PHOTOS Memorial Day honors Korea's fighting heroes
A woman sobs in front of a family member's tombstone at Seoul National Cemetery in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, on June 5. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
A classmate, center, visits his friend's grave at Seoul National Cemetery on June 5. They graduated together from Seoul High School in Seocho-gu in the late 1940s. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
Kindergarten students visit Seoul National Cemetery to present flowers on June 5. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
A man pays his respects at Seoul National Cemetery on June 5. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
Situated in the middle of Seoul, Seoul National Cemetery draws visitors throughout the year but more in the lead-up to Memorial Day on June 6. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
By Ko Dong-hwan
Memorial Day on Wednesday honors the men and women who died fighting to protect the country.
At Seoul National Cemetery in Dongjak-gu, visitors pay their respects to more than 164,000 people enshrined there.
The cemetery, where Korean soldiers who fought in the Korean War are buried, fills with visitors around the statutory holiday. Street vendors sell flower bouquets in front of the entrance near Dongjak subway station for visitors wanting to pay a floral tribute.
The place is so large ― 1.43 million square meters ― that visitors need to check a map to locate the rows and tomb numbers of their loved ones.
The cemetery ran out of space in the early 1970s and another was opened in Daejeon in 1979. It covers almost 3.3 million square meters.
At the Seoul cemetery, many burials were for victims of the Korean War (1950-53), which officially has not ended. It is still subject to a truce agreed by China, North Korea and the United States.
At the Pyongyang-Washington summit in Singapore on June 12, a peace treaty is expected to replace the truce. Together with North Korea's “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization,” the possible end of the war is considered one of the greatest breakthroughs anticipated in the meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Amid such an unprecedented era of peace in Northeast Asia since the Korean War, the heroes interred at the cemetery lay asleep as if nothing new has broken the chill underground. Only the friendly footsteps of visitors, the sobbing sounds of the bereaved and stories told by them may show these souls that history hasn't been still and, these days, their sacrifices are especially appreciated.