Admiral Yi. Achieved victory in a
battle against the Japanese. Not a common thing in Korean
history, and hence Admiral Yi is a hero.
The monument is most striking to me because its ugliness
reminded me of something I might have seen in Beijing.
Maybe it was just seeing the monument up close after the awful
Contemporary History museum with its "glorious country, glorious
laborers" tone. On the other hand, this statue went up in
1968 during Park Chung-hee's reign. (Park seized power in
a military coup in 1961.) Maybe autocrats like things that
look like this.
