April 19, 2017

Today we attended a demonstration. I sat down on the sidewalk with women, students and a few men.

What were we demonstrating and why did I take part?

The demonstration has been occurring every Wednesday at noon for the past 25 years, opposite the Japanese Embassy.  The  aim is to obtain justice from the Japanese government regarding the large-scale sexual slavery of the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan during World War 2. The women were euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women”.

There is a statue of a young girl facing the Japanese embassy.

We didn’t see the statue in Busan which created an international incident. The Japanese didn’t want the new statue (December 2016) installed across from their consulate in Busan and withdrew their staff and closed the consulate and Embassy in Seoul for a short period of time. They stated that there was an agreement between the two governments signed in 2015, the organization for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery, disputes that the agreement helped the surviving women or acknowledged remorse or an apology to those women who had to endure rape on a daily basis.

There are few survivors left, but there was one lady who was sitting there who was a comfort woman, she was sitting behind this little doll.

An older lady next to me gave me a sign to hold up and someone else gave me something to sit on. The demonstration lasted an hour and had a few speeches, a couple of musical interludes and students reciting something they had written.  Not knowing Korean, I had no idea what they were saying.

One of the organizers asked me to sign a petition, they have received over one million signatures. After I had signed it she gave me a pin that represented women against sexual slavery.

My first demonstration.

After we left the demonstration, we headed to the Gyeongbokgung Palace and spent about three hours wandering around the various buildings and gardens.

The entrance fee was about $3.50 each.

I wasn’t expecting the Gyekongbokgung Palace to be as big as it was. We kept going through a door or gateway and into another courtyard with more buildings and structures.

The Gyeongbokgung Palace was built in 1395 by King Taejo (Yi-Seong-gue).  the palace was destroyed by fire furing the Japanese invasion of 1592 and was reconstructed in 1867.  During the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945 most of the palace was torn down.  Only a few buildings were left standing.  The restorations have been ongoing since 1990 and the Gwanhwamun Gate (the main entrance) was fully restored in 2010. 

The palace is surrounded by office buildings and mountains, inside the grounds is peaceful (apart from all the students on school trips!)

One of the buildings was a library, it was the only quiet spot in the whole grounds.

The gardens were lovely and there was a large pond with very large koi, the natural stream that flows into the pond, is diverted so that it does not flow directly into the stream to allow for reflections in the pond.

In one area there were stone statues that guarded tombs of important people.  Next to these statues were phallic symbols.  Phallicism handed down in Korea, venerates natural stones to geographical features shaped like female-male sexual organs as objects of praying for the birth of a male baby, the protection of villages, productiveness, and complementary measures against geomantic problems. 

As we wandered around the grounds, we saw a lot of people dressed in traditional dress.  Apparently, if you wear traditional clothes you get into the palaces for free.

As we were leaving for the day, we stopped to listen to traditional music.

We also spotted the guards who were practising for the changing of the guard performance.

The royal princess sat on her throne – very regal.

A lovely day being tourists.