Cheonan and the Independence Hall

I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Cheonan a couple weekends back with my good friend Trevan Hauck from my college days. He is a teacher up in Cheonan and it was my first big trip out of my region and into the northern part of South Korea. It was a weekend full of catching up, meeting new people, Noribang (karaoke), and the Independence Hall of Korea.

Just outside of Cheonan tucked in the lush green of Korea lies a massive monument. It’s chilling and overpowering at first site. I equated it with the Jedi Temple from Star Wars when I first saw it. The Independence Hall is in fact a large collection of buildings and museums. At it’s center lies a gargantuan monument. The Great Hall of the Nation. It’s a modern building with traditional Matbaejibung tile roofing. The building itself is 126 meters long, 68 meters wide and 45 meters tall, or about 15 stories high. It is the largest tile-roofed building in all of Asia. Its size is imposingly powerful, beautiful and ugly at the same time. Inside the pillared hall is a statue, the Statue of Indomitable Koreans. It’s a very Western style statue, almost Roman or even Russian in style, a symbol of the movement for freedom in Korea.

After passing through the Great Hall you arrive at the complex of museums. There are seven in all, each cataloguing the history of Korea from 5,000 years ago to 1950. The focus of each museum especially focuses on this idea of Korean autonomy and the movement for freedom and independence.

The first building showcases Korean history from 5,000 years ago to the beginning of the modern era. Vases, models, artifacts and weaponry dot this building. The building is called The Origin of the Korean People. It is a lot of information crammed into one building. One unique item was Admiral Yi Sun-Sin's sword. It’s a massive and almost samurai like sword. It would be like seeing William Wallace’s sword. Yi Sun-Sin was the admiral who defeated the Japanese in a naval battle in the 1500’s, his image now graces some of Korea’s currency.

The next five buildings are all in regards to Korea’s relationship with Japan. It’s a rocky relationship dating back hundreds of years. The real debacle began in the 1860’s and in 1905 Japan took total control over the Korean peninsula. Decades of brutal occupation and imperial rule followed until 1945. The struggle for independence climaxed in the failed revolutionary movement on March 1^st, 1919. The March 1^st Movement or Samil (3-1) movement signaled the beginning of a massive protest against the Japanese regime. Over two million Koreans took part in the movement that comprised of over one thousand different protests. A declaration of independence was created but the movement eventually ended in failure. The iron fist of Japan tightened even more.

Japanese rule ended at the close of WWII. It is around here where the museum ends it’s telling of the story of Korea. What follows is the tragic division between North and South. It’s an incident that could have been avoided had America taken a tougher stance against Stalin and had not drawn that fateful line across Korea. Korea, a people and a nation had for thousands of years been one people, even in the face of Japanese occupiers. Now they are bitter enemies, North and South, the result of a hasty line in the sand.

(The last building is The Experience Hall of the Independence Movement and is more geared towards children)

I picked up on several different things during my visit to the museums. One is the extreme nationalism, bordering on over the top but at the same time very admirable. Something that isn’t seen anymore in Western societies, a love of one’s people that runs deep. Another thing was the blatant portrayal of the Japanese as the harbingers of Korea’s destruction. It is a true and tragic story, one that Japan still struggles with today. Indeed there is a deep-seeded hatred among many Koreans against the Japanese that I see off and on. Some love Japan, some hate without forgiveness. Events over sixty years ago still linger in the minds of Koreans, many of them children. The displays in the museums depict glorious scenes of the Korean people marching forward towards independence. There are also scenes of rape, torture, massacres, and violence that fuel this hatred. Children come on field trips to view these scenes without the understanding and maturity necessary to grasp what they are seeing. For adults it means something different. We can gain lessons from the dark days bygone. The challenge is how do we teach these lessons to our children. Do we do it with a visual onslaught? However, who am I to say what they can do or should do? It’s a slippery slope. Most important it’s a different culture that should be respected and this is a story that defines them. We all want to be respected for our cultural background and our country’s history.

If we can steer away from things that fuel the fires of anger and hatred than it’s all the more better. History is a slippery slope…

http://www.i815.or.kr/html/en/ -The official website for the Independence Hall