Following on from 2014’s The Admiral: Roaring Currents, Hansan: Rising Dragon is the second of South Korean director Kim Han-min’s (War of the Arrows) planned trilogy about the revered military hero Yi Sun-sin (Park Haei-il). Yi spent much of his career kicking various invading Japanese fleets up and down the Korean coast before dying in the final battle of the war in 1598, because sometimes even history likes a bit of symbolism.
Yi Sun-sin is one of the great figures of Korean history, roughly analogous to George Washington or, if you want to preserve the maritime flavour, Lord Nelson. As presented here (and, looking at the historical record, without much hyperbole) he’s a brilliant strategist, a canny politician, and a fearless naval commander, frequently seeing off numerically superior forces with a mix of tactical cunning and the odd technological marvel, such as the Turtle Ship: essentially a giant floating tank bristling with spikes and cannon.
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