Incheon and the Yellow Sea

On Saturday we planned on going to the Van Gogh exhibit here in Seoul. The exhibit is supposed to be one of the largest assemblages of Van Gogh paintings anywhere in the past decade, and the last showing of Van Goghs in Asia for the next ten years, with two of the largest Museums in the Netherlands loaning paintings from their collections. It started in late November and will continue until March. But our plans were foiled.

None of our friends wanted to get up early enough or weren't interested enough to go. After debating whether or not to go by ourselves to the museum, our friends Tom and Lindsey called us with a somewhat ridiculous suggestion to go to Incheon to see the Yellow Sea. It was already 2:00 in the afternoon and the trip to Incheon is nearly 2 hours from our place. With the sun setting at around 5:00 here we realized that it wouldn't be the most scenic or comfortable outing. Nevertheless, it was an intriguing idea, and I have been wanting to go to Incheon for some time.

Incheon is technically a separate city from Seoul, though you'd be hard pressed to tell where one ends and the other begins. It is one of the busiest ports in the world and is where Seoul's international airport is located. Incheon also has an important role in Korea's recent history. It was in Incheon that Douglas MacArthur and a group of UN soldiers made an amphibious landing to turn the tide in the Korean war. Well, almost turned the tide, as the country is still divided in two. Without a doubt this is one of the most important events of modern Korean history, as the American influence in South Korea has been tremendously influential in every aspect of it's post-war culture, for better or worse. But this isn't the only reason why the Koreans venerate MacArthur, as they also adore him for defeating the Japanese in World War II, which ended the half century Japanese occupation of Korea, one of the most shameful periods of history for the Koreans.

So to illustrate MacArthur's importance they have erected a large statue of MacArthur on top of a hill overlooking Incheon's port. Just how important this statue is can be understood by the simple fact that the statue of Confucius (who can be credited with laying the intellectual and cultural foundations for several east asian cultures) is lower on the hill and quite smaller.