Seodemun Prison
February 8th, 2007 by Sean
In northern Seoul there is a Prison that was built during the Japanese occupation used to imprison, torture and execute Korean nationalists and freedom fighters. This heritage sight is very well preserved as a museum. We had a very nice English speaking volunteer offer to give us a tour of the place. It was pretty fascinating while at the same time disturbing. Its very unique to actually be in the same place, walk the same paths and stand in the same rooms as victims did less than 62 years ago.
It’s quite haunting. It’s strange, Koreans have had such a horrible history of occupation after occupation. There entire history is a violent and losing one. The volunteer was unapologetic about the events that went on at the prison, yet seemingly unphased in comparison to so many other tragedies in their history. Good news those tragedies give us 15 holidays a year, but we weren’t thinking that at the time. They really know how to get the point across here. There are dioramas of people getting tortured complete with blood and bone chilling screams in each rooms. Full size mannequins of people starving to death and trying to kill themselves in tiny cells. In addition, visitors to the museum and take part in reenactments of what it was like you can sit inform of a 3 person jury of Japanese prison wardens and plead you case not to be executed. Seated on a stool it suddenly drops a foot and that is supposed to show you what it is like to be hanged without notice. The tour guide puts you into a vertical coffin actually used by the Japanese as a torture devise She locks you in there for 5 minutes regardless of your protests. After the 5 minutes she opened the door “this is a good time for pictures she said, I was like “get me the eff out of this thing”. You can see here how especially tight it was for a guy my height. I wasn’t closet-phobic until now. This is a picture of me with the door open.
So like I said.. they really do diligence in trying to get you to relate you what happened here. I couldn’t imagine spending 3 days in it. After all the movies with torture I have watched I always thought “for the right cause I could last and fight till the end” yeah right – I am a complete pansy. Along the tour we went in to the actual cell blocks where we were told up to 30 people stayed in a 10′ x 10′ cell. Then on to the walk to the execution room. The horrible thing was, the hanging building was right next to the area in which outside family was allowed to visit prisoners. This means that prisoners thought there were going to see a loved one and then about 15 steps before the gate they are pulled sideways towards towards the execution building and their imminent deaths. There is an old tree there that has hue chunks of its bark removed form doomed prisoners wailing and holding on for their lives only to be ripped away, along with chunks of bark, and led to their deaths. Again, it was chilling to be touching the same tree, walking the same steps.
The tour finished with a pumping full of Korean nationalism. Given the tour, and all they have been through, we were all shouting “Manze!” (10,000 prayers to Korea) by the end of it.
