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Thursday 2006-09-07 - P’yŏngyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
The USS “Pueblo”
Back to P’yŏngyang from the West Sea Barrage is about 70km. Once there, we’re first having lunch in the revolving restaurant on top of the Yanggakdo hotel (the name means “Sheep’s horn island”: yang = sheep, gak = horn, do = island), so we can have a view of the city by daylight as well.
Our first visit today is to the USS “Pueblo”: an American spy ship captured on January 23, 1968 in territorial waters off Wŏnsan — the Americans deny the ship was in territorial waters but it certainly was not far off —; only after the Koreans fired a grenade (killing one officer) did they surrender. It was an embarrassing incident for the Americans, especially since the Koreans captured so much sensitive material (the crew had no time to destroy it all). President Johnson tried to deny it was a spy ship and vehemently accused the Koreans of illegal aggression but by then the crew had already admitted it was actually a spy ship while the equipment and records found on board told their own story. The crew wrote a letter to their president, and finally in December 1968, after exactly 11 months, the US sheepishly apologized and the crew was allowed to return.
The Koreans refused to return the captured ship itself though and kept it as booty. Our tour around the ship, originally kept in Wŏnsan but now docked in P’yŏngyang on the Taedong river as a floating museum, is actually very interesting.
I expect this is a little bit of history — with the first U.S. Navy ship to be hi-jacked on the high seas by a foreign military force in over 150 years — most Americans would rather forget… But there are more twists to the story (which naturally is different as told by each side); the official site of the USS PUEBLO Veteran’s Association makes interesting reading in this respect.
Friday 2006-09-08 - P’yŏngyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
King Tongmyong
Our first stop on the way from P’yŏngyang to Wŏnsan today is the (reconstructed) tomb of King Tongmyong who founded the Koguryo kingdom (lasting from 277 BC to 668 AD) and the Tongmyong dynasty. King Tongmyong was the most powerful and most worshiped king of Korea. In this area, only some 22km south of P’yŏngyang, there are actually 15 tombs in all, made for the burial of kings, members of the royal family and the aristocracy, but this tomb is is the largest, and obviously most important one. The site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004; the listing includes more similar tombs near Namp’o.
We visit a small museum on the grounds where a series of beautifully done murals depict the life story of King Tongmyong and Korean life and culture at the time showing games and contests at celebrations but also scenes of village life. Our (inevitable) local guide tells us these paintings are based on murals found in the tombs — that seems a bit of a stretch to us, the style looking too modern, but we reason it is of course possible that the actual themes of the paintings were indeed depicted in the original murals. However, the UNESCO justification for listing the site specifically mentions the “beautiful wall paintings” and the description states:
“These paintings offer a unique testimony to daily life of this period.”
One rather moving story depicted in one of the paintings is that of the reunification of the king with his son: the king had been married, but divorced; many years later, a young man came to visit the king and presented him with the tip of his broken sword, thus proving he was the king’s son. When the king died at the early age of 40, his son, just 19 then, succeeded him.
