“Generational Empathy: Life of Choi Dall-ryong in Seoul,” a special exhibit from the Seoul Urban Life Museum
which confronts the daily lives of our fathers’ teenage days.
All people adapt and live through the time and place given to them.
Each generation contain a different image of their past times and they exist together in every way.
The Seoul Urban Life Museum strives to become a hub for the communication and understanding between various generations through an exhibition that remembers life in Seoul together. In the late 20th century, Seoul and the people living in Seoul have experienced immense change, and this change can be observed within the daily lives of those born in the year of Liberation of Korea in 1945. The lives of people born in the year of Liberation of Korea are in line with the dazzling development of Korean society well known as the “Miracle on the Han River.”
Take a moment to experience life in Seoul back in 1950s-1970s with Choi Dall-ryong’s daily lives, such as their school, work, and marriage lives, Choi Dall-ryong spent a lifetime collecting personal research material to record his life in Seoul, and 1,181 of the collected material was donated to the Seoul Museum of History and the Seoul Urban Life Museum. Look into the daily life and the major turning points of teenage Choi Dall-ryong to experience the periodic landscape of Seoul and empathize with the teenage lives of our father’s generation.
Part 1: Seoul and the growth of children born in the year of Liberation of Korea
The modern history of Korea starts with the Pacific War and the Korean War, the two major conflicts which greatly impacted the history of the world. In 1945, the newborns that were innocently brought into the world in the midst of the raving cheers of joy after finally being liberated from the 35-year colonial rule of Japan was a cruel one, plagued with poverty and disaster. Although the war that lasted for a total of 3 years came to a halt after the peace treaty signed in 1953, the road to post-war recovery was slow. People struggled to escape from the scars of war and the poverty that followed, but politics was a raging storm throughout the 1950s and life did not seem to get any better. However, when the Park Chunghee regime came into power after the April Revolution and the May 16 coup, the Korean economy slowly started to warm up during the mid 1960s when diplomatic ties with Japan were restored and troops were dispatched for the Vietnam War. Children born in the year of Liberation of Korea were the generation which experienced the dynamic era of the April Revolution first-hand and the generation that led the development of the Korean economy through industrialization.
Part 2: From living in a rented refuge to becoming a patent attorney
Choi Dall-ryong was born the fourth among 2 boys and 3 girls. The Korean War broke out when he was just 5 years old, and he recollects his experiences during the war with the terror of showering bombs and the constant whining of sirens. His family hopped on a train crossing the Gyeongbu Line in December 1950, on the road of a late evacuation. He remembers his life in Daegu city a sorrowful one: living in a rent house as an unwelcome guest, studying at school which was unable to afford classrooms, and using textbooks printed on papers donated from UNKRA. After the war ended, he and his family returned to Seoul and lived with about ten families in a worn-down house in Sindang-dong.
Choi Dall-ryong was finally able to receive regular education in his 6th grade in 1958, and spent his teenage days with series of examinations. Not giving up despite his poor family background, Choi Dall-ryong finished his studies, got employed, and made a family of his own through marriage. People living in 1960s-70s had the ultimate goal of developing the economy to get out of extreme poverty. They worked day and night, fought hunger, and stayed loyal to the “top-down modernization” policy laid out by the government. The lives of people born in the year of Liberation who have succeeded in making their own fortune are in line with the dazzling development of Korean society at the time well known as the “Miracle on the Han River.” We aim to look into the lives of people born in the year of Liberation from 1950s-1970s through records that reveal the daily life of teenage Choi Dall-ryong.
Part 3: Together we live in Seoul.
The changes in modern Korean society are commonly referred to as “Compressed Modernization.” This means that the high-speed economical development achieved in such a short time from the ruins of war, which ended in mid-20th century, and achieving democracy are unique changes that have never been seen elsewhere in the world. The “Miracle on the Han River” indicates that Seoul was at the center of this “Compressed Modernization.” Just like how the per capita income before the Five-Year Economic and Social Development Plans in 1962 was just below 100 dollars—which rose hundredfold to 10,000 dollars within 40 years—the population of Seoul increased tenfold from a mere 1 million in 1953 to 10 million in 40 years.
The extreme change that Seoul underwent in the latter half of the 20th century created different landscapes in people’s minds, which resulted in varying values and views of the world between generations. The generation of the 1930s which experienced colonial rule and the ruins of war, the 1950s which experienced industrialization, the 1980s which went through the post-Cold war and the information age, the Millennials born after the 1990s, the Generation Z, etc. Human beings are all thrown into the world, in which we all adapt and live through the time and place given to us. In modern-day Seoul, various generations coexist each containing varying images of their past times as long as the start and endpoint of the “Miracle on the Han River.” Although we are all living in the same space and time, we are also living with so much generational disparity.