People to meet in Shanghai, China

 

I'll be stopping in Shanghai, China later this month on my way to European Field Research.

 

Every time I've been to Shanghai in the past, I've gone to places I'm familiar with. It went to Xintiandi and Witan, where there is a lot to see, and visited the Korean Provisional Government Building, the First Congress Hall of the Chinese Communist Party, Lu Xun Park (formerly Hongkou Park), and universities, research centers, and companies.

 

This time, I'm going to go somewhere I've never been... Or, more accurately, I'm going to go somewhere I couldn't go because I didn't know about it.

 

First, I'll be looking for traces of Father Kim Dae-gun, the first Catholic priest in Korea, and I'll be searching for Jinjashang Cathedral. As a Protestant, I learned the history of Christianity in Korea centered around Protestant missionaries like Appenzeller, Underwood, and Allen who came to Korea in the 1880s.

 

However, as I began to interact with Catholic friends, I learned more and more about the history of the Catholic faith on the Korean Peninsula. I had a vague idea that Father Kim received his priestly ordination in China in the 1840s, but I wasn't sure where he got it.

 

 

Two years ago, while watching the movie "A Birth" about Kim Dae-gun, a young man full of curiosity and enthusiasm... I realized that the place was the Jinjia Temple in Shanghai's Pudong district. As I watched the movie, I could feel a young man's struggle with faith, country, new civilization, history, and community.

 

The word "first" is synonymous with "pioneering" and "loneliness," so I saw a frail human being struggling to know the truth and spread it in the face of a wasteland of reality, and to be set free.

 

For young Kim, Shanghai was one of the places that made that history.

I'm in Shanghai to meet Kim Dae-gun, a 24-year-old man from 180 years ago.

 

The second stop is the Joint Trust Warehouse Memorial Hall, an iconic space from the Battle of Shanghai fought between Japan and the Republic of China in 1937.

 

 

In the movie 800, which was released in 2020 against this backdrop, I saw a strange scene unlike any war movie before it. While Japanese and Chinese troops are fighting fiercely, the area across the river remains peace, with parties at night, complete with colorful lights. At that time, war and partying were coexisting in Shanghai.

 

Watching movies gives you an indirect sense of the international situation at the time. The movie is titled "800" because 800 Chinese soldiers fought against 20,000 Japanese soldiers.

 

One thing I noticed while watching the movie was that the style of the Republic of China (now Taiwan) army, which fought Japan at the time, was similar to the German army.

 

Later, I looked it up and found that at the time, the Republic of China was working with Germany to advance its military. This cooperation continued into the early years of Hitler's rule.

 

In an irony of history, Japan and Germany then formed an alliance and started World War II. China received help from Germany to advance its military before World War II and fought numerous battles with Germany's ally Japan. In a way, war seems to be a collection of contradictions and madness, and an outlet for them. I want to meet the people who were in the middle of the war.

 

In the early modern history of East Asia, Shanghai, China, was like a great melting pot. And there were a lot of people's stories in there. I'd like to go back to each of them when I get a chance and reflect on what they mean.