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Washington, D.C.

Here are some close-ups of the mural. It's pretty amazing what they can do with a sandblaster these days.

Turning 180-degrees, I see the platoon of 19 soldiers again. God, they look so miserable! Their gray color and hunched-backed demeanor gives them a zombie-like appearance. They're all just plodding along in a foggy daze. This looks like a scene from the movie Night of the Living Dead.

The juniper plants and the graphite beams that stretch horizontally between the soldiers represent the obstacles the troops encountered during the war. Some have complained that the symbolic obstacles fail to show the true struggles that were faced during the three year war.

Looking at the Mural Wall once again, I notice the reflection of some of the soldiers. Most of the Korean War was fought on or near the 38th Parallel, the dividing line between North and South Korea. The original design of the Memorial was supposed to support 38 soldiers to commemorate the warfront geography. For reasons of space, they decided to instead just sculpt 19 soldiers and count the other 19 soldiers via their reflections in the polished granite wall. Talk about thinking out of the box, that was a really creative idea.