's really easy to miss something like one unarmed guy hiding in a trench, when you see hundreds of enemy troops, tanks, and planes rushing your position. You're probably going to be more occupied with watching the enemy army. Plus his uniform was getting kind of dirty, and he kind of blends in with the rest of the Koreans. Now, if the POW was a blond-haired American, then I could totally see your point, as he'd stick out a lot more than a Korean guy would there.

Close quarters combat was pretty common in Korea, since that area of the world is very mountainous, so oftentimes they're fighting on hills (like shown in the movie). In other wars/war movies, they often shoot because they're still a vast distance apart from each other, so it's better to knock out as many of the bad guys as possible before rushing in, unless you're doing a human wave attack, where you just send in hundreds or thousands of soldiers in the hopes of overwhelming them with sheer numbers. Obviously this is less effective when you have automatic weapons, but mass charges still have a psychological factor built into it, because the charging soldiers feel a bit braver when they see many of their comrades charging into battle with them, and it could potentially demoralize the enemy seeing that many guys charging them, which could cause a panic and unorganized retreat. Of course, to do something like that today is suicidal, with air support, artillery, and automatic weapons mowing down the guys like grass (a lot of World War 1 movies show how reckless this tactic is, like All Quiet on the Western Front).

Back then soldiers on both sides didn't really have time to train on how to properly fight, as many were peasants who didn't even know how to read. So it was often easier just to give rifles to a bunch of guys, and send them in waves and show them briefly how to point the right end of the gun towards the bad guys, and then let them loose.

First gripe:

The battle in question is part of probably the bloodiest and most brutal sets of conflicts at what was known as "Iron Triangle". Needless to say, the battles were extremely chaotic and unstable, with frontline shifting quite literally constantly. While we should assume some "main character is invulnerable against bullets" effects, the chaotic situation probably gave him good covers.

Second gripe:

Iron Triangle was a tiny spot in an hilly/mountaneous area where, due to the nature of the international law at the time, basically determined vital parts of the eventual line drawn between North and South Korea. Hand-to-Hand combats were extremely frequent due to both terrain and the compact size of the battlefield.

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