trees and flowers”). The land for the cemetery was a gift in 1890 from King Gojong to the foreign community, who at the time were mostly missionaries.
In 1866, an estimated eight thousand Korean Catholics were beheaded or strangled to death during a state-sponsored purge. One of two main execution sites in Seoul was along the Han River’s north shore in front of this future cemetery. The spot is known as Jeoldusan Martyrs’ Shrine — jeoldu means “to cut off heads” and san is “mountain” (referring to the steep embankment).
We crouched in front of each headstone, some worn, some of the engravings faded, reading the inscriptions from the approximately six hundred stones, many of which dated from the late 1800s and early 1900s, though there were also a few from the later part of the twentieth century. I scribbled names and dates into my notebook, the list forming a veritable who’s who of missionaries, notable foreigners, and others who gave years of their lives to serving in Korea.
Arthur Ernest Chadwell’s gravestone indicated he arrived from England in 1926, was named Assistant Bishop to Korea in 1951, and was buried here in 1967. Henry Gerhard Appenzeller’s tombstone indicated he was the first Methodist missionary to arrive in Korea in 1885. Sadly, he drowned in 1902, at the age of forty-four, trying to save a Korean girl. His daughter, Alice Rebecca Appenzeller, born in 1885, was reportedly the first American born in Korea. She died in 1950 after spending most of her life teaching in the country.
In the far corner of the cemetery was the Underwood family plot: six black marble headstones representing four generations of Underwoods who have lived in Korea since 1885. The original patriarch was Horace Grant Underwood — brother of John T., the founder of the Underwood Typewriter Company in New York. Horace was the master of all Korean missionaries, and devoted his life to establishing schools, churches, and medical clinics and persuading Koreans to embrace Christianity on behalf of the Protestant Church.
While Horace wasn’t buried in this plot, his wife, American missionary doctor Lillias Stirling Horton, was. She wrote the book Underwood of Korea, about the couple’s life in the country. There is also a tombstone for Horace’s grandson, also named Horace Grant, who was born in Seoul in 1917 and who died in the same city in 2004 at age eighty-seven. He was the author of Korea in War, Revolution and Peace: The Recollections of Horace G. Underwood.
The Underwoods have been in Korea for 120 years. Their original two-storey stone home, in use since the turn of the nineteenth century in Yeonghui-dong at Yonsei University, is now the Underwood Memorial Hall Museum.
Some inscriptions were grim reminders of how fickle life could be a century ago, with numerous children of missionary parents buried here, many the victims of diseases such as typhoid, cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis. After entering Seoul in 1887, The Church of England Bishop for South Tokyo, Edward Bickerstet, wrote derogatorily, “I thought when I saw it that the Chinese town of Shanghai was the filthiest place human beings live on this earth, but Seoul is a grade lower.” Isabella Bird wrote of late-nineteenth-century Seoul, “For a great city and a capital its meanness is indescribable,” speaking of a quarter of a million people residing in a labyrinth of alleys beside foul-smelling ditches, where solid and liquid waste from houses was emptied.
There were three headstones in a row on a slight knoll, for Kim Ok Ja, 42, Kim Hankaul, 16, and Kim Scott Hansol, 14, all perishing on August 12, 1985.
We were puzzled. Had the trio, likely a mother and her two sons, been in a car accident? Later, I did some digging and discovered that Japan Airlines Flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka had crashed into 6,500-foot Mount Takamagahara that day, killing all but four of the 524 passengers aboard. The passenger list indicated there were three Koreans aboard. Were they the three Kims in the cemetery? The evidence seemed to point in that direction.
After three and a half hours, and with darkness upon us, I finally scribbled the last inscription into my notebook. I couldn’t feel the fingers of my right hand; they were cramped from writing and the cold.
Cemeteries to me represent the end of lives. They weren’t fun places for me.
* * *
After three weeks touring historic places in Seoul, Heju and I were itching to get out on the road and motor through the country. I had recently bought a used and inexpensive red 1994 Hyundai Scoupe. The car’s most salient features were its bucket seats and ample leg room, the latter in short supply in most Korean compact cars. Granted, the car’s shock absorbers were kaput, and if I drove up a mildly challenging hill, the engine would inevitably overheat and the temperature gauge would shoot up to “extremely dangerous” territory. But the Scoupe cost just 1.5 million won (US$1,250), and I only needed it for a few months anyway.
I didn’t even want a car. There are already about twenty million vehicles on South Korea’s roads. Comparatively, Ireland has just 1.5 million. Canada — one hundred times larger in area than South Korea — has just 13 million. Seven million vehicles are registered in Seoul alone. But if we wanted to travel to all the destinations we had planned to, trains and buses were not the way to go, particularly for those places located off the beaten path.
The month before we started out, I had to sit three separate tests to earn my Korean driver’s licence. The first was a written one, followed by driving on a controlled course, and finally on the road. The second was conducted on a long, narrow swath of pavement next to a creek that fed the south shore of the Han River. The circuit had an S-curve, a stop sign, a traffic light, a crosswalk, and a parallel parking area. I was hustled into a little compact car at the start line. On the dashboard was a small electronic screen showing the number 100 in red. Suddenly, the car started blurting loud nonsensical Korean phrases at me.
I cursed. I had paid 60,000 won (US$50) to take the test, and I had the sinking feeling that I was already behind the eight ball. I craned my neck back and forth trying in vain to find the source of “The Voice.”
Beep, I heard, as the number on the screen dropped to 95. I hadn’t even stepped on the gas pedal yet. Then there was another voice coming from a loudspeaker outside the car; I guessed it was my cue to begin the test. I worked the clutch and slowly proceeded forward. Beep, the number fell to 90 at the S-turn. Beep again at the traffic light: 85. Another beep as I went through the lights. Now 80. Then I was suddenly accosted by a startlingly loud whining blast from a siren inside the car. I almost had a heart attack. I stopped the car.
I swore again, furious that my test was now doomed for sure. “What’s going on?”
Beep. The red number changed to 75 and a young man suddenly ran across the track toward the car like a storm trooper. He flung open my door and told me to get out.
I was fuming. “I’m not going anywhere!”I retorted, refusing to budge, but the fellow practically pulled me out, then got behind the wheel and drove the car off the track.
I made a beeline to the track-side office, where I informed an official, in both Korean and English, that this was the most moronic test in the annals of world driving history! I looked out over to the track and noted a young Korean woman driver being unceremoniously pulled out of her car, too.
Not ironically, sometime after this, I came across a weekly Korea Times column entitled, “Seoul Help Center for Foreigners,” and in it a Canadian complained about taking the same test on the same track. “I had a very bad experience today going for my driving test,” he wrote. “I was thrown into the car with everyone knowing that I don’t speak Korean, but during the test, the car spoke Korean to me. The examiner did not provide guidance, and no one told me I would have to wait for a Korean voice to go ahead. I have ten years of driving experience in Canada, and I know that I drive better than a lot of Koreans. I really hope something can be done about this terrible situation.”
The
