Korean War Museum II

Andrew and I had vacation July 24^th –Aug 1^st, so instead of going somewhere exotic, we decided to finish seeing the sites we had missed in Seoul. I enjoy going to Seoul, however it does make me miss the calm and less chaotic life we live in Ulsan.

The first thing we wanted to see was the War Museum of Korea. If you remember from an earlier post, we had been to the museum last October during Chuseok, but only toured the outside facilities. This time, we wanted to check out the inside of the museum.

The inside is massive and after spending over two hours there, I was glad we split the museum into two visits. We were also exited to see that last month was the 60^th anniversary of the Korean War, so they were having a special DMZ exhibition.

After walking through the many rooms and eras of Korean history, I was once again reminded that I am glad I’m American. No wonder most of my students dislike history so much. There is so much history on the Korean Penninsula and so many wars, and enemies, and heroes, and facts…it was hard to keep everything straight. My favorite part of the museum was the part dedicated to the Korean War. They had a really great exhibit dedicated to the countries in the United Nations that aided the South during the war. I was very proud to be an American when I entered that room and read everything that the USA did to help the South. It truly is the forgotten war for the USA, and it saddens me that we were not taught more about it in history classes growing up.

One of the coolest things in this exhibit was “The Drop.” In rememberence of both Korean and U.N soldiers who lost their lives in the war, 1,300 I.D tags form the shape of a tear drop. The iron thorns symbolize the horror of the tragic war.

The DMZ exhibit was $5 extra a piece but since the next day we were going to the real DMZ, we thought it would be interesting. It was mostly just pictures and photographs but the disappointing thing was that it was completely in Korean. I wish we would have been told, but we were still able to enjoy the pictures, we just wish we could have read the captions in order to get more out of it. I thought it was a very nice display for the people of Korea to get a chance to see inside the DMZ since they are not allowed to visit the real DMZ. The people of Korea are still not allowed to visit the 38^th parallel because the government still fears that in desperation to see their families, people would try to cross the boarder and then would immediately be killed by North Korean soldiers.