I know you’re all probably quite sick of looking at old photos. Tough. Here are some more photos from the 20s and 30s—some of them are really good:
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
If you search around the blog linked above, you’ll find some rare photos of the East Sea port of Wonsan (currently in North Korea) as well.
UPDATE: I’ve clearly sold the blogger linked above short. Check out his “대한민국” archive—he’s got a ton of photos and postcards taken during the Korean War, colonial Korea, late Joseon and throughout the Japanese Empire (Palau, Sakhalin, Manchuria, etc). Seriously, you can spend hours looking at his stuff—it’s a veritable gold mine, especially if you’re looking for photos of old North Korea (Pyongyang starts at around page 69, but don’t skip over all the stuff from Chongjin, Wonsan, Shinuiju and other North Korean cities before that). Interesting given the timeliness of it all, the blogger has posted several photos of colonial-era Nanam (actually Nanam-dong, Chongjin-si), Hamgyongbuk-do, the childhood home of So Far from the Bamboo Grove author Yoko Kawashawa Watkins. If you’re reading the book and need some help visualizing, here you go:
Headquarters of Japanese Imperial Army’s 13th Division
Nanam Police Station
Nanam Girls High School
Nanam Post Office
Nanam Charity Hospital
Nanam Military Police Headquarters
Nanam Middle School
Nanam Terminal
Streets of Nanam
Streets of Nanam 2
Streets of Nanam 3
Streets of Nanam 4
Saenggujeong Street, Nanam
Saenggujeong Street, Nanam 2
Colonization Bank, Nanam
49 Comments
One should never tire of looking at old photos. Someday it may be all that remains.
These look like the photos from the Japanese website linked by commenter Mika on Gusts of Popular Feeling back around November.
Thanks a lot, Marmot.
Great photos. Always interesting.
Thanks marmot - keep em coming. Really gets the imagination fired up to see Seoul back then.
Great photos, one of the reasons I keep reading this blog.
P.S. When will Occidentalism’s Matt come by to give us his learned historical spin on things and tell us what filthy, depraved, Africanesque beasts Koreans of that period were compared to the shining light that was/is Japan?
So Africans are “filthy, depraved beasts”? You’re hardly one to be casting stones at Occidentalism or anywhere else given what you’ve let slip about your own viciously racist thinking.
Abiola,
Before you go casting misdirected stones, go to Occidentalism
http://www.occidentalism.org/?p=35
for the article where Matt compares a series of photos from Korea and Japan in the pre-colonial period. He says under one picture
“Typical Korean Woman of the pre-annexation period. It was common for women to walk around bare breasted in Korea at the time, as in Africa.”
You could claim it to be a non value-laden statement, but in the context of the rest of the article, the author is implying that Korea at the time was ass-backwards, just like Africa (His implication, not mine, since you were slow to pick up on my initial satire).
You see, far from being the vicious racist that you claim I am, I was merely paraphrasing Occidentalism’s author. But once again, since I sense you may have been educated in a special institution, for the record, I do not believe Africans (or any other race for that matter) are filthy and depraved.
Great pictures - but aren’t many of these actually postcards? I am still waiting to scan a group of photos said to be from Manchuria and southern Russia - (Can’t read Russian so I have no idea of the city) and while most of the Chinese pictures appear to be simple village life under Japan’s rule (1920s-30s) there is one or two that appear to have Koreans….. Will load them up on your site (if you like) once they are scanned
aaronm
Maybe Matt’s implication in his post was not proper. BUT you in the contexct in this thread used also the word “africa” in a degrading sense, were’nt you?
Your impliciation is NO (if you look at these picture) Korea was not indeed these “filthy, depraved, Africanesque beasts” wasn’t it?
Aaronm, I did not make any value judgement there. My own ancestors spent most of their history doing just that. I wrote that because I knew that Koreans WOULD make a values judgment on it, and DO make values judgments on it, while remaining completely unaware that they are judging something that was also common place in Korea up until the first half of the 20th century. As for your “paraphrasing” me, I never wrote anything about “filthy, depraved, Africanesque beasts”, nor implied any such thing, so that is coming from YOUR imagination, and is no doubt your feelings on the matter, full stop.
Aaronm, this is about the third or fourth you have brought me up in a topic that has nothing to do with me. Do you have something you want to say? If so just say it without the passive-aggressive comments about me on inappropriate threads.
Robert, thanks for the links. Exactly as Mark said, one should never tire of these old photos.
Great Pictures. So, why did the old post office suffer so much more damage in the war than the surrounding buildings? - Shinsegeh Dept Store, BOK building, Cheil Bank, City Hall, Bando Hotel, etc. It’s a shame not to be able to see it today - a beautiful building. Also interesting to see the pictures of the fairly wealthy Japanese neighborhood located between Myungdong and Namsan. Are any of those houses still standing? Was also surprised to see that even by the 30s the Japanese hadn’t paved any of the major downtown streets. Must have been tough to keep the white hanboks looking good.
I’m not sure why the post office was so damaged. here is a picture of Namdaemunro said to be from 1952, and you can see the post office still standing in the background. Perhaps restoring it was considered too costly at the time - a shame.
Hard and Tiny mentioned the photos Mika linked to on my blog, but the links are now dead. I saved those photos at the time, so I’ve put them in a zip file, and you can download them here (the download link is at bottom left, wait 12 seconds). The zip file is about 80 mb.
There are over 300 photos of Seoul, Incheon, Gunsan, Daegu, Daejeon, Busan, Cheongjin, Pyongyang, Wonsan, Sinuiju and Ranan, later known as Nanan, a city which has gotten a lot of press lately because it’s where So Far From the Bamboo Grove takes place.
The files are named after their Japanese names, but the first file (chronologically) of each new city has the Korean name in the file name.
And a big thanks to Mika for having posted the links to these photos.
Matt,
OK, probably a curve ball, but its the common thread of historical pictures here and the meanings that people ascribe to them. It’s probably because I think that article ranks as one of the worst examples of your blatant Korea bashing. What was your intention of linking the example to bare-breastedness and Africa, if not to draw some parallel to an uncivilized state?
Tomojiro, if you can’t understand that I was using the phrase as part of a satirical critique of what Matt was doing, you need to go back and take lit 101.
Again, what is the connection between bare-breastedness and “an uncivilized state”? You claim to be offering a critique of Occidentalism, but I don’t see any explicit value judgment on there, just a statement about what Korean women were like, while you’re the one actually going on about how “uncivilized” bare-breastedness is.
The funny thing about all this is that Koreans and their defenders don’t seem to mind comparisons to Africa at all when they’re of the form “Korea was as poor as Ghana in the 1960s, but look how far they’ve come in such a short time”, but dare suggest their way of life shared any commonalities with Africans decades ago and out comes talk of “filthy, depraved, Africanesque beasts” and “uncivilized state” …
Are you fucking thick, or do you just play a retard on TV?
Quote from “Accidentalism”:
“Typical Korean Woman of the pre-annexation period. It was common for women to walk around bare breasted in Korea at the time, as in Africa.”
Shakuhachi:
“Aaronm, I did not make any value judgement there. My own ancestors spent most of their history doing just that. I wrote that because I knew that Koreans WOULD make a values judgment on it, and DO make values judgments on it…”
Yes, but why Africa? You could have just as easily phrased that sentence as:
“It was common for women to walk around bare breasted in Korea at the time, as in New Orleans on Mardi Gras during the pre-Katrina days.”
or
“It was common for women to walk around bare breasted in Korea at the time, as in Daytona Beach, FL or the Yucatan during certain times of the Spring”.
lets just enjoy those pictures…
I can assure you Bluejives, there were bare-breasted women at Mardi-Gras in New Orleans post-Katrina
Maybe my comment got eaten? The links to the photos Mika posted on my blog that Hard and Tiny referred too are now dead, so I put them in a zip file and they can be downloaded here:
http://www.filesend.net/downlo.....683445d913
The download ‘button’ is at bottom left, you have to wait 12 seconds. There are pics of colonial incheon, seoul, cheongjin, pyongyang, hamheung, nanam, busan, gunsan, daegu, wonsan, daejeon and sinuiju, about 330 in all (80 mb).
As I explain above, it is to remind Koreans that they actually share something with the African people that they caricature (check out Metropolitician for examples, and there is one on Occidentalism as well), and it was only a little more than half a century ago, something which they are myopically unaware of. If you are Korean, or non Korean, and find citing similarities between Africans and Koreans to be insulting to Koreans, you need think deeply on your attitudes towards Africans. Quite simply I struggle to understand why you should identify that particular picture and caption as an example of “Korea bashing” unless you think there is something wrong with Africans.
I’m not “fucking thick”, but you certainly are for descending to ad hominem when called on your racism. You’re not only a racist idiot, but a foul-mouthed and dishonest one as well.
Why not Africa? What’s wrong with Africa? Why do you prefer a reference to Mardi Gras to one to Africa if you don’t think the latter somehow insulting?
I wish you lot would be honest, so at least everyone would know you had the courage of your convictions, odious as they are, instead of being dishonest in such a transparent way. You resent the comparison to Africa because you believe it demeaning of Koreans, and you think it demeaning because despite your disingenuous disclaimers you really do think Africans are “depraved”, “savage”, “beasts”, etc., lower life-forms in short; not that your own prejudices stop you from flinging baseless accusations of racism whenever foreigners dare to point out Korean shortcomings.
Once again someone hijaculated all over a thread.
Cool photos.
It would be nice if the fellow organized the pictures into subfolders, rather than just 대한민국. But what an excellent find, whoever found that blog!
Hee hee, under “Related Posts (Maybe),” I see “Francine Prieto tsunami.” I guess in advance, we should say “Maligayang pagdatnig” (”Welcome”) to all the Filipino bloggers who will be showing up sooner or later.
By the way, is that Francine Prieto link automatically showing up because of the ongoing discussion of unclad bosoms?
Wow. We hit the Corean Corollary to Godwin’s Law by comment #6.
pretty bold words from Shakuhachi, who knows in detail all the difference in levels of a US African American slave’s lifestyle and rank and what they were called and why they were called that.
Shakuhachi=Matt,
Why do you know these things?
Do you realize that most people educated in the US don’t know those exact differences, and knowing those terms per say aren’t part of their mandatory education?
Yeah, that’s right. I think you study those things, out of self interest.
Then, why are you interested in those things?
Do you have any friends who are real Australians?
Aboriginal people?
I don’t think so. Any of your friends of African origin? How do they feel about you, an Australian using the N term so loosely? Didn’t you call kyopos equal to that?
Ever study Art history? I want to say it’s Crete, but I’m not positive. Women found in artwork from that era walked around with boobs bare.
I’d say western and middle eastern women stopped doing that due to the influence of Christianity and Islam.
for example, 99% of us would have no idea of what you and your friends call the Aboriginal people back home in a disparaging way, but you would. Simply by living there, you would have heard of it.
Anyone else who knows the term, and in addition some subtle differences, would be rightly accused of studying the subject, a foreign subject, out of personal interest.
That, I believe, is your case. Shakuhachi=Matt.
aaronm:
There was nothing offensive about what Occidentalism wrote. Women in Korea went around bare-breasted at that time, and so did women in Africa. You might think that a such a factual statement is the equivalent of calling Koreans “filthy, depraved, Africanesque beasts,” but that’s no reason to assume Matt agrees with your view that bare-breasted Africans are filthy and beastial. Also, childish name-calling doesn’t exactly help your arguments either.
Once again. My use of the phrase ‘filthy, depraved Africanesque’ was simply a satirical device. Racism was not my intent. I do not believe that Africans are either filthy or depraved. However, Matt’s article is all about the under developed state of Korea prior to the Japanese occupation. The question (again) begs to be asked, what other purpose than to indicate a lack of sophistication does the comparison to Africa serve? And as for the non-sequitur about showing Koreans they have something in common with the people they characterture, does this not also happen in Japan, a country that receives none of the scrutiny that Korea does on your blog? At any rate you seem to remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that context and the balance are important things in any writing.
James. If you can’t see the value judgment inherent in what Matt did, then you are as blind, ignorant and obtuse as he.
More like a Freudian slip.
You are ignoring what other people have written. Go back and read what you have written and what they have written and you will see why people find your comments racially offensive. At least I hope you will be able to see it. By the way, please contain your temper an foul language. I feel embarrassed at the thought that a fellow Australian could be letting loose at Koreans in Korea in this way.
And once again, the hypocrite (#33) about racism speaks.
Well, I liked the photos…
32. Shite, either should read neither.
I mean either. oops.
love the photos, sorry for talking about anything other than the photos. Keep the photos coming. We’ll forget the words, but we’ll always remember the photos.
If you looks at these photos from the 20ies,30ies and compare it with the photos taken by that american doctor after or during the korean war,what strucks me is that you got a visible impression of how devastating the Korean war was.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/.....aegu-1954/
Just reading history books about this era sometimes are not enough if you have not the visual images.
Great pictures.
Robert,
The only time we get tittie-shots anymore depends on someone linking us to Occidentalism? And the more up-scale the postings get, the nastier the banter gets? WTF!
Good point—there has been something of a boobie-draught here. And as I’ve always said, boobies are the great uniter—regardless of your ethnicity or ideological persuassion, everyone loves boobies.
Hell yeah! And it doesn’t matter if they’re African or Korean!
As they long as they are within the accepted age profile of course
Oops, correction in what I wrote in #35. It should have read:
And once again, the hypocrite (#34) about racism speaks.
bulgasari, thanks for the zip file, I hadn’t saved all of them.
Thanks for the photos, bulgasari.
Robert wrote:
“Good point—there has been something of a boobie-draught here. And as I’ve always said, boobies are the great uniter—regardless of your ethnicity or ideological persuassion, everyone loves boobies.”
Everyone but gay men. We women love our own boobies best!
Thanks for the link Marmot.
Iceberg: “hijaculated”
That’s brilliant.
Mark: “Corean Corollary to Godwin’s Law” Also brilliant.
The rest of the thread suxs