Old row houses in Incheon’s Bupyeong District on March 21, 2023. (Yonhap)
INCHEON, April 20 (Korea Bizwire) — A history tour program will return to Incheon’s Bupyeong district, just west of Seoul, designed to remember the pain of forced mobilization during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
More than 1,200 people participated in the program last year, which is being hosted by the Bupyeong Cultural Center. The tour comprises three courses (A to C), each taking around two hours.
Course A begins at the row houses built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, through Bupyeong Park, and to Camp Market, a former United States Forces Korea (USFK) base.
The row houses were used to accommodate workers from Mitsubishi Steel Manufacturing Jinsen Factory, a military factory of the Japanese military during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
It is South Korea’s only heritage that provides insights into Koreans who were put into forced labor by Mitsubishi Heavy, which has been accused of war crimes.
Bupyeong Park, located ten minutes away from the row houses on foot, once housed a large military factory run by Mitsubishi Steel Manufacturing, carrying the pain of exploitation by the Japanese.
Camp Market, located right across the park, was used as an arsenal for the Japanese Army.
The underground facility of an arsenal (Yonhap)
The Japanese governor-general’s office in Seoul filled the labor shortage through the forced mobilization of the public, including students, in 1944.
Course B tours along the outskirts of Camp Market towards Buyeong Park.
Buyeong Park, part of Camp Market, was formerly used as an anti-communist prisoner-of-war camp. It was turned into a park in 2002.
The park has an underground concrete facility that is seven meters in length and two meters in height, assumed to have been built during Japanese rule.
Course C tours the Bupyeong Underground Facility near Mount Hambong. It was an underground cave built to cover up Japan’s military manufacturing facilities.
The Bupyeong Cultural Center will also introduce the Bupyeong Underground Facility Field Walk on Friday, which provides an exclusive walking tour of the facility.
Anyone can sign up for the program for free via the center’s official website.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
