Monday, November 29, 2010

A Visit to Seodaemun Prison

A friend and I recently visited Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Seoul and I would recommend it to anyone interested in history, prisons, or appreciating Korea.

In brief, the prison was built in 1908 and used during the Japanese rule of Korea to house anti-colonial activists. After the Japanese occupation ended in 1945, the prison was used by the South Korean government until 1987. It was constructed to accommodate around 500 people, but actually housed close to 3,000 prisoners at the height of civil disobedience. In 1992, the site was dedicated as the Seodaemun Prison History Hall. For more historical information, click on the link above.

Prisoners at Seodaemun were forced to work, they were tortured, and many of them were executed. I was reminded of visits to Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and other former German concentration camps where one can't help but imagine the suffering that occurred in the very cells you walk by. Like many of the concentration camps, the execution building still stands at Seodaemun and remains a reminder of the prison's original purpose. The execution building itself was off limits to photographs, although you'll find many on the web. I took this shot from outside the wall that now blocks the small wood-sided execution building from plain view (you see the wall to the left of the poplar tree).

A plaque before the entrance to the execution building states that this poplar tree "was planted in 1923 at the time when the execution building was constructed. It was said that patriots in the course of being dragged to the execution hall grabbed this tree and wailed with deep resentment for their unachieved independence." The tree is therefore named the Wailing Poplar.

Seodaemun offers something of an interactive approach that I have never experienced at another historical prison exhibit. In the bottom floor of the main exhibit, visitors can see life-like representations of what cells, prisoners and even torture looked like. They can also become a Korean revolutionary and watch themselves be arrested. I took the opportunity to participate.

Smiling me in a crowd of fellow Koreans hollering "대한 독립 만세!" ( [daehan dokrib mansae] Hooray for Independence!)
And before you know it I've gotten myself arrested.
Faceless guards escort me to Seodaemun.
My smiling profile is interrogated. But I don't budge!
This is me being tortured--I believe with scalding hot water poured down my throat. This was disturbing to see and it took me a bit of time to identify what was so disturbing about it: One-seeing myself in a position to be tortured was simply uncomfortable. I think few people really want to see this. Two-it is a fun and interactive museum setting. School kids come through, have their likenesses imprinted on the screen and watch themselves be Korean nationalists, giggling all the way. I want to know that at the end of the day, they realize what they are giggling at. Three-I can't forget that this is someone's reality in this world. Right now.

After much thought, I have concluded that the activity is as realistic as it can be, and that should make people uncomfortable.
Here I am escorted to my cell.
And in my spacious cell I continue my hollering for freedom: "대한 독립 만세!" It should be noted that Seodaemun has solitary cells that were much smaller than the one seen here, and I imagine I was not alone in this room.

The Seodaemun Prison History Hall exhibit left me feeling thankful that I could say "that was then..." and made me question how much I would be able to endure for my own beliefs and values. But it also reminded me that "this is now" in some parts of the world. It makes one consider the differences one feels when they visit Alcatraz--with its clean and pristine lines of cells, beautiful west coast Pacific views, and fantastic jail break stories--and when they visit the camps and prisons where the execution room is still to be seen, where we are given the numbers of lives that suffered torture, starvation, and death.

It leaves me wondering if we will someday tour other modern day prisons in this fashion. More pictures of Seodaemun follow.
This room memorializes Seodaemun prisoners. Each 3X5 card is a prisoner intake card with photo and personal information. There are thousands here.
Buildings were built with these bricks, which were made by prisoners. The mark represents Seodaemun prison bricks. Textiles and prison uniforms were also made in Seodaemun and shipped to other prisons throughout the country.
A view so often seen in Seoul--the old, the new, and the natural. The red brick buildings are century-old Seodaemun prison buildings, while the white buildings in the background are modern apartment buildings. In the far background a mountain outcropping can be seen, which has surely been here longer than everything else.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Winter Hats Make Me Smile












Hats used to be so uncool that I preferred walking to school with icicles in my hair. Apparently using a hair dryer when I was fifteen years old was uncool, too. Anyhow, in the dead of winter in northern lower Michigan I walked a mile or so with wet hair to get an education, and I arrived with icicles over my ears. (Someday I may share these facts with my grandchildren in order to let them know how hard life was, but I'll omit the part about how it was my choice and I'll add that bit about up hill both ways. I always appreciated that snippet of trickery.)

Call it maturity or what you will, nowadays I can't stand going without a hat in cold weather. At the end of last year's hat season, I was faced with a horrible situation--my favorite hat was lost in the Vancouver airport. Yes, it's true! Either someone snatched it from my luggage cart or (more likely) it fell out of my bag as I was shifting my belongings around in preparation for boarding. It was a great hat but can't be seen here because I can't seem to find a single photo of me in it. You'll have to take my word on how lovely it was.

The hat was gifted to me years ago by a dear friend and I initially had a hard time figuring out how to wear it (it was very loose knit, so if I wore it without folding it, my ears suffered from wind zipping through those large holes). When it finally clicked, I wore the hat through several winters. It was angora and had four lovely little flowers at the top. It received many comments and surely beat frozen locks both in comfort and in fashion. When I realized it was gone, I hardly had the opportunity to say goodbye.

However, as any traveler knows, goodbyes are inevitable. Nothing lasts forever and I took the loss in stride, hoping only that someone else came upon my little head-warmer and appreciates her as much as I did (yes, she's a she). And I along my way, I didn't think about the need for a hat all summer long.

Then I visited Lake Michigan in September and was reminded of such things as the gales of November. I would need a hat soon, I knew.

Looking through my mom's closet--still in MI--I came across a big knit hat I wore in college and that I think my mother had worn years before me. I remembered that hat being perfect in warmth and fantastic in fashion, but I also remembered that hat having been unraveled in my college years... Well, some of the memories were foggy and apparently false. I took this hat with me when I returned to Seoul, of course.

My returns to Korea are always somewhat bittersweet. I miss friends and family and a place that feels like home, yet there is something familiar enough about my hovel in Seoul that feels like home, too. It is difficult to exist in a city so large and so impersonal, but I was noticing more and more after this return how happy people (strangers) appeared.

The weather had turned quickly. The wind had picked up and already had a winter-like bite to it. The sun shines throughout the fall and winter seasons here, so I thought perhaps it was relief from the rains that people were smiling about. I wore my 'new old' hat to keep me toasty on the way to and from the subway, and I smiled at smiling people all the way.

Seoul is typically like New York. Folks have places to go and don't often pause to acknowledge strangers (foreign or otherwise) while on their way. But these sudden smiles simply wouldn't cease. One day after work I donned my hat in the elevator. At the 8th floor, a man boarded and grinned at me then looked to the floor. When the doors closed he said something quietly in Korean, smiling all the way. I realized he was referring to my hat, which I tapped and said "it's a great hat, isn't it?" He laughed and deboarded at the 7th floor. (Sidebar: Who takes the elevator from floor 8 to floor 7?) As he exited the elevator he turned to me to say "Thank you for the encouragement." "Thank you for appreciating my hat," I thought in return, but in reality I just smiled and nodded.

As I teacher, I like to think that I encourage people, and it makes me feel good to know when I do. Did I encourage this man to wear a poofy winter hat? Did I encourage him to make fun of me in a poofy winter hat? I really don't care. In fact, I am not at all sure 'encourage' was the correct word to express this fellow's true meaning. Just like I am not sure that 'appreciate' was the correct word to reflect what he was doing when he noticed my hat. But semantics isn't important for me here.

What is important is that people keep smiling at me. That makes it worth not taking the hat off until spring.
All images for this post (excluding the final image) were sourced from google images.
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