Gaijinphoto Magazine

Chestnuts Roasting

Woman roasts chestnuts at Insadong, Seoul.

The Old and New

Korean War Vet poses proudly for a portrait.

Seoul is a city of old and new. Like all of the developed/ industrialized world it is in constant transition. Walking around the city and watching the decay and fast disappearance of the old is photogenic and disheartening. Today's modernity seems obsessed with the same love of easy answers and "we are the only ones to discover it" attitude that has long plagued the human condition. 

We live in a crazy age where it is somehow insulting to brand the brutal hermit state of North Korea as part of an "Axis of Evil" while that regime exists, for all to see, juxtaposed against the still-developing South Korean democracy. That democracy was fought for by a generation that is fast-disappearing, slowly being replaced by the effete leftists who are more concerned about what hair conditioner to use rather than the fate of their freedom. 

Every weekend, there gathers in a park in the Jongno district of Seoul, those who built the Republic of Korea with their hands. Men who are owed everything by those who least appreciate it - a story that could be about Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia etc., where the older generation fought for peace and freedom, only to be criticized and marginalized by the loser generations of the sixties to the present day. 

These men know barbarism. I have often been approached by those of them who speak English, and it is not long into the discussion before they tell me what they suffered at the hands of the communists. As the world prepares to be lead back down the socialist path by the new American President, and the bankrupt ideas of the past once again gain ascendancy, it seems a shame that the leaders who tout such policies suffer from an almost criminal lack of historical knowledge. They should come to Seoul and learn from those who defeated what they now espouse before they sign any more orders that damage capitalism and freedom.

This is the last generation that will gather in the park to play checkers, publicly debate, read posters containing news, smoke, talk, or do anything for that matter. Video games and texting is what the new generation brings to the equation. Easy, effective, impersonal, and as vapid as their politics, the young are not better than the old - they are a shadow of those who went before them. In fact, every time I have headed out to photograph these gentlemen, there are never any young Koreans around. I am probably the only person under 60 in the group, and I do not know what they find more interesting, that I am an American, a photographer, a relatively youngster at 44, or that I am in any way interested in them.

Another dying past-time is the writing of Chinese characters, Hanja, with paintbrushes - what the Japanese call Shodo. Every time I stop to admire the skill of the old men who still conduct this ritual, I am surrounded by kindness and often given a Hanja scroll to take home. It is at both a pleasant and unnerving feeling since again I realize that the present generation of Koreans could care less about these living relics of a bygone era. It makes for perhaps the richest cultural experience, and a productive day out with the camera, but in ten years or so, when most of this is lost forever, many Koreans will not even realize what they have lost.