Seoul is an excellent last stop abroad. The climate and atmosphere are all New York, but it is still undeniably foreign. There is a sense of history and of pride in history much stronger than anywhere else we have visted. I think this in part simply because there is so much history - South Korea has had civilization pretty much since civilization was invented - and in part cultural - In no other country we have stopped in are ancestors and tradition as revered as they are here.
This manifests in strange ways. Part of the culture of traditon is a culture of repect and integrity, resulting in Seoul being one of the safest cities in the world - statistically more than twice as safe as NY. I sort of took feeling safe here for granted and let it slip out of conscious thought until I noticed that the subway cars have luggage racks. And people were using them for everything from innocuous boxes to very clearly laptop computer bags. And the owners were actually napping on the seats below. Sleeping. I can't imagine falling asleep on a NY subway, let alone while my laptop sits unlocked and in plain view on a shelf over my head. But here, no one even blinked, no one's stuff was stolen, and the subway system is just as extensive, and nearly as busy as the one in NY.
Lunar New Year has passed, which means that all the museums are finally open. Today we went first to the Seolodang Prison Museum, which we had tried to visit on Thursday. It is a complex of buildings designed to torture and detain Koreans who dared to oppose Japanese rule 1910-1945. The prison was originally constructed to house only 500 inmates, but at times it could be crammed with over 3000.The museum is clearly intended to detail the atrocities of the Japanese towards the occupied Koreans. Cell blocks are restored to give vistors an impression of what life here might have been like. Everything is carefully oraganised. Long grey corridors with overhead catwalks fan out from a central point with overhead to allow ease in controlling prisoners. Rooms decked out with vaguely cheesy mannequins graphically illustrate the tortures endured by prisoners nearly nonstop.
Perhaps most powerful is the execution room, a simple wooden structure behind a 2m stone fence. The inside is set up like a small theatre house with the condemned on a stool behind a procenium complete with curtains, and the officials seated in rows on risers. When the lever was pulled, the stool dropped, and the prisoner hanged. Behind the building a set of stairs lead to the basement so a guard can secretly go down to make sure he is dead. After that, the body is whisked away via secret tunnels to a public cemetery.More than the brutality, what struck me most in the exhibits was reverence in which the rebels are held. In every dsplay, they are referred to as 'our noble ancestor' , 'our patriotic ancestor' or even 'our revered ancestor' . I believe it is partly the cultural respect for ancestors mentioned above, and partly national pride/propaganda.
The other thought that struck me was that once again how history is written by whomever is currently in power. No doubt, the Japanese occupation was wrong, thousands of people wrongly imprisoned, and unspeakable violence done. The prison and the history books make that clear. That said, one of the displays was a diorama of a Korean village in which holographic figures act out scenes from the occupation. In one, a Korean scholar lobs a molotav coctail into a trio of Japanese, killing all three. Surely, had the rebellion failed, there would be a very different museum in place hailing the strong rule of the Japanese against the Korean 'terrorists'.
From the prison, we had a banquet of museums from which to choose. We opted for the National Museum of Contemporary Art. Once again we got more than we bargained for. The directions to the museum simply state "take subway line 5 to Grand Park". Grand park, is in fact, a huge park complex comprising not just our museum, but a zoo, a science center, an amusement park, and a park as we think of them (grass, trees, ponds, etc). It was so huge that we opted to use the park's tram system rather than walk the 30 minutes across the park in the cold.
Once we arrived at the museum we were in for another lucky surprise. The 2nd Saturday of every month the museum is totally free! The museum is housed in a 3-storey open-plan building. The review in the guidebook called it dissapointing, saying that there was too much unused space. Personally I prefer museum to give the art a little 'breathing room'.
We whiled away the rest of the afternoon getting an overview of 20th century Korean art. In many ways it did not seem to differ too much from American modern art. Perhaps this is a mistaken conception, as most modern art galleries in the US display works from around the globe, but I suspect that it has more to do with the transfer of information. Before the 20th century, communication was slow and though extensive in its reach (global trade, and hence global communication is not a new idea), it was very limited in scope. By the 20th century, however, communication had become fast and widepread. As a result ideas flowed back and forth across continents and cultures, resulting in a much more homogeonised art scene. That's my theory anyway.
The art museum was a good ride away from home, and as the temperature dropped with the setting of the sun, we were very grateful for the heated subway seats. The MTA could take a clue here!
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