 A building on Yeonpyeong Island remains unoccupied because of damage caused by the shelling by North Korea. / Photo Matthew Crawford |
By Matthew C. Crawford
YEONPYEONG ISLAND ― The town on Yeonpyeong Island seemed almost deserted when I arrived on a Saturday afternoon in early April. Though all the doors were unlocked, it took three tries to find a restaurant that was staffed. There were more people in the side lanes, where slow moving oldsters stayed out of the way of kids zooming past on their bikes. Young and old alike seemed not to notice the charred wreckage of houses that had been destroyed by artillery or burned down in the ensuing fires.
North Korea attacked on Nov. 23, 2010 and the citizens were evacuated to Incheon for three months. While almost everyone has returned now, life is still unstable. In the week before I arrived a live firing drill was held on the island, the second of these since the incident. No one knew how North Korea would react, so the residents were urged to evacuate again, temporarily.
Ra-ok, a woman who worked at the only large bar in town and who only gave her first name, said everyone was still on edge. There weren’t any customers in the bar because everyone goes to Incheon during the weekend.
She was sleeping on the afternoon of the attack. Still not fully conscious after the first shells landed, she thought she was hearing a South Korean firing drill, with the heavy guns aimed into the ocean. Then the windows broke and the walls started shaking as the shells struck closer. Seizing her purse and whatever money there was, she ran to the door. First she emptied the glass shards from her rubber boots, then she kicked the door loose from its frame. Together with her mother Ra-ok reached the harbor and boarded a slow boat to Incheon while her house was being destroyed.
Walking across the island, one notices swathes of forest that have been cleared from hill slopes. Trenches have been dug along roads and spaces have been bulldozed out of the sides of hills to serve as parking spots for tanks. While the military presence has increased, with new facilities added to the many that existed before, there is little separation between the marines and the civilians. Tourists are free to wander almost anywhere, though the beach, facing the North Korean shoreline, will only be open for one month this summer. For now it is lined with a barbed wire fence constantly patrolled by marines.
While gazing through a telescope at the Manghyang observation point, scanning the hazy outline of the North Korean shore, I noticed a cluster of Chinese fishing boats right along the Northern Limit Line. On the northwest side of the island is another scenic viewpoint, the “Tourist Lookout Point,” with views of North Korea and Yeonpyeong Island’s precipitous cliffs. A museum has been constructed here in homage to the island’s other staple, the yellow corvina, a fish used in a spicy local soup. There is also a monument here to the naval officers who died in the clashes of 1999 and 2002. No doubt, space will have to be made for the four South Koreans who fell in the recent attack. Stranger than the sappy piano music that started up when we passed an automatic sensor was the newly constructed fitness park, with a dozen vacant exercise machines.
Ra-ok has being living in one of the 30 or so pre-fabricated houses provided for families who lost their homes. These “containers,” as she calls them, have been set up on the field of the elementary school. When asked why the ruined houses haven’t been demolished yet, she explained that the owners have to sign a release form for their house to be rebuilt. Many are holding out to be compensated for the contents of their homes as well as the structural damage. There are a few moments of silence in the empty bar as Ra-ok shakes her head. Then she sums up: “We’re worth no more than flies.”
