Yesterday I visited the Seoul foreigners cemetery. Unfortunately I cut my fingers on a sharp join in a handrail there and needed seven stitches so I can’t write in great length about it. The instructions on how to get there are at the bottom of this Web page.
There are over 500 graves in the cemetery. A third of the dead are missionaries and the rest are diplomats, sailors, foreign visitors etc… Before I sprayed blood everywhere I had the chance to admire a very nice 19th-century (I think) funeral column of a British diplomat.
My one criticism (apart from the handrail of doom) is that the graves have been fenced around and one can only view them from little paths. This makes it hard to stand in front of each one and think about it properly.
I had the opportunity to accompany Claire and her father to the cemetery. Unlike Claire, there are many things that bother me about the cemetery. Gone is the respect that it once possessed and now it is nothing more than a Christian tourist group. I won’t get into the specifics as Korean libel and slander laws are extreme and unfair…but someone is making a great deal of money.
It is a shame that such a thing has happened to this cemetery which is filled with people – great and small – who have contributed so much to Korea’s history
[...] my war wounds. All the shop assistants in my local area have now seen me mime my accident in Seoul Foreigners Cemetery. I’ll tell you dear blog reader that it’s not pleasant typing with three fingers [...]
I would have liked to see what it used to look like. Was it like a western burial ground? If so, that atmosphere definitely has been lost with the pathing and the fencing.
I was in Korea in 1988-89 & 90 with the American Red Cross “Rapid Deployment Force” I am very sorry that i didn’t take the time to visit the Cemetery. I own the Book: Yanghwajin Seoul Foreign Cemetery, Korea an Informal History 1890-1984 by Donald N Clark. I also Note that Three American GI’s Killed in Vietnam are Buried in the Seoul Foreign Cemetery. They are: William Handsome House, Bobbie G Wooten and Wayne A Garber.