Category: Korea

In the basement of my parent’s house, buried deep beneath some old tools, a bulky laptop running Windows 95′, my mother’s childhood dolls, plastic tubs of multi-colored legos, and piles of books, was a wooden box full of Kodachrome slides. At times I would go through that box, hold the slides up to the light,…

I looked out my window and saw fog rolling in from the sea. I couldn’t believe it because it was the first week of March, and fog season here is usually from May to July. I stood there wondering if it was for real, and if I would finally get the shot I’d dreamed of. I…

Some friends told me there was this island in Korea unlike any they had seen before. They said it reminded them of something out of Jurassic Park or Lord of The Rings. I’d heard overblown comparisons before: the Hawaii of this or Santorini of that. Then the Lonely Planet included Ulleungdo in its 2012 list of…

The sound of monks chanting echoes through the forest. Birds chirp in the trees. The humming sound of cicadas lowers and rises in waves. At the end of a tree-lined trail is a stone bridge covered in white lanterns known as Paradise Bridge. It crosses over a lazy stream where water bubbles over smooth stones.…

35 years ago my family moved from America to Jeju Island. We lived there for just over a year. I was six then. While we were there, my father took a bunch of photographs. But they got buried away in a pile of boxes, stored along with all the other stuff families collect.

In 1979, Iranian militants seized the US Embassy in Tehran, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and Margaret Thatcher became the new Prime Minister of England. The album of the year was Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gees. The song of the year was Just The Way You Are by Billy Joel. Apocalypse Now and The…