99th Anniversary of An's Death

March 26th was the anniversary of An Chunggun's death. I attended the memorial services at his memorial hall in Namsan park. It was really interesting. The services lasted about forty-five minutes. It was more subdued than the one in October dedicated to remembering An's killing of Ito Hirobumi. One of the more interesting parts was that a Japanese Buddhist priest who performs various rituals for the repose of An's soul was there. When he placed a flower in front of An's portrait the audience spontaneously began to clap. Later I would have lunch with him and told him in very poor Japanese that I had read the Korean translation of his book, to which he smiled and thanked me.

Just like in October, children came and sang two songs. They are really good.
Flowers donated in honor of An. The president of Korea also gave flowers.
They will build a new memorial hall for the 100th year anniversary. There was a ribbon to cut and shovels to shovel dirt.

Here is the actual ground breaking ceremony complete with a military band playing "Arirang" a sort of Korean national song.