The thing that really struck me was the grit and resilience of the people — they were in the process of recovering from a devastating war that displaced so many people. But the markets were crowded, people went about their business — things had to get done! They had to survive and thrive! … When I see Korea now and think back to that time, Korea’s success should come as a surprise to no one. - Marie Ann Yoo

The photographs in The Feeling of Han: Portraits of Post-War Korea (1956-1957) by Marie Ann Yoo capture the scenery and people of a specific place and time.

As a young Korean-American woman who grew up in Hawaii, Yoo had a chance to visit Korea for the first time in her life when her mother was offered a job in Seoul. Excited to be going overseas for the first time, she was inspired by what she saw and saved money while working on the U.S. base in Korea to purchase a 35mm Petri camera. Yoo roamed the city and the countryside and took pictures everywhere she went, documenting life among the affluent expatriate social circles at the Bando Hotel, where her mother worked, and the everyday life of commoners. Her arresting images of post-war Korea are a testament to her existence as both an insider and outsider to the society she photographed.

Through the impatient stance of a woman on the streets, the grim expression of a man trudging forward to an unknowable destination, a moment of lift in a child’s gesture, the crowds, the buildings, the mud and metal and shambles, Yoo captured a Korea far from the glittery slick nation of the 21st century. We see the nation it was, and the people’s fierce will to manifest and become what they could only dream.

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About the Speaker:

Marie Ann Kauang-Hee Yoo was born in 1936 in Honolulu, Hawai’i and raised on the Kunia Camp plantation. A descendant of the first wave of Korean immigrants to the US (1903-1905), her family’s reasons for immigration to the territory of Hawai’i were like other Koreans: to practice Christianity, escape Japan’s colonial rule, and ensure their children’s education.

In 1955 Syngman Rhee, a family friend and the first president of South Korea, offered Yoo's mother Salome Han the opportunity to be the Public Relations Director of Bando Hotel, which was located in what is now the site of the Lotte Hotel in Myeongdong near City Hall in Seoul. Marie Ann, then a student at the University of Hawaii, and her sister Elizabeth, who had just graduated from high school, joined their mother and moved to Seoul for one year.

After her sojourn to Korea, Marie Ann transferred to the University of Oregon where she majored in East Asian Studies and political science. After relocating to the Bay Area, she married Dr. Tai-June Yoo and raised three daughters, Stephanie, Christine, and Katherine. She traveled the world and lived across the continental United States, returning many times to visit Korea and lived there again, briefly from 1969-70. After decades away from the Islands, she has returned home to retire in Hawai’i.