Gingko Trees Forever

The city of Seoul has been the capital of the Chosun Kingdom for 500 years and of the Republic of Korea for 61 years. It is an ancient city by any standard. And yet, today, it is a modern metropolis and many old landmarks and structures have been torn down mercilessly in the name of economic development. They were replaced with tall gleaming—and ugly, I must say—steel and glass buildings as well as broad streets and boulevards, that were paved with concrete to accommodate millions of cars running over them day and night.

Except for a few city gates, palace buildings and pockets of traditional houses that were designated by the government as “cultural ”assets,” there are few structures that Koreans can proudly show to foreign visitors not to mention enjoy themselves as part of their time-honored heritage.

There used to be a stream that ran through the heart of the city but even that was covered up to build a highway in the 1970s, the period of rapid and heady economic progress. Recently the highway was torn down and the stream was rebuilt with concrete.

It is true that whereas most buildings and roads in the capital cities in Europe were built with stone, granite mostly, those in Seoul and other Korean cities, were built with wood that easily decayed or was destroyed by fire. Compared with stone structures, wooden buildings, needless to say, are difficult to preserve, especially in time of war. And Korea has its share of wars triggered by foreign invasions.

Incidentally, most Koreans do not remember but during the World War II, when Korea was part of Japan, the United States did not drop a single bomb on Korea from its aircraft, thanks to the ardent appeals by Syngman Rhee, an exiled Korean leader in America, who later became the founder of the Republic.

In any case, many old buildings that survived the Korean War (1950-53) were razed to the ground, without a second thought, by government authorities and the construction industry during the 1970s and ’80s when South Korea was making the dizzying economic ascendancy, which eventually become known as the Miracle on the Han River. A few ancient structures were also rebuilt and sometimes relocated as they were forced to make way for new buildings and streets according to ever-changing city reconstruction plans.

The latest victims in the city’s fast changing façade were a row of large, old gingko trees that line the middle of Sejong-no Boulevard, Seoul’s equivalent of Champs Elysees in Paris. Some 29 gingko trees, 12 to 13 meters high, that stood in the traffic divider in the middle of the street were uprooted and moved elsewhere in the city under the plan to build a plaza in the middle of the boulevard.

The gingko trees up to 100 years old had graced the otherwise desolate and traffic choked street with their green leaves that turning to brilliant yellow in the fall. They provided Seoulites not only with a beautiful and romantic atmosphere but also cleaner air, as they are extraordinarily environment friendly trees.

The gingko trees on Kwanghwamun were designated as the symbol of the city of Seoul in 1971. But President Lee Myung-bak, when he was mayor of the city in 2004, decided to remove them in order to build a plaza.

In an opinion poll, however, 88.7 percent of citizens opposed the plan. But when it was publicized that the gingko trees had originally been planted there by the Japanese colonial government (1910-1945), 72.3 percent of the people approved their removal. The Koreans hated the Japanese colonialists so much, they want to destroy and erase everything Japanese from their memories.

When I visited Seoul last summer, the construction of the plaza was going on in full blast with most of the gingko trees already gone. And the work has been completed by now, and the plaza opened to the public on August 1. But if you are living overseas, there is no way of knowing how the boulevard looks now with the plaza in the middle of it.

I read somewhere that the plaza was going to be declared a rally and demonstration free place, but I am willing to bet my last dollar that it will be used by the people of what has become to be known as “the demo-crazy” country sooner or later. After all, the street is lined with the main government buildings and the U.S. embassy and therefore it is, in a way, an ideal place for political activists to air their feelings and grievances.

In any case, in a country where the cityscape seems to change at the whim of government leaders, I hope that someone in Seoul city hall or in the central government will decide to replant those wonderful gingko trees in the Kwanghwamun Plaza someday soon.

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