CHICO — A group of musicians from South Korea will perform at Chico State next week in a benefit for the planned Willows Air Memorial.
“The Sound of Korea,” a Korea-U.S. Friendship Korean Traditional Music Concert, is set for 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Bell Memorial Union, at the corner of West Second and Hazel streets on the university campus. There won’t be any charge to attend, but the Willows Air Memorial — the event’s sponsor — will accept donations.
The group is made up of students at the Seoul National University Korean Traditional Music Troupe. The nine members will perform vocals as well as sounds from eight Korean instrument types.
According to Laurie Woodward, a board member of the Willows Air Memorial, which seeks to establish a museum at the Glenn County-Willows Airport, said support and awareness are key to making the museum a reality.
“Our hope is that there will be a museum in Willows at the airport someday,” she said. “The Glenn County Board of Supervisors, in 2018, offered us a long-term lease on 20 acres at the airport and we’re interested in aviation history.”
Woodward pointed to the Korean Air Force flight school that came into existence in 1920 after Korea had been invaded by Japan. That school, which predated the airport, was on private land belonging to Kim Chong-Lim, a rice farmer of Korean descent; the training facility functioned “only for a year or two,” Woodward said, before flooding destroyed it.
Woodward added that the Willows Air Memorial will also recognize the airport’s contributions to 1920s air mail routes, as well as the Doolittle Raiders and their training in Willows before shipping out to attack Japan in 1942.
Finally, it will also honor the contributions of Glenn County resident Floyd Nolta, who devised aerial systems for planting rice as well as combatting forest fires.
Ki-Won Rhew, president of the Willows Air Memorial association and a resident of Eugene, Oregon, arranged to have the Korean musicians come to Chico. They’re also going to perform in Seattle this Saturday and in San Francisco on Dec. 8.
He said he has known Eunah Noh, head of the Department of Korean Traditional Music at Seoul National University, for several years.
“I was able to introduce her for a program of the Greater Seattle Korean Association successfully. That led me to arrange this concert tour to promote what we do at the Willows Air Memorial,” Rhew explained. “Dr. Noh selected the best students in her department for this tour.”
Rhew researched the flight school’s establishment, discovering that its graduates went on to join the Republic of Korea Air Force in the early 1920s. Rice farmers in Glenn County, including Kim, helped finance the flying school, Rhew explained.
Two graduates became the first officers in what was to become the Korean Air Force.
