Bury my heart at Gyeongsan

Yesterday the country gathered to honor President Roh (Pronounced Noh by Koreans.) As you can see in the papers, it was a mass gathering with a sea of yellow (his campaign color) filling the streets outside the invite only funeral within the old palace’s walls. 
Inside some tension arose wen a courageous Assemblyman, Back Won Woo, rushed at current President Lee shouting “Don’t lay the flowers. How dare you come here. You must apologize! You have murdered him in political retaliation.” As he was being taken away he cried out ”President Lee must apologize to President Roh.” And when Lee approached Roh’s family to offer his condolences, Roh’s son turned his face away. The cry heard throughout the week from his supporters filtered into the speech by his former prime minister saying “we’re sorry we abandoned you. We’re sorry we left you alone.”
It’s true the mass movements that ushered him into office had been relatively silent as his successor’s prosecutorial agents went after Roh with a vengeance. people in the movement, often stymied or frustrated by the new conservative government, realized they had let him down. Yet, Roh chose some degree of self-imposed exile at his southern house/farm and, thought becoming an active blogger, appeared to enjoy being out of the limelight of public office. Of course as with any politician his period in office was not always 100% in line with his supporters who often had trouble with his sending troops to Iraq, the dispossession of farmers from Pyongtaek for the U.S. military relocation and the signing of the Korean Free Trade Agreement. Yet, he boldly engaged the North and called on Washington to enter a peace treaty - something that fell silent in the Bush years.

I did not stay in the sea of people around the he funeral and would only return to Seoul Plaza at dusk. This would be the only time that a rally was allowed to take place on the historic plaza, as by nightfall hundreds of police buses would encircle the plaza and block access.
Instead the TRC took me a couple of hundred miles south to the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine - of the ten (and largest to date) excavations sites from massacres by South Korean soldiers during the early Korean War. While not directly attributable to U.S. Soldiers, it was part of a mass execution of lefties policy carried out with U.S. knowledge. More than 100,000 died in this fashion according to the government sponsored TRC.

The Japanese had built the mine in 1937, but it had ceased operation by 1944. Today it is located behind a nursing home and borders a country club and gold course, with a small lake where people float by in boats not knowing or acknowledging that just below lie the bones of thousands of victims of horror. In fact several deep holes on the golf course were filled in during its construction and it was well-known in the area that all of these mine shafts and holes had been filled with bodies arriving by the truckload.

Two members of the local aggrieved families group accompanied us down the mine shaft. But first they took us into see some of the bones that have been gathered. Before the TRC took over, the family groups had gotten others to support their excavation. Many of the bones were used as examples to lobby hard for establishment of the TRC. In fact, one of the members with us had gone to New York with 8 others in 2001, when our group, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), whoa re holding the conference next week in Hanoi, helped put on a Tribunal on US War Crimes in Korea. (See Report at our site www.nlg,org/korea). They had raised the money for all their expenses and brought some of the pre-TRC evidence to reveal some of the hidden truth about the war.

I slowly circled the shed with its assorted trays of skulls, femurs, bullets and teeth. Only the femurs can be used for an accurate count. I have had my share of sites of grief. I have been to Hiroshima and felt its painful imprints. In South Africa I listened to stories of great torture and unspeakable crimes, and visited Mandela’s cell and the the stone quarries of Robbin island. In the North of Korea I felt the fire-charred walls of the bomb shelter in Sinchon, where women and children and other civilians were burnt to death when US troops placed dynamite and gasoline down the air vents of the shelters. Yet, here the trays and trays of bones brought home in graphic terms how “civilization” has shelves and shelves of tears. As my boys sing in their Generation Prodigy song: “Sad eyes are leakin’ tears. Too much pain the world today.”

I will never forget the skull with the clear bullet hole, amazingly preserved, like a message from the past - pleading with us to end the madness.

Upon opening the door to the mine a huge icy breeze shot out - as if in one of those horror films where suddenly you can see your breath just before the candle goes out. The locals used to call it the “ice cave” and in the heat of summer some would picnic at the opening oblivious to the horrors just below the surface.

We donned large rubber boots as water flows along the floor. Traveling deep into the mine, hands raised to guide us along the low lying ceiling, I glanced back and saw the light of the entrance fade in the distance. Two flashlights lit the path ahead. When we reached the center we could see the vertical shaft where many of the bodies were dropped. A pond concealed the bones that were protruding from the wall below, as they were a few weeks from excavating the next more extensive layer. Some bones were found near the entrance which tells them that some people may have tried to crawl out after being shot and dropped. Our guide, a Ph’d anthropologist who heads the TRC excavation teams, used a stick to separate off the algae in the water to try and show us the bones below.

Gratefully we emerged into the bright light of the day and I took note of how the pine trees along the hillside seemed more alive and vibrant than when we entered. As we spoke with the family members the birds in the trees started singing a beautiful melody.

Back at their local office I met a woman who’s lost both her parents in the mine massacres. At ten she was an orphan. I held her hands as we walked up the stairs. She had lost her husband as well at age 30. Children of alleged leftists were denied work and hounded. But she still had such an infectious smile. She told me she was all alone and that this struggle for justice was all she had. She wishes to honor the dead through an apology or acknowledgment and some form of reparations. It was clear that the aggrieved families bond had become her surrogate family.
It was here that the bones became live with flesh and broken hearts. On the train home I would listen to the rest of the guys’ “Sad Eyes” song and it was so healing :
You can’t erase,
what’s before today.
But you can change
so tomorrow’s not the same.
Whatever it is in life,
can’t sleep at night,
there’s time to make it right.