Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Mall: Korean War Veterans Memorial




I was very young in 1953, but old enough to hear about the Korean War. Murmurs, phrases. There were no sons on our street old enough to go fight there. And the Dads were too old. We had a black and white TV and I'd hear voices booming out about it when the news was on. But that all faded from my mind, and I don't even remember ever studying this war in school. It was a thing of the past.

All that changed when I flew to South Korea in 2002 with my husband to attend the FIFA Men's World Cup Championship tournament. I hadn't really wanted to go to Korea. With no sense of the language we were relying on the good graces of the citizens, our guide book with phrases we'd studied, and the tour buses and trains to get to the various venues. During one break between matches we heard about a tour to the DMZ. Just thinking of it made me nervous. I didn't want to go. But I did. Something told me I should be there. We rode the bus through long miles of rice paddies and hilly country with tea bushes and grapes sculpturing the steeps.

The demilitarized zone was full of soldiers, barracks, thoughts of war, & precise changing of possession of the building that housed a table which was divided in half lengthwise by an imaginary line so that one half was in the South and the other in the North. I didn't know all of that before we visited. When we arrived we were ushered into a theatre room and then saw a movie. It educated us about the history of the Zone. How a soldier was killed because he was hacking off a branch of a tree that blocked the South's view of the North. Killed with the ax. Of North Koreans being shot & killed when they tried to run to the South across the bridge. How the North Koreans had created an entire ghost city that looked industrious and beautiful across the river where workers were bussed in each day to work the fields before returning home once again. It was to entice folks to cross into a prosperous looking North.




We were warned and tutored in how to behave before venturing outside close to the demarcation line. Number one, we weren't to raise our hands above our heads, nor shout, nor make large gestures with our hands and arms. And two, we were to follow without fail those precise instructions, entering the Observation Tower when told to, and then the shared building where when inside we could step into North Korea. Some fellow standing next to me in the Observation Tower evidently didn't think much of these commands and absentmindedly raised his arm above his head. I didn't appreciate this as I was standing right next to him. I told him to lower it, nervously admonishing him because he was putting us all in jeopardy -- even though it made me feel like an old school marm. We had to wait longer than usual because there was an unusually large group touring from North Korea and they got first dibs on the building.



I asked one US soldier accompanying us what it was like there. he said, "Lonely. I've only been here a week. I get hazardous duty pay here. There's not much to do. There is a golf course. The North Koreans play really loud music late at night to disrupt our sleep."

This trip had a huge impact on me. Life changing. It led us to the Korean War Museum in Seoul a few days later. Life-sized panoramas of war and village scenes brought the devastation home. And they had a copy of the music that blared from the loud speakers recreating that harrowing sound of horses hooves galloping right at you at the So. Korean side. We spent most of the afternoon there taking everything in. Educating ourselves on what it was like to have lived and still live in this divided country.



Upon approaching this memorial in DC so far away from the Pacific Ocean, I was struck immediately by the realism here and the representation of Americans intermingled with Korean countrymen fighting side by side in miserable circumstances. Life size figures staking out territory with war worn gaunt faces looking hard for any movement that might be the enemy.

So many Americans wonder why the US was there. Now I know. And I found this dedication at the Memorial:

OUR NATION HONORS
HER SONS AND DAUGHTERS
WHO ANSWERED THE CALL
TO DEFEND A COUNTRY
THEY NEVER KNEW
AND A PEOPLE
THEY NEVER MET
1950 KOREA 1953


1 comment:

Unknown said...

Blog fodder for you!

Just tagged you with a 10-20-30 meme.

http://o-scientist.blogspot.com/2008/03/10-20-30-procastinators-unite.html

Karen