When I started listening to the BBC History Hour podcast featuring the division of Korea, I couldn't help but think of an episode of the American TV series 'Lost'. When one of the characters, Hurley, finds out that a couple among the passengers of the crashed aircraft is from South Korea, he blurts out 'Is that the good Korea or the bad one?'. I had laughed out aloud. Though I have often wondered about what caused the partition, I had never taken the pains to find out. So I started listening with great interest. The first 'Aha' came when I learnt that the North side was governed by the Russians and the South by the US. The podcast went on to talk about the events of the day but somehow I don't think it spelt out the reasons for the split clearly. I guess I will have to look up on the net after all.
There were two stories from the podcast - one of an Algerian man who was held captive at the French Penal Colony in French Guinea called "Devil's Island" and another of a young American girl, who along with her 3 siblings, had to live in a Japanese concentration camp in China during WW2 - that moved me. The first is a story of what tortures humans are capable of inflicting on others and the second one talks about how humans are capable of making the best of what life has thrown their way.
These podcasts are like frozen pieces of history. Stories of people who you or I wouldn't have otherwise heard about. They would never be talked about in any classrooms, perhaps not even published in any books. There won't be any movies about them. And yet they are so very important, perhaps more important than dry academic discussions about world history - simply because they are stories of real people like you and me, just from a different slice of time.
Sometimes the trees are more important than the forest.
There were two stories from the podcast - one of an Algerian man who was held captive at the French Penal Colony in French Guinea called "Devil's Island" and another of a young American girl, who along with her 3 siblings, had to live in a Japanese concentration camp in China during WW2 - that moved me. The first is a story of what tortures humans are capable of inflicting on others and the second one talks about how humans are capable of making the best of what life has thrown their way.
These podcasts are like frozen pieces of history. Stories of people who you or I wouldn't have otherwise heard about. They would never be talked about in any classrooms, perhaps not even published in any books. There won't be any movies about them. And yet they are so very important, perhaps more important than dry academic discussions about world history - simply because they are stories of real people like you and me, just from a different slice of time.
Sometimes the trees are more important than the forest.
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