Banned in France at the time of its release, the film was born of a historic trip to North Korea in 1958, one in which Chris Marker, Claude Lanzmann and Armand Gatti also participated. Apparently honoring a request by Mao Zedong, Gatti penned the script of this idyll inspired by a traditional Korean Opera—the pansori The Faithful Chunhyang—transposed in the context of the Korean War and clearly positioned against the destruction perpetrated by the forces of the United States and the UN.