10 September 2011
War Memorial
You would expect a country like South Korea to have a decent war memorial / museum, and they indeed do. Unlike many, it seems to celebrate war a lot more than reflect on the tragedy. I cant imagine in the Australian war memorial they would let you play pretend soldier computer games with m16's for example.
They also have an impressive collection of actual military equipment, which they often let you climb in and over. Perhaps the 2 most impressive are from recent times, they have parts of the actual torpedo that North Korea sunk the South Korean navy ship with only last year, and a big display about it, and they have the actual patrol boat that North Korea killed a few guys on in the 90's, completely riddled with bullet holes, and you can climb all over it and sit in the (dead) captains chair.
The building looks suitably stately, if a little grey.
The display about the sinking of a ship last year by North Korean torpedo, with parts of the actual torpedo recovered from the ocean floor.
Laser M16 shooting range, you can practice killing communists.
Mock up of a modern AEGIS equipped ships bridge.
There is a history wing, it has hundreds of large dioramas, when you stand near them it makes battle noises of people being slaughtered, plus they also have some excellent looking swords.
The actual memorial part, goes around the whole building, completely deserted apart from me.
The outdoor weapons play area, rockets, planes, tanks, helicopters etc. Lots more pics to come.
An F4 Phantom, these are huge, the photo doesnt really do it justice, easily twice as big as a Sabre.
The Sabre, which was the main American fighter in the Korean war.
An apache helicopter, most commonly used now for killing iraqi civilians to create videos for youtube from the gun cam.
This is a mig 19, the actual plane was flown into South Korea by a defecting North Korean pilot.
Inside one of the large transport planes.
A twin tailed transport plane.
Cant remember what this is, but it was large.
An F5 tiger, or whatever the trainer equivalent was called (T38?), as seen in apocolypse now dropping napalm in the ride of the valkyries sequence.
Me, standing in front of a B52. Whilst they arent as big as I imagined, I still cant figure out how they got it here. Surely they had to cut the wings off?
On board the patrol boat that everyone got badly shot to death on, which sits in the pool of rememberance. I cant figure out how the bullet holes went all through it, I will have to read about the incident to find out.
Looking down at the B52 from the fly deck of the patrol boat. In the bottom of the boat they have a movie theater showing a 3D movie recreation of the events of the day. You might recall that anytime anything happens now thats newsworthy, Korean animators recreate it immediately, they have done the same here, in 3D.
Looking in the other direction at the impressive collection of militaria.