The Stars and Stripes

I was born sometime in 1971 when the dictatorial government was ruling our country in 1970s. Many young students, professors, and intellectuals resisted the government. Demonstrations and rallies took place all over the country to oust the dictator from his position.

Though I forgot almost all that I saw at that time, I remember that our national flag was hung in the middle over the blackboard in our classroom. Therefore, I'd grown up seeing the national flag at school during the darkness period;someone said that this framing the flag was from the Japan when Japan had colonized in our land in 1900. Anyway, every Monday before school, we saluted the flag with the right hand on the playground. We heard the National Education Charter over hundreds times. Also, when the national anthem echoed widely everywhere at fixed time-usually 6pm, people were compelled to salute the flag until the song finished;we stop talking, walking, driving, and playing, etc.

All those disciplins and compulsions were geared for inspiring patriotism into the hearts of the people. Those were worth being encouraged.

Still, people felt that the dictator emphasized our patriotism in favor of the stable ruling during his term, not of our country's security. Some uncomfortable feeling-compulsary obedience- came out from the hearts as I did the actions like respecting and saluting our National Flag.
The admiring for our National Flag seemed to be something enforced during the dictatorial government. It brought about the prejudice that those actions were done for looking up to the dictator. It could sound strange, but I had some kind of uncomfortable feeling about our national flag due to our dark political history .

With the passages of years, the president(the dictator) who wanted to extend his term longer by force was assassinated, and the world changed a lot. All forcible duties began to be removed and we demanded more freedom of individuals. We salute the flag far less than that time.

In the United States, I observed the Stars and Stripes a lot of times from school, commercial building, individual's houses, and many streets. The American are very natural in showing love their flag. However, it came to me as a kind of surprising at first.

As I mentioned above, I thought of respecting the national flag as the actions that could be done under pressure. Since the United States is more liberal than us, I did not expect to see the Americans hoist / raise the Stars and Stripes quiet a lot. Pretty much more in dictator regime, I thought, their national flags would be flying than the Democracy countries such as USA. But, a lot of flags are hoisted here and there in the United States. They are really proud of their flags as long as I look at.

I came to see an error of my way. I had mistaken notion and ideas about our flag. Loving our flag should be taken as a matter of course. In 2002, Korea&Japan co-hosted the world-cup soccer game and the one of slogans was "let's love our flag". Furthermore, many events with our flag presented in our country. It is good for us. This picture shows the Seoul City Hall covered with many our flags, T’aegŭkgi.