Heads have started rolling for the Sungnyemun disaster, with You Hong-june offering to resign as head of the Cultural Heritage Administration.
As many readers know, I’m a big fan of You, and it’s sad to see him go. Nobody loves Korea’s cultural heritage more than he, and I truly believe he’s left behind a positive legacy, especially in opening up Korea’s cultural legacy to the general public.
Still, somebody had to take responsibility for the Sungnyemun blaze, and as head of the agency ostensibly in charge of protecting Korea’s cultural heritage, he was as good a candidate as any to do so. I wonder, though, whether the chief blame lies with the Cultural Heritage Administration, the National Police Agency, Seoul Metropolitan Government or all three.
Anyway, while many may now remember You as the “man who lost Sungnyemun,” I will remember him as the man who wrote the best line ever written about Korean architecture. “Korean architecture gains vitality only when there are people. Only when there are people can Korean architecture be preserved.”
Debate Time
The burning of Sungnyemun has also reopened the debate on the opening of Korea’s cultural properties to the general public, as this Herald Gyeongje piece reports.
Under You’s watch, the authorities opened up a great many cultural properties to the general public, including the Gyeonghoeru Pavilion and Geoncheonggung of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the Biwon Garden of Changdeokgung Palace and Seoul Fortress.
The area around Sungnyemun Gate, meanwhile, was turned into a citizen-friendly plaza in 2006 on the initiative of then-mayor Lee Myung-bak and approved by the Cultural Heritage Administration. Heunginjimun (Dongdaemun) Gate will be opened to the public in June.
Some, however, point out that cultural properties are suffering as a result. There have been cases of arson at Changgyeonggung Palace, Suwon Hwaseong Fortress and, of course, Sungnyemun Gate. There have been more cases of graffiti and other damage inflicted on cultural properties. You himself was not immune to the occasional gaff, such as when he held a cookout at a royal tomb in Yeoju following a function there.
Politicians are now calling for more emphasis to be placed on protecting cultural properties. One lawmaker has already submitted a bill to restrict access to cultural properties not equipped with fire protection facilities.
On the other hand, there are those who point out that there’s no direct link between the opening of cultural properties to the public and recent cases of arson — both the Suwon and Changgyeonggung cases involved structures long accessible to the public, and Sungnyemun was destroyed despite its wooden superstructure being off-limits to the public.
What you want to do — as a scholar points out in the Herald Gyeongje piece — is open up properties to the public, but as you do, formulate measures to protect them from the added threat.
What to Do?
Sprinkler system, I think, wouldn’t be a bad start. Unfortunately, there’s more to it. Go to the Gyeongbokgung, and you’ll see tons of kids running up and down on stone carvings in the steps of the buildings in full view of their parents and teachers. Then you have this:
That’s on the wall of this building, Geumsan-sa’s Mireukjeon Hall, the only three-story wood building left in Korea and National Treasure No. 62. I guess it really can’t complain, though — it’s faired a lot better than the Main Hall, which was Treasure No. 476 before it was burnt down in 1986 in a suspected case of Christian-inspired arson.
Assuming, for a moment, that we’re not going to post cops to watch over isolated temples on remote mountainsides, I don’t know how much can really be done to protect cultural properties other than to install CCTVs and to make damaging and defacing cultural properties prohibitively expensive. Sure, you could launch “Let’s Love Our Cultural Heritage” and “Let’s Not Carve ‘Cheolsu Loves Yeong-hee’ into the National Treasure” campaigns, but how effective would that be?
18 Comments
Well, it’s not his fault, it’s because of shape of the mountains. I’d also advise those of you who live in Seoul to pack up your bags and leave as crime rates are expected to greatly increase…
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww.....18705.html
This is even better than articles about fan death.
While education (propaganda) is not going to solve problems short term, it has certainly been shown to be effective over a generation.
I have an even harder time believing that coercive power is going to be more effective than education (again, longer-term), simply because of what I have seen in enforcement in other areas of life and society.
I agree that something needs to be done, but I’m not sure how to best go about it. Seems public shame and humiliation work pretty well for some things.
As a side note, the Buddha statue inside that building is very impressive! If you’re heading to Jeonju for the paper festival this spring you should squeeze in a visit to this temple.
So much for learning from one’s mistakes. If all the public servants resign, there’ll be no one left with experience.
Stick it all in glass, behind fences, disassemble and stick it in museums, and send it around the world to make money before it turns to dust! Either that, or create a junior guide corps for all those aspiring vandals to keep them from torching the national jewels and give these students some resume stuffers!
Appreciating history and culture is a luxury for those with an axe to grind and the wherewithal to bury it cleanly!
the seodaemun prison museum has some of the best graffiti and profanity i’ve ever seen in korea…it’s all over the museum and i don’t think any effort has been made to stop it
Right on Robert, great post on this issue — i hope that this one dramatic incident doesn’t result in irrational defensive measures.
A reporter of Time Magazine wrote me (i’m still here in San Francisco) asking for a quote on this issue, and i had nothing profound to offer, but did mostly agree with what you wrote…
Most of what i told her:
Preservation of historic and traditional-culture
sites is certainly under-funded and not-enough-attended-to — same as in most nations, as there are always more urgent budgetary priorities. Anti-fire measures like automatic sprinklers are notably lacking in Korea’s many old wooden buildings; usually there are only extinguishers
provided, which is inadequate. But then, hooking up the modern anti-fire tech would be very expensive.
Unlike these city gates, most of Korea’s old wooden buildings are under care of religious groups — mostly the Jogye Buddhist Order, some local Neo-Confucian
Associations — and Park authorities — and that is as it should be. I don’t support increased national control.
In the understandable very-upset public reaction to this, there might be a big national-government push to better-protect all kinds of these treasures, good in general, but might include restricting up-close access to them — I would oppose that.
One really nice thing about Korea is that there is extremely little public vandalism of the sort so common in the USA and parts of Europe. Teenagers aren’t brought up to see vandalism as “cool” self-expression, and adults rarely ever damage their ancestor’s legacy without cause.
That’s why you can walk right inside 400-year-old buildings and worship, take photos or whatever; why you can walk right up to 1300-year-old stone statues in the mountains, just standing in their original site out in
the forest, and touch their faces. There’s hardly any “security” like fences around them, because virtually nobody ever tries to damage them* — and that’s a truly
wonderful thing about Korean sites! I would hate to have that radically change, in response to one insane incident like the Namdae-mun arson. That would be an inappropriate response, because most treasures remain quite safe from damage by visitors.
* = except for a few attacks by fundamentalist Korean Christians, as documented in my 1999 book and on Frank Tedesco’s Buddhapia web-page, and some thefts of antique
paintings by gangster art-theives. But these have never become urgent problems.
By the way, one more little note for you: a lot of the folks commenting on this tragedy make a big deal out of Namdae-mun’s status as “National Treasure #1″. But that numbering system was created by the Japanese Colonial Authorities and is fairly ‘random’ — NT #3 has no more value than #103, neccesarily — Namdae-mun just happened
to be the first thing they put on the list. No real implication that it’s most important / precious. I think most well-informed observers would agree that Seokkur-am Grotto is S Korea’s most important / precious National Treasure, followed closely by the stoneworks of Bulguk-sa Temple — but those are # in the 20s & 30s i think…
Regarding your last comment, they do post conscripted police grunts outside of Yongsan at all hours of the night. There are enough of those guys to be posted at cultural sites across the country. Better yet, take volunteers form those conscripted guards, let them wear Chosun era uniforms, give them real pikes, and training on how to use them. That would scare away vandals better than the guys waiting around with plastic sticks, plus it would attract tourism like the guards at Buckingham palace.
The arsonist should be charged with treason. If convicted, they will always be recorded as a traitor. An attack (arson) like this is somewhat akin to an attack against all Koreans.
This is also a very nice post.
I noted a new security system at two old places of interest in Kangjin last week. They are more afraid of theft than arson in these cases.
I was thinking something along the lines of captbbq’s suggestion.
Frankly, Namdaemun looked better in photos when it was surrounded by traffic: those stereotypical night shots with streams of headlights and brake lights flowing around it were awesome. The prospect of sprinting across multiple lanes of Seoul traffic might have deterred the arsonist, but who knows what he might have done if Namdaemun didn’t present itself as such an opportunity?
I think Korea should let Japanese come in and take Korea’s cultural assets to Japan for safekeeping.
#11, as long as they aren’t stored at Kinkakuji.
#11. Still stoking the Japan fire? My guess is your bait will be taken. Pity.
Maybe the VANKers can go from chasing imaginary slights around the world to actually protecting something useful in Korea.
You could get those shots post-plaza, too:
http://photo.naver.com/view/2008021313082270084
BTW, Naver.com is doing a pretty cool photo campaign for Sungnyemun:
http://photo.naver.com/mission/8
About Sanshinseon’s comment about the meaninglessness of that “National Treasure No. 1″ designation, there was a good deal of debate a while back about changing the order — or at least No. 1 — in order to make it more “value” representative… and to rid the system of a Japanese colonial legacy:
http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news.....ode=990304
It was a joke, Mr. Charming. Pity you didn’t get it.
As for the graffiti…It’s not just in Korea. Korean graffiti can be found on many national monuments and public buildings around the world. The government should really think about educating people about that problem.
#17, I agree, although graffiti in English and other languages are also present everywhere around the world, so I don’t think we can exactly pinpoint it on solely Koreans.
Anyways, we need to have more people like You Hong-june that actually care about Korean culture. Many of my younger cousins living in Korea actually said that all of the “old buildings in Seou” (aka, traditional wooden Korean buildings) were becoming an eyesore, and that they much prefer buildings of the more Western variety.