There have been many invasions of Korea by the Japanese throughogwaout the recorded history of Asia. There was a signficant invasion that began in about 1910 and ended up with Korea becoming a Japanese colony until 1945. Gunsan was one of the most signficant sites of the invasion as it was one of the biggest ports in Korea. The Japanese forced the Koreans to ship enormous amounts of rice to Japan…in some years more than half of the local production, causing many people to die of starvation. Gunsan area produced about 40% of the rice in Korea, so this had a significant impact on the entire country. Like most colonial powers, they then took over the farms and forced the local population to work for them.
Gunsan has the largest collection of Japanese colonial architecture in Korea, possibly in the world. The city has decided to make it into an attraction, and they continue to develop the harbour area, where the most significant buildings are still standing. We spent the day wandering around looking at the buildings, which are clearly a different style of .architecture than Korean buildings. The time is “frozen” at about 1930. Many movies and TV dramas have been filmed here. We stayed in a traditional yogwan. Wan means room or place, and a yo is a mattress on the floor stuffed with cotton – a bit lumpy and hard but worth it. Our room had Japanese style sliding windows with decorative wood over the windows.
The museum in Gunsan is one of the best that I’ve seen here. It’s ranked by the government as the 5th best in the country. There is a village inside set up to resemble a 1930’s street scene, and you can get a real sense of how the Japanese shaped the city. The store fronts are from actual businesses and each one has a photograph of it in place.
By the time we got to bed we had walked about 10 km, and were ready to sleep.