Becoming Myself: A Korean Photographic Essay

"Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself."

Pico Iyer

On my 22nd birthday, my relationship with Korea began on the wings of serendipity. On that day, Sept. 2nd, 1973, I received an official acceptance letter from the U.S Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., telling me I was being assigned to serve in South Korea. 

Several months later, in Daegu, a city I had never before heard of,  I was about to complete my in-country training. As he did with each of the other fifty or so volunteers, Dr. Chae, the Korean director of our program, gave me a Korean name. That name, Song Su Nam, gave root to its own nearly novelesque imagery: an old wise man who lived on the Korean peninsula during the time of the Chinese Song dynasty. So I ask rhetorically, when exactly did my relationship with Korea really begin?

A family aboard an overnight ferry bound for Cheju Island (Spring, 1975)

Dining in a Korean Chinese restaurant (1974)

Is being home a place, a presence, or is it more like a journey? And what do we make of the places in between? 

Couple on a Daegu public bus (1974)

Korean elders. This man wears the traditional Korean horsehair hat (1974)

"Am I closer to some other power? Is some other source, some other energy, closer to me than I am to myself?"

Meister Eckhart

Downtown Daegu (1974) before the era of private cars

Downtown Daegu in 2013. In today's Korea, luxury cars hardly draw a second glance

The old and the new in the northeastern
coastal city of Kangnun

Young women in rented Hanbok, Korean traditional dress.
Here taking selfies in Seoul (2016)

Busan's Haeundae Beach during the off-season (Sept. 2014)

Living in Korea makes other parts of Asia much more accessible. By air, Japan is less than two hours away, as is Beijing. For non-Korean citizens, that city provides access to North Korea. Taiwan and Hong Kong are also popular destinations for Koreans and expats alike. Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, are following, or attempting to follow, South Korea's recent path from a developing country to a shining example of economic success. South and North Korea had nearly identical per capita GNPs as recently as 1974. Today, South Korea's GNP, per capita, is fifteen times that of North Korea.

Fashion makes a modest entrance on the streets of North Korea's capital
Pyongyang. This scene is on the main thoroughfare at the entrance of
the city's main subway station (Summer, 2014)

College students at Wonsan Agricultural University, Wonsan, DPRK (2014)

Hanbok-clad tour guide at Juche Tower in Pyongyang (2014)

Buddhist monks visiting ancient temple in Mandalay, Myanmar (2016)

The King of Chinese Chess reigns over all, Temple of Heaven Park, Beijing, China

Yeungnam University is one of Korea's largest universities and boasts a magnificent, sprawling campus. I spent 5-years here teaching, and learning to no end.

The university library is a campus focal point.
The pond in the foreground is a favorite spot of mine for
watching turtles sunning themselves and for enjoying
fried squid and potatoes sold by a local woman.

Tranquil "Lovers' Lane." Here pictured during Cherry Blossom season.

A quiet moment for a gentleman who sits alone
 in the stands of the old soccer field.

With a student during a Saturday Seminar when I had the opportunity
to give a presentation on my trip to North Korea.

"If the only prayer you can ever say in your entire life is 
'thank you,' it will be enough."

Meister Eckhart

Standing in a field of cosmos (Seoul, 1975)

In a field of cosmos (Gyeong-ju, 2014)

My Korean name, Song Su Nam, 
freshly tattooed (2015)

"Oh, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or of a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all; but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old...and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening."

from Narcissus and Goldmund, by Herman Hesse