Nice article in today’s English JoongAng on the progress of the rebuilding Namdaemun (the south gate).
The key appears to be getting enough quality pine trees in Korea, which after years of industralization and deforestation, are apparently in short supply.
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been told in the past that the Japanese systematically destroyed the revered Korean pine trees expressly to break the spirit of the people of the peninsula.
No support was offered for the claim, which I wrote it off as another anti-Japanese rant.
I’m curious if anyone else here has heard that rumor.
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I don’t know about it either… but it’s more likely that Japan took the trees to feed their war effort. I’d reckon that “breaking the spirit” of the Korean people were secondary concerns.
It’s also equally likely that Korea cut all the trees down to feed their own industrialization efforts.
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Back in the ’90′s, I saw video of iron rods being removed that had supposedly been driven into the ground by the Japanese to ruin the Kn. pen’s chi. If true, then the tree thing could have a hidden kernel to it.
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“I have been told in the past that the Japanese systematically destroyed the revered Korean pine trees expressly to break the spirit of the people of the peninsula.”
May as well toss the squirrels into that one.
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# 3,
Yeah, head about the metal spikes in Korea thing.
Wrote about it at “Ask A Korean” blog some time ago:
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2007/02/korea-japan-relation-saga-part-iii-wwii.html?showComment=1208814000000#c2925145331866243780
Some Japanese claim that they were not metal spikes to dissipate “chi” energy but were really land surveyor markers.
Maybe some were. However, I did see pictures of these metal spikes being inserted in a ceremony presided by Shinto priests, which I thought was odd. Also odd is that some of these metal spikes have Taoist slogans on them…
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Mi-serable-C-zar #5,
if you actually knew anything about your Korean Buddhism that naturally comes with a combo study of Korean shaman stuff,
you would have already known the real basics of poong-soo-ji-ri and some rites done to alter ‘ki’.
You are a horrendous pretender and an annoying dick.
Japanese did a lot of things that were weird in Korea. Spikes in certain mountains with Chinese wordings on them. These are basically similar to bujuks.
they built Shinto shrines in places that fit the poongsoojiri, according to their Shinto religion.
let me dumb it down for you. It’s basically as if Muslims came over to Christian nation, and converted the churches to mosques.
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Wangkon (#5),
Why does the old “Japan spiked Korea” myth resurface every few years? It’s like a bad penny. The Marmot helped spread the myth when he wrote something about it HERE in 2004 , and now you bring it up again.
Is this the Baektu Spike Ceremony you are talking about?
The object the priest is standing in front of is not a spike. It is the table leg from a ceremonial table that looked something like THIS. Notice the base at the bottom of the leg. Would a spike have that?
The “Japan Spiked Korea” myth is one of the sillier anti-Japanese attacks that Koreans have come up with, except for maybe this new one about Japan cutting down Korea’s pine trees to break the Korean spirit.
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gbevers,
I saw the article in question, but that’s not the picture I’m referring to. It had a frontal shot of the Shinto priest and the table was not present.
The caption on that photo said something like, “Shinto priest praying over spike after insertion…” or something like that. Can’t find the photo right now, but I saw it on the web a few years back.
There are unfortunately few sources in English that document this claim.
This article might be interesting for consumption:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/manoa/v011/11.2kang.html
Particularly paragraphs around and after [page 34]. What were nearly 9,000 of these spikes doing underneath the Government-General Building?
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The Japanese can’t win — they cut down pine trees and people are pissed, then they plant cherry trees and people are pissed.
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Korea was significantly deforested well before the Japanese colonial period. “Anecdotal” evidence can be found in any collection of photographs from the late 19th/early 20th century. Some that I have show that there were no trees to speak of on Namsan, Naksan, Imwangsan, Sungbuk ridge, including the large hillock right behind the blue house or even the southern slopes of greater Bukhansan circa 1900. Gojong and the Mins also sold off huge tracts in the North to Russian logging interests – that’s where Yul Brynner’s father and grandfather made some dosh — in order to finance their courtly frivolities (instead of desperately needed modernization).
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Anyway, they can always import fine old pines of the requisite girth from Japan.
That’s what my neighbor did when he built a very large (~300 kan) hanok (with modern heating and plumbing and windows) next door. I hadn’t seen beams like those used for the frame since I disassembled and rebuilt a barn in upstate New York that had been built in the 18th century (those were maple and oak, though).
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# 7 and 9,
Are there any Koreans saying that the Japanese cut down a lot of pine trees to “break the spirit of the people”? Or are we stretching for straw men?
As mentioned in my comment in #2, I haven’t heard of it. But, maybe it’s a popular sentiment… don’t know. No Koreans have affirmed it in this thread.
# 11,
I’m sure for someone’s hanok, that type of import would be fine, but for National Treasure # 1? Highly doubtful that would even be seriously considered. Although Baekje coffins were made from imported Japanese cedar, but that was a different place… A different time.
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Wangkon,
You saw a Shinto priest standing in a photo, without a table, and the caption read that he was praying over a mewly inserted spike? Did you actually see the spike, or did you just believe the silly caption? Why would a Shinto priest have to pray over an evil spike insertion? Does it not work without the prayer?
If there were a photo of a Shinto priest praying over a spike sticking out of the ground, I am positive that Korea’s English language newspapers would have run the story, as well. Therefore, I do not think you saw a Shinto priest standing over a spike.
Don’t you think it is possible that Japan’s so-called gi-breaking spikes were just building foundation rebar, cadastral survey monument spikes, and spikes used to run safety lines on mountain trails?
When Japan annexed Korea, she did cadastral surveys of the country. To an ignorant, superstitious Korean at the time, driving survey monument spikes into the peaks of Korea’s mountains may have seemed like a sinister act, but why do Koreans today still believe in such crap?
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ask the shaman expert of the Marmot’s Hole, sanshinseon.
Unless, he conveniently chooses to shield himself from actions that may validate Korean misgivings towards Japan.
I have no further input. All I have is sayings, saw this somewhere, read this somewhere, etc. It has to do with Korean shaman, Shinto, etc.
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#10 and #11,
Yul Brynner’s roots? Great!
And Canada needs to export lots of pine and spruce – why not make Korea The Hub of Conifer Importage?
#13,
Yes, with typical efficiency, the Japanese set to work getting the lay of the land, so to speak.
I don’t know whether it’s apocryphal or not, but the story goes the Humbolt was nearly killed in _ (I forget the country) while taking his geodesic surveys; the natives were suspicious – maybe the country was Mexico.
It does sound like nationalistic ignorance coming out to play.
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Cadaster (also cadastre)- a public record, survey or map of the value, extent and ownership of land as a basis of taxation. – (adj.) – cadastral
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#15,
There are plenty of large pine trees in the Maritime Provinces of Canada. These pine trees used to be harvested for the masts of the British Navy’s ships (the legends of Paul Bunyan have been traced to Fabian “Saginaw Joe” Fournier, a Canadian some believe may have worked in the Madawaska region of New Brunswick (right on the border with Maine), the area where most of these large pine trees were harvested before moving on to logging camps in the US).
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Excellent! Ridicule, scorn and contempt – that’s the Gerry Bevers the crowd comes out to see. Please continue to stay in character. When you go all user-81 on us and start offering us never-ending commentary on politics, education, poetry, the afterlife and anything else that crosses your mind you only degrade your brand and drain your credibility. Now go get, em, tiger.
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gbevers,
From the internet searching I can do, there appears to be somewhat unsubstantiated claims from both sides. I’ve actually emailed Dr. Min Soo Kang to see if he’s got any English language documentation to substantiate Korean geomancy claims.
The evidence that I could dig up on the Japanese side tend to deride Korean geomancers of the past and present without providing a lot of documentation. That’s not evidence in my book.
On the surface of it, it appears that Japanese claims that these were merely survey markers sounds more plausible, particularly to modern audiences. However, for the Japanese to use geomancy during their occupation of Korea also has a ring of authenticity in my opinion. Japan was clearly more modernized in the early 20th century, but were still a pretty superstitious bunch. You are talking about a people who thought that a shy amateur marine biologist was a god and did all manners of bad things in “his” name. It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that they tried it.
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superstitious is an understatement.
They threw away their lives for the Emperor. For visual, re-watch the Clint Eastwood film.
Not only them, but Koreans did it, too.(Park Chunghee somehow survived, maybe he didn’t love the Emperor enough)
Koreans also believed the Tenno was god in the flesh.
Shinto religion part of life. I think it still is.
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wjk,
This story would suggest that not all Koreans were as devout.
http://thomo.coldie.net/history/korean-soldiers-in-ww2-german-army
But of course some were “as devout.”
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/05/09/controversy-over-proposed-memorial-for-korean-kamikaze-pilots/
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Wangkon (#19):
“Unsubstantiated claims from both sides”?
It is Korea who is making the claim that Japan spiked Korea, so shouldn’t it be Korea’s responsibility to provide the evidence to substantiate the claim, rather than Japan’s?
I assume that you did not see a spike in the photo you mentioned about, but rather just a Korean caption saying it was a spiking ceremony. Is that considered evidence in your book?
Do you happen to know the Japanese name for “Korean gi-killing spiking ritual”?
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“It is Korea who is making the claim that Japan spiked Korea, so shouldn’t it be Korea’s responsibility to provide the evidence to substantiate the claim, rather than Japan’s?”
On what basis do you say that? It was Japan who lost the war and lost their colonies per the Potsdam Accords. The Japanese have a lot to answer for. It’s unfortunate that the “answering for” was limited to only the major Allied powers (minus Communist China, which didn’t have a government in 1945). But anyway, expanding this argument gives me a headache and I’m not in the mood to have a bird walking 100 plus comment thread that was originally about the rebuilding of the Namdaemun, a subject that is deserving in its own right to comment on.
No I didn’t literally see the spike pounded in via the photo I had mentioned. It was a caption, but it wasn’t a Korean book either. I’ll readily admit that I’m not an expert in this field. There are so few Korean scholars who are non-Korean to begin with. When it gets distilled into more specialized studies, it’s admittedly hard to find information, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it’s locked within Korean language sources. However, I think this is a good place to see if meaningful evidence exists and I’ll spend some time here.
Based on your response, other than condescending dismissals, it doesn’t appear that you have any real “evidence” either.
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Speaking of Sungnyemun and the Japanese, Yonhap ran this piece today — it’s been on the front page of Naver.com:
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LS2D&mid=sec&sid1=103&sid2=245&oid=001&aid=0002431681
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Wangkon (#23),
We were not talking about Japan’s losing the war. We were talking about Korean claims of Japanese driving metal spikes into Korea mountains to break the Korean spirit.
Real evidence for what? To prove that Japan did not drive spikes in Korean mountains to break the Korean spirit?
I will provide my evidence disproving Korean claims as soon as you provide evidence that the core of the moon is not made of green cheese, and I want more than opinion.
By the way, you are right. We are off topic.
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By the way, Wangkon, though I take issue with your spiking comments, I generally enjoy your posts.
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I agree with Sperwer on the treeless mountains of Korea. Many of my photographs from the 1890s and on all show bare mountains. There were some trees, especially on Namsan, but according to accounts in The Independent, they were often subject to poaching by Koreans for firewood, and by the Japanese.
The Yalu River concession – that area was actually promised a couple of times to the Russians, but during the same period there was a concession granted to the Japanese in the same region, and the two groups often violently competed with one another and the Chinese poachers. Not only was there the Yalu River concession but Ullongdo as well.
In 1884 it was promised not only to Townsend (an American), but also an Englishman named Mitchell, and a Japanese businessman. The Japanese, possibly under the instruction of Mitchell (at least during the early years), poached trees on the island for a great number of years. At some point – probably when the first Russian concession was granted (not to the Bryner family – that comes later, just prior to the war) the Russians were also granted rights to the timber on Ullongdo.
The Western and Japanese mining companies also had concessions of timber in Korea. It was absolutely essential to have timber – almost as valuable as the gold was. With no timber you could not do any serious mining. The Japanese government, after it took over Korea, implemented reforestation laws which forced the mining companies, who claimed they did it voluntarily, to replant large tracts of land.
As for the spiking claims…….
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Robert:
Care needs to be taken with allegations of “Japanese” poaching of Ulleongdo timber. To be sure, there undoubtedly was poaching by various Koreans and Japanese, but in neither case was it a matter of national policy, as Korean complaints often imply in the case of the Japanese. Moreover, at least some of the alleged incidents of poaching fall into the gray area of self-help, often carried out with a wink from the Korean side, as in the case of the Japanese concessionaire for Ulleungdo, who operated under color of auhtority granted by Kim Ok-kyun in his capacity as officially-designated commissioner for Ulleungdo timber (among other resources over which he was given control by Gojong.
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Sperwer:
“Japanese” doesn’t imply the government….it implies individuals. When Mitchell was given his concession by Kim Ok-kyun, who seems to have been handing these timber concession to Ullongdo like candy, Mitchell was described as the new King of Ullongdo in the Japanese press (English)….but one editor – can’t remember his name off the top of my head….suggested that Ullongdo was owned by the Japanese and that Mitchell might have problems making good his claims.
In 1897/1898 the Korean Customs Commissioner (vice) at Fusan was sent to Ullongdo to report on the poaching of timber. He found a large number of Japanese who allegedly terrorized and forced the Koreans on the island to either help them, or to not interfere.
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Also, if you look in the first post you will see that I did mention the Japanese businessman that was also given a concession by Kim Ok-kyun. Like I said…Kim was handing them out like candy to just about anyone with an interest. My question is what was Mollendorff’s view on all this at the time. Mollendorff was also busy handing out “concessions” mainly to Germans…..
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Robert:
I know YOU didn’t mean the government; but one has to be mindful of the audience(s) and the propensity of part of it to misconstrue things, either deliberately or just as a reflexive bias.
And I know that you alluded to the Japanese concessionaire; I didn’t mean to tweak you on that point either.
There’s some good stuff on the latter topic and Kim Ok-kyun’s activities in this regard in cooks book about :Korea’s 1884 Incident (more in his nearly 1,000 page (!) PhD thesis on the subject).
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For my two-cents-worth on the question of whether the Japanese imperialists drove iron spikes into Korea’s mountain peaks in order to cripple their colonial subject’s national spirit:
I have been interested in this claim ever since i heard it, and have looked into it as much as i could over the past 15 years, as part of my studies of Korea’s sacred mountains, pungsi-jiriseol geomancy, the Baekdu-daegan and so on. Seen some recovered spikes, plenty of photos of others, talked to professors and cultural-nationalists and geomancers, etc.
As far as I can tell, the claim as generally made is very unlikely to be true; i have come to suppose that it is not true. What seems far more probably closer-to-reality are the alternative explanations for these spikes suggested by Gerry Beavers in #13 above. There just isn’t any good reason to believe this particular claim of bad Japanese intentions in doing this,
and there are several ways in which it just isn’t logical to believe that they would do so, or that they did so.
To add just one thing to what’s already been said against this claim — I have not been able to find any previously existing theory of Geomancy that says that the powerful /san-gi/ (Earth-energy running along mountain ranges) can be stopped or disrupted simply by driving a thin iron stake 1 meter into the peak of a mountain along the range. Seems to me you would need something much bigger to cut this great energy-flow and thereby damage the national spirit (like President Lee’s Grand Canal project — THAT Would surely do it!).
I know that the analogy is made to acupuncture — where the inserted pins can either block energy or enhance its flow, depending upon expert placement and manipulation — and we have heard of the spiking of individual tombs to try to damage a family’s fortunes — but there’s just no evidence i’ve found that anybody traditionally believed it works that way with mountain-range /gi/.
This winter i’m writing a book about the Baekdu-daegan, and i intend to include a more extensive discussion of this issue. If i can find anymore real evidence on it, that will be fascinating. My mind remains scholaristically open.
I know that many Koreans, especially the cultural-nationalists, will continue to believe that it happened; the claim is deeply-rooted and widely-spread by now, and can’t be definitively disproven, and so will probably live forever within the social culture…
Shocking it is, that i find myself on the same side as Prof. Beavers of a historical-geographical question of Korea… but at the closings of years, all kinds of bizarre things are known to happen.
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Surveys were conducted by the early foreign powers all along Korea’s coast prior to and after Korea was opened to the West. The Japanese also, often secretly, surveyed and mapped the interior. These early survey teams were occasionally bothered by the Korean population – probably due to superstition and likely, especially during the early years, because the foreigners were illegally intruding into Korea’s territory.
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wjk: “you would have already known the real basics of poong-soo-ji-ri and some rites done to alter ‘ki’.You are a horrendous pretender and an annoying dick.”
sanshinseon: “I have not been able to find any previously existing theory of Geomancy that says that the powerful /san-gi/ (Earth-energy running along mountain ranges) can be stopped or disrupted simply by driving a thin iron stake 1 meter into the peak of a mountain along the range.”
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sanshinseon said an elaborate
“I don’t know.”
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No, he expressed an informed opinion that is contrary to yours, based on specific knowledge and research, whereas you have resorted to irrelevent and irrational personal attacks, dishonest suppositions, and logical fallacies to justify an irrational prejudice.
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he said he doesn’t know, so he asked around.
since when is that counted as research?
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“since when is that counted as research?”
I’m not certain, but Merrium Webster provides a date of 1577, tracing the etymology to the Middle French term recerche, from recercher (to go about seeking):
1: careful or diligent search
2: studious inquiry or examination ; especially : investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws
3: the collecting of information about a particular subject.
It sounds as though sanshinseon has done considerably more research on the subject than most, and I admire his open mindedness.
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Okay. I emailed Dr. Min Soo Kang, an associate professor of European History at University of Missouri, St. Louis who wrote http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/manoa/v011/11.2kang.html and this is his (edited) response to me (bolds are mine):
That’s all I have for now, but I’m doing more digging…
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Wangkon (#39),
From what I understand, Japan surveyed the whole Korean peninsula, not just populated areas, which would mean they had reason to go to “isolated and mountainous” places to place their survey monuments.
The “venerable Korean geomancer” seems to have not understood the purpose of the mapping surveys and their monuments.
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Here is an interesting LINK.
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The October 1995 issue of 月間朝鮮(Monthly Korea) carried a detalied story
about the iron spikes with a title “nationwide investigation searching for the Japanese spikes”. They concluded that the crippling the Korean national sprit theory is nothing but tall tale MaCarthyism.
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I love Kimuchi , real Japanese kimchi , I love Takeshima Islands and Takeshima Day in February , I love the Japanese people , a beautiful polite , friendly , clean , quiet race , totally opposite to Koreans .
It was so funny to see their stupid Namdeamun burnt down by a Korean .
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Yes, the peaks most geomantically-significant are generally also the most geographically-significant — most likely to be included in a survey of Korea’s mountain ranges and watersheds — remote from cities or not.
On the claim “many of the spikes they found engraved writing of geomantic symbols” i really have to wonder about that “many”, as i suspect it’s really just “a few”. None of the ones i’ve seen in photos had such symbols. I’d be highly interested to see them, to learn what they are and what a Geomancer would interpret them as meaning.
I wish that there were records we could find of the J driving these spikes in for what reason; it could also be that different kinds of these were done by different groups of J for different reasons. It was a lot of very hard work, wasn’t done casually — and the colonial authorities were known to have kept very detailed records of their projects.
I have trouble with the idea that it would still be carefully covered up by today’s Js — compared to all the actual J war-crimes we know were committed, and all the assorted insults and injuries to Koreans over those years, this must be counted by modern people as a very minor matter even if it did happen as claimed, more a curiosity of bygone beliefs than any big scandal that current officials and academics would feel the need to cover up. That’s just my opinion…
Some of the recovered-spikes i have seen have looped-tops — the top of the iron rod was bent over into an oval. Can’t think of a pungsu-jiri reason to do that, but it’s perfect for anchoring a cable or rope…
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Bye bye jeffable.
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This isn’t the first I’ve heard of the pine tree-Namdaemun issue. There was a call for trees and aged lumber, and other projects got requests to return their already-bought wood, or at least they brag about it. In any case I think Namdaemun gets first pick of any lumber in the country.
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