Seoul – Seodaemun Prison

im not sure if this attraction receives many visitors – there werent too many people when we were there – but Seodaemun Prison is one of the places that i liked the most in Seoul, and one that i’d recommend to anyone visiting the city.

Seodaemun Prison was constructed during the Japanese occupation, and if i recall correctly, is infamous for being the place where most of the tortures and interrogations of korean freedom fighters were carried out.

 

the koreans’ dislike for - or perhaps more accurately, their hatred of – the japanese is evident from all the descriptions at tourist attractions, and is perhaps most evident here. while most museums and attractions use neutral words in their descriptions, in korea, you see a lot of emotive language, such as “japanese aggressors”.

there were a fair number of figurines in the prison. this is a portrayal of a japanese prison warden:

there were others showing prisoners undergoing various forms of torture:

above: beatings and electric shock tactics

below: the fingernail-yank torture technique

there was also a track with some life-like screams of pain. the main building was less creepy than the prison museum i visited in sydney, however. the latter was rather eerie because it was even emptier than the one in seoul, yet the few visitors there were enough to make the wooden floorboards creak – just imagine hearing strange sounds in a quiet building, where you are the only person in sight. *shudder*

this particular prison seemed to have been built for efficiency; it was just cell after cell, and was drafty and cold. just imagine the conditions the prisoners had to endure in the harsh korean winter!

 

there were several other buildings on the premises. one of them was an underground female prison, where the cells were so small that the inmates could never stand up straight or lie down flat. in another particularly scary block were dark cells that from which recordings of screams of pain and terror periodically play, catching the random visitor unaware.

there were also two enormous south korean flags on the side of two of the blocks, presumably to reinforce the fact that seoul korea is now independent.