Empires Light Becomes Modern Landscape
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
The word lighthouse resonates romantically in most Koreans' minds _ an image of a lonely light beaming across the dark seas from a tip of the land, to guide ships through waves and rocks. A song in elementary school's music textbook, titled ``Lighthouse Keeper,'' praises the ``saintly and beautiful mind of love'' of lighthouse keepers who endure isolated lives for the good of others.
Joo Kang-hyun, director of the Research Institute of Korean Folk Studies and board member of the Ocean Culture Foundation, does not sympathize with this view. ``Now as well as in the past, lighthouses are first and foremost government offices,'' declares Joo with authority in his new book ``Lighthouse (in Korean/ Joo Kang-hyun; Thinking Tree: 584 pp., 27,000 won).''
But this rather fantasy-shattering, dreary definition of the lighthouse is not definitive tone of the book. Joo, who is dubbed the ``fierce archivist'' among historians and folk studies researchers, presents the history of 40 of the lighthouses dotted along the southern half of the Korean Peninsula based on his visits there and talks with lighthouse keepers. The result is more than a travelogue or introduction of lighthouses, offering a look into history and culture of modern Korea.
It is illustrative that the 100th anniversary of the first light shed by a lighthouse on the Korean Peninsula was celebrated in 2003. The first lighthouses coincided with imperial Japan's landing here. During the few decades that followed 1903, the lights from those lighthouses primarily served as ``lights of empire,'' guiding imperial ships and watching out for their enemies.
Incheon, which holds record for many ``firsts'' as the gateway to capital Seoul, for example, was also the first place to have a lighthouse built by Japanese architects. Palmido Island, an off-limit point of military importance, had a 7.9-meter-high lighthouse _ which has after centenary existence retired into a local cultural heritage. More muscular, 26-meter-high ``grandson'' lighthouse has been serving right beside it since December 2003.
The ``sea route signalmen'' _ as lighthouse keepers themselves prefer to be called _ were 100 percent Japanese during the Japanese colonial rule, with Koreans merely waiting on them. Radios were specially granted to the Japanese serving on lighthouses to console their solitude during the 1920s. Ironically, so they became the first ones to hear the news of Japan's defeat and Korea's national liberation on Aug. 15, 1945, through radio _ a rare item at the time.
When the Japanese left, the lights momentarily went out. Few Koreans had necessary technical knowledge. Those in the navy, or those who were waiting on Japanese lighthouse keepers, were recruited to replace them.
While most of the lighthouses are brimming with stories from the colonial era, those on the farthest north of the South Korean territorial waters mirror the history of divided Korea, some having only been built in the 1970s.
During the turbulent South-North relations in the 1960s and 1970s, the lights from the lighthouses on the northeastern front in Daejin and Geojin in Goseong, Gangwon Province, had nothing to do with romantic symbol for ``beacon of hope.'' Rather, they drew barbed wires across water, preventing fishing ships from crossing the line into the North. While the forbidding lights lost much of its authority since the opening of the inter-Korean road along the eastern coast _ which links Goseong and Mount Geumgang in the North _ the lights still blink habitually across the borderline, N38°33", Joo writes.
Overall, lighthouses have now become a natural part of scenic Korean landscape _ often favorite places for tourists on the lookout for a historic site with romantic aura.
At the end of the book, the author offers tips for those who might be determined to visit and explore the charms of lighthouses themselves, along with practical itineraries. Joo wrote a few basic etiquettes: first, never ask for a ``cup of water'' at lighthouse.
While there may be some exceptions, lighthouse keepers on islands, who buy drinking water from land and store rain for bathing, will suffer from hundreds of thousands of tourists who casually ask for water. Second, if you plan to stay overnight at a lighthouse, bring your own food and, if by any chance you get treated, wash your own bowls; do not make lighthouse keepers, who forever cook and washes dishes for themselves their entire life, wash your dishes too.
The 52-year-old author plans to roll out a few more books on lighthouse in the coming months. ``Every lighthouse, however beautiful it may be, is etched with the labor of the Koreans who were mobilized to ignite the light of the empire.'' But over time, ``they became invaluable cultural heritages that testify more than a century of history.'' Despite the stern attitude of the writer against shallow romanticism, it seems inevitable that a whiff of romantic aura rises around a lighthouse.