Holding on to heritage

By Seoh Bong-seong

Last autumn I returned to the elementary school where I spent six years studying. It was built in 1907 in a city 32 kilometers from Daejeon. I hadn’t visited for a long time and things had changed so much I almost couldn’t recognize it.

In the 1970s, the school was such a nice place that many people visited it. At that time, you could see the school’s emblem as you approached the main entrance. To the right, a stunning garden awaited you after you passed through the gate. Among the various species of trees and flowers were a few majestic red pines, as well as stone benches to rest upon. There were parallel bars, slides, and seesaws on the other side.

If you followed the school walls, you would come to an old guest house managed by the municipal government and a document repository that dated to the Joseon Kingdom. Then, on the western edge of the school were the residences for the principal and vice principal, behind which were a well, a night watchman's office, and a barbershop, which was popular among students, teachers, and neighbors alike for its reasonable prices. Every year in mid-October, the school held a sports festival that drew so much participation from the area that it could be considered a city festival.

The school is now a four-floor cement structure that differs little from a common apartment building. The wooden facilities have been erased from the landscape. Everything that had once been there is now gone, with the exception of the main entrance. Low metal fences now surround the campus, rather than the bricks that once enclosed it.

In the 1960s, the main gate of Seoul’s Deoksu Palace, called Daehanmun, was in a different location than it is now. It was moved when they expanded Taepyong Street, but it was originally where a subway exit now exists, in the direction of ``Namdaemun” (The South Gate). During the 1960s and ’70s, poor couples and college students frequented the Cheongjind-dong alley to enjoy a dish of very spicy broiled octopus and makgeolli (traditional Korean rice wine). I still remember the taste of it. The government, however, removed all those tasty eateries, which even foreigners knew well, in the name of redevelopment.

When you visit Taiwan or Japan, you can easily find wonderful restaurants that have stood for more than 100 years. Eating at them transports you to other, romantic times. No matter what it is, if Japanese people believe something to be important traditionally or historically, they will do whatever they can to preserve it. In Taiwan, they still use and maintain the central government building that was built when the country was under Japanese colonial rule.

In Korea, workers demolished the central government building during the Kim Young-sam government in order to rub away the scar of Japanese colonial rule. It was a solid stone building, designed by a German architect, and was appreciated for its design both here and abroad. Can we erase shameful historical facts by removing a building? If so, why don’t we dismantle the Seoul railway station building and the Korea Bank building. It would be better to efficiently make use of places like that.

The government also tore down apartments built for foreigners during the Park Chung-hee administration to preserve the Mt. Nam landscape. Wouldn’t it have been better to rent them out and use the money collected to help the disadvantaged?

Is taking a shortcut to join the ranks of advanced countries the right way to go? Should we remove shameful relics of the past and old places enjoyed by people in order to “develop” the areas with new concrete structures? Or should we preserve the reminders of the past, be they painful or shabby? The way to really improve our country, for both future generations of Koreans and travelers from abroad is to hold onto our heritage.

The writer is a professor of the Department of Chinese Language Culture in Jeju International University. His email address is benseoh@naver.com.