Yangjae Citizens Forest AKA Park of Tragedy and Cosplayers

I'd visited Yangjae Citizens' Forest, an expansive woodsy park sandwiched between Yangjae Station and the Costco/E-Mart area, a few times before but I'd never been to this section.

Set off from the main picnic and playground-themed area of the park is a small collection of statues built in memoriam of some of Korea's greatest tragedies:

Statue in memory of Korean Air flight 007, shot down by Soviets in 1983 when it strayed off course.

A statue in memoriam of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995 that killed 501 people. The building had not been built according to code and even when the top floor was cracking and caving in the owners never warned customers or staff because they didn't want to lose business. After the collapse, a major review of Korea's existing buildings was done and more than 80% were found to be structurally unsound. The documentary series "Seconds From Disaster" did a really interesting episode about this, which can be found on any torrent site if you're interested.

Now, on the site where Sampoong Department Store used to stand, is a huge, luxury apartment building. I used to teach a student whose family lived there. My co-teacher told me the apartments are nice, but cheaper than usual because many Koreans think the building is haunted.

The main purpose of our visit to the park was just to enjoy the weather and drink some magkolli, but we didn't realize how great the people watching would be. Turns out, a number of cosplay enthusiasts were also hanging out in the park that day. Cosplayers like to dress up and role play, and it's really popular in Japan... not so much in Korea. The Korean cosplayers were all female, and all were accompanied by armies of male photographers. For every costumed girl, there was 5 men taking her photo. It was strangey. What were they doing with the photos?

These girls were wearing wigs and kimonos. They stayed next to the washrooms the whole time and Mel and Hannah reported that it was NOT easy to get a mirror in the washroom with all this costumey business going on in there.

This group of sailors/soccer players stayed at the far end of the park and didn't associate with the other cosplayers. Even a clique can be cliquey in Korea.

The last two times I was at this park was with my school, for Sports Days. Maybe it's best that we skipped the controversial statues, but I bet they would have gotten a kick out of the costumed girls. If they could see them past the wall of photographers.