I arrived early so I wondered the streets to get some snacks before the tour. Since I was so early, I was the first to arrive. There were six Seoulmate guides waiting, and only one from my last tour! There are so many people involved in this operation. Today was special (for many reasons) because they were beginning to collect footage for a commercial. Six guides, and how many foreigners? Four, including me.
It felt like a guided tour. In fact I thought it was funny watching other people try to sneak into our tour subtly. Like join in, dude. It's free, there's space. Hell, they're making a commercial to get more of you here!
We started with a bronze statue of two soldier lock in arms. My immediate thought was "That's not a hug" -but actually it was. The story goes that a younger brother fighting for the North and an older brother fighting for the South met on the battlefield and just hugged. No one cared to mention what happened after -maybe that's sort of self-explanatory.
We moved to the memorial afterwards a very open square with the surrounding area home to many large government and military buildings. Oddly enough the struction, the scale of it all, the layout felt a lot like Tienanmen Square. But the vibe was not one of looming fear, but on of patriotism or maybe even peace. Flags lined an open circle, each flag was from a country that assisted South Korea in the Korean War. So yes, Canada was there. Perhaps more interesting was that India, Thailand, Greece, and Ethiopia were also contributors.
Again this day is special. If you look at the photo above at the bottom of the stairs you will see people dressed in white. They're actual Taekwondo students, and they are putting on a performance to honour Soldier's Day. On October 1st, 1950 allied forces crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea. They actually did take Pyeongyang, but lost it again after Chinese forces arrived to assist North Korea.
The memorial was incredible, very interactive and moving. I was surprised by a lot of what I learned there. They say that the war is started by the one who was prepared, South Korea had barely anything when the North attacked -in fact they dropped bombs by hand from commercial planes. Much of North Korea's weaponry was leftover from WW2 and given to them from China and Russia on the grounds of shared ideology. Then South Korea's biggest assistance came from UN forces (88% US). This is why is it so often called a proxy war; the superpowers chose Korea to be their battlefield so they did not have to directly attack one another.
I heard from one of the other international tourists that her friend had been to the war memorial in North Korea, where you can get a completely different picture of what happened.
After going through the history we came back to the entrance hall, where there was an old man selling Korean flags. One of the other group members went to buy one, and as an appreciator-of-flags I went too. It turns out this was more than a flag. It was a statement of sovereignty. The man appears to be a crusader for Korean ownership of Dokdo. After purchasing the flag he takes a series of photo-shoot style pictures of you with Dokdo in the background.
I told my Seoulmates that asserting sovereignty like this is hands down better than war as the gallery had just shown us. It's actually really fitting with my whole International Relations degree. Constructivist IR theorists look at the world and see what we believe to exists has been constructed by us, including notions like what is a state. Most of our ideas are only true because we all believe them to be. Thus it is more powerful to change people minds (Dokdo is Korean) then try to forcibly change things (Take down the Korean flag and lighthouse, put up a Japanese flag). Bit by bit this guy is churning out people who will associate Dokdo with South Korea in a completely nonviolent way.
Unfortunately, I don't think this tactic will work for reunifying Korea.
Outside is home to a garden of relics. Old ships, tanks, and artillery are kept in incredible condition for all to view.
Next we went back to the entrance to watch the Taekwondo performance. I actually started with break dancers, then we had an incredible violinist, then the two worked together on this...
Then out came the kids. It reminded me of Timbits Hockey. Like everyone is gonna clap extra hard even if it's not exactly impressive. Parents will film each kid doing a little kick an- NO! I was so wrong. These kids were Timbit Taekwondo, they were the real deal. Breaking boards all over the place.
Our tour guide even got chosen to go down and join them. She head butted a board -it was pretty cool.
We finished up the tour with lunner, a mix of lunch and dinner cause it was like 3:30pm. We had a big table of food to share. Lots of soups and side dishes. I was telling one of the Seoulmates how much I liked how side dishes were always free and plentiful in Korea. She told me about how shocked she had been realizing this was unique to Korea while she had been in Singapore. We had bbq'd marckel, some stir fried beef, a big tofu soup, and always bap. I split some soju with a new friend from Uzbekistan!
I took the train back home, stopping at Daiso to get some new headphones. Then I went to get some groceries. There was a sale on ice cream, like actually. So yeah, I brought a popsicle. It was nostalgia on a stick. Mum, remember those watermelon popsicles Ryan and I loved from Safeway? It was like those. My day awesome.
I remember them well and I'm sure they were well earned! Keep jumping in the lake that one more time Niki!!
ReplyDelete