Regrets for Cultural Tragedy
Dear editor,
I was in tears at the news of the senseless destruction of the Namdaemun gate. I was a U.S. soldier stationed in Korea in the 1970s.
Namdaemun is the one image of Seoul that has remained clearly etched in my mind through the years as a touchstone of Korean culture and history, preserved in the midst of a modern metropolis.
This act of vandalism, aimed at the very heart of the Korean nation, succeeded precisely because it was so senseless, and one can hardly fault the authorities for failing to prevent something so malicious and unimaginable.
But the suspect responsible for the arson has been forgiven before for a similar crime, so I can only hope the judicial authorities incarcerate this miscreant where he can do no future harm.
My deepest regrets and sympathies go out to the Korean people for this cultural tragedy. And I hope the government will choose to fund the restoration from charitable donations so that individual Koreans and friends of the Korean people around the world may participate in the project as a way of alleviating their sense of loss.
A reconstruction is of course not the original. It will in fact be only a monument to the memory of Namdaemun, no matter how faithfully the builders re-create the original architecture. But we can at least hope it will lift the spirits of everyone who mourns the loss of this historic wooden structure, as I do.
Ron Garrett
Morrisville, North Carolina, U.S.A.