Streets of Seoul: A peaceful noon demonstration at Seoul Plaza against President Yoon Suk-Yeol. The 62-year-old South Korean President has been in office exactly one year, and many people are impatient with his style of leadership.

Our project strives to show the different forms of political and social protests in various countries. Through photojournalism, we hope to gain a better understanding of the political dynamics in different nations.

 This feature by Michael Kennedy offers an intriguing view of Korea, where geography is destiny. Seoul is halfway between Beijing and Tokyo. In fact, Korea is a peninsula of China, a country with 1.4 billion people – and, as Ukraine is a flashpoint in Eastern Europe, Taiwan will soon be the object of similar focus in this part of the Pacific.

We are used to seeing beautiful images by him but now with this analysis, we can understand them better. Arm yourself with patience and wait until you have a moment to read everything.

“What’s required to maintain momentum towards a humane civilization is we first have to transcend our prehistory.” - Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

As an expat in this culture, it’s impossible to understand Korea as authentically as the native born. Yet I think it is impossible to even attempt an understanding of Seoul, South Korea and the entire peninsula without an awareness of the momentous changes and horrors and tragedies that visited this place in the first-half of the last century.  M.K.

The relatively new experiment with democracy in Korea is like building an airplane in flight.

 This debate about how to go forward after over five-centuries of the Joseon Dynasty is often displayed with peaceful demonstrations and rallies on Saturday afternoons along Seoul’s version of the King’s Highway.

 To Korean’s, it is Sejong-daero – and this boulevard, so steeped in history, is the heart of the country.

 If during the first-half of the last century your country endured the demise of a royal dynasty from 1392 at the hands of a hostile neighbor, the subsequent 35-year military occupation by that country, a ghastly three-year civil war that virtually destroyed Seoul and has never officially ended, leaving the country divided 70-years later, you might better understand why representative democracy with a side-order of dissent is passionately embraced on the streets of Seoul.

 Traditions based on centuries require little explanation. They are almost encoded in the DNA of a society.  Yet to pursue a new tradition, especially a new political system – a new Squid Game for barely more than three generations is far easier said than done.

 Ask Americans these days about the health of the 236-year-old experiment with representative democracy, and a great many people are braced for The Last Rites, especially if a certified sexual predator is the Presidential nominee for the Fascist Republican Party in 2024.

The Republic of Korea, more commonly known as Korea – which is how the country will be referenced in this dispatch, is where the Phoenix has risen to make this Asia-Pacific country an inspiring showcase of what the human spirit can achieve.

“Geography is destiny.” 

 This maxim suggests Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian and geographer. Other candidates include Confucius, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Bismarck, and George Patton.

 Yet credit goes to Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the Arab sociologist, philosopher, and historian widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages.

Korea is a peninsula of China.  And the distance between the southeastern Korean port city of Busan and Fukuoka, near Hiroshima, is 218 kilometers or about 136 miles.

 Based on air travel time:

Seoul to Beijing is 2.15 hours;

Seoul to Shanghai is 2.05 hours;

Seoul to Tokyo is 2.20 hours;

Seoul to Vladivostok is 2.40 hours.

Ibn Khaldun was right, and geography is destiny. For Korea this means a never-ending connection with both China and Japan.

2018

Anti-Moon Jae-in protests.  He was President from 2017-2022.

Part I

Recently, Koreans took to the streets of Seoul because the Japanese government announced that it would discharge contaminated water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

 On March 11, 2011 a combination level-seven earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant, located 130-miles northeast of Tokyo. To date, the earthquake is considered the most powerful in Japanese history – and a level seven earthquake is what destroyed the nuclear facilities in Chernobyl in 1986.

 Protesters in Seoul were wary of Japan’s ability to safely discharge the water, and voiced concerns about the immediate impact on the Korean peninsula – warning that the discharged water from the Fukushima disaster would ultimately impact both sides of the Pacific Rim, from Siberia-to the Philippines on one side, and from Alaska-to-Panama on the other side.

 During the Saturday demonstrations Japan agreed to allow a 21-member inspection team of experts from Korea to visit the Fukushima site on Sunday.

 Yet to understand the edginess of the Koreans about their Japanese neighbors, one must have at least a nominal understanding of what happened on this peninsula at the beginning of the last century.

 Part II

As the Americans expanded the concept of Manifest Destiny in the late-1890s to justify island hopping across the Pacific Ocean to China by taking over the sovereign country of Hawaii, the Japanese did the same with the independent Kingdom of Okinawa.

By 1904, the Japanese had crushed both the Pacific and Atlantic fleets of the Russian Imperial Navy – which in turn triggered the First Russian Revolution a year later and reduced Czar Nicholas II to a constitutional monarch.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. As a result, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, even though he fomented a revolution in Colombia three years earlier that created the breakaway country of Panama - so Americans could build a canal across the Central American isthmus at a cheaper cost.

The Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 allowed Japan to go off the chain in the Far East, and exert control over both Korea and southern Manchuria. Roosevelt and the Americans turned a blind eye to this and concentrated on both the Panama Canal and dominating the Philippines, as a further stepping stone to China.

 Roosevelt knew he had unleashed The Dogs From Hell by doing nothing to restrain Japanese aggression in the Far East, yet he had no way of knowing The Day of Reckoning for America would finally occur on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor and Japanese Imperial intentions for an Asian Empire would end in the horrifying ruins of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 when the U.S. wasted the second city in three days with an atomic bomb known as Fat Man at 11:02 a.m. local time.

 Keep in mind that the Guns of August, the beginning of World War I in 1914, started with a cavalry charge, and 31-years later, World War II ended with Japanese citizens – women and children, and older civilians, being vaporized by an atomic bomb in Nagasaki. And this mind-numbing chronology all happened in the first half of the 20th century

Korean history has no record of aggression toward China or Japan – or any other country. Yet in 1895 – in the opening salvo of things to come, Japanese agents assassinated Joseon Empress Myeongseong - known informally as Empress Min (1851-1895).

Empress Myeongseong’s husband, Emperor Kojong, died suddenly in Deoksu Palace on January 21, 1919, where he was confined by the Japanese – which is to say under house arrest. He was 66-years-old, and because he had no critical health issues, it is assumed the Japanese poisoned him.

With the official annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910:

- the Korean language was banned in schools and universities;

- loyalty to the Japanese emperor was mandatory;

- the Japanese language replaced Korean in public places;

- all films in Korea were in Japanese;

- Japanese authorities burned over 200,000 Korean historical documents, essentially wiping out the historical memory of Korea;

- during the Japanese Occupation, land and wealth were confiscated for the Japanese;

- agricultural products and natural resources were sent to Japan;

- nearly 725,000 Korean men were forced to work as slaves in Japan and its other  colonies;

- and as World War II loomed, Japan forced hundreds of thousands of young Korean women to become “comfort women,” – sex slaves who served in the military  whorehouses for the Japanese army.

In view of the recent dreadful history between Korea and Japan – especially the horror of the “comfort women,” some of who are still alive, yet stigmatized forever as outcasts despite circumstances well beyond their control, it’s easier to understand why Korean protesters gathered Saturday on Sejong-daero because of enormous bitterness and distrust regarding Japan.

For Koreans, Sejong-daero, the 10-block boulevard that stretches through the center of downtown Seoul, literally represents the heart of the country, its very essence and significance to anyone with an ounce of Korean heritage.

The boulevard, named for Sejong (1397-1450), the Joseon monarch best known for his development of Hangul, the phonetic system for writing the Korean language that is still in use, starts from Gyeongbokgung – the largest of the Five Grand Palaces from the Joseon dynasty, and ends at Namdaemun Market, the oldest market in Korea.

Gyeongbokgung is where Japanese agents assassinated Empress Myeongseong in 1895. Sejong-daero passes along Gwanghwamun Square, with Deoksu Palace at midpoint.

This is where Kojong died in 1919 – under Japanese confinement, the last of the Joseon monarchs. 

Seojong-daero represents everything important to Koreans: what it was, what it is, and what it will be.

I walk this path nearly every Saturday in good weather. The street is my university.

2019

Anti-Moon Jae-in protests

October

 Part III

For Koreans, the Baby Boom Generation refers to the large group of people who were born between 1955 when the fertility rate rose sharply after the Korean War (1950-1953) and 1963, when the birth rate slowed due to birth control policies, accounting for over seven-million people - or around 15% of the population. This group is believed to hold a considerable portion of the nation's wealth and consume expensive goods.

Korea is a conservative, patriarchal society with a low divorce-rate. In many ways, life as an American expat is reminiscent of the U.S. in the mid-to-late 1950s – really just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which really marks the beginning of the1960s – and ended with Nixon’s fall from grace and self-exile to Southern California in 1974.

 As an example of conservative social policy in Korea, public school teachers are expected to retire at age 62 – to make way for the younger generation into the workforce. This applies to other professions, as well.

There are 188 accredited colleges and universities in Seoul. They are all competitive, with Seoul National University the top university in the country. Yonsei University in Sinchon, a trendy Seoul neighborhood, is best known for the large number of international students – including Maddox Jolie Pitt, who is majoring in Biochemistry.

 His parents are familiar to most people on this planet.

 So there are a growing number of both well-educated senior citizens and younger generations ready to play their parts in a vibrant Korean society.

Part IV

The cycle of life is for the old to make way for the new, and older Korean professionals with national pensions and other investments who are retired have genuine concerns about politics and social conditions in a country still divided by an unsettled war with North Korea, a historical sense of unease about Japan and the threat of China as a rising superpower.

There are a host of other socio-political issues that affect Koreans – and not just the retired set.

Yet this group of Gray Panthers is at the vanguard of the peaceful demonstrations and rallies along Sejong-daero. They do not want to lose what they have worked so hard to achieve – which is common everywhere.

 Yet in a competitive fast-paced city like Seoul, some of the socio-political issues affecting Koreans are: Aging population;

Declining birth rate;

High level of household debt;

High level of youth unemployment;

The influence of chaebols in politics and business;

Geo-political tensions with North Korea and Japan.

Competition from China (steel, shipbuilding, electronics, automotive, domestic appliances);

Teenage suicide rates;

Discrimination against women relative to equal pay in the workforce;

Discrimination against the LBGT community.

The word chaebol is not familiar to most people beyond the Asia-Pacific region.

 In the West, Napoleon is given credit for eliminating the thousand-year-old feudal system in Europe. Maybe this is true. Maybe the feudal system simply adapted to the Industrial Revolution, and instead of the serfs reporting to the fields surrounding the castle, they moved to the cities and reported to the factories and still existed on the edge of hope, riding the train to nowhere every day, promised the deferred gratification of heaven with a celestial deity and his son, born of a married Jewish woman.

 In Korea, a chaebol is a large industrial conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family. Several dozen large Korean family-controlled corporate groups fall under this definition.

 While the founding families do not necessarily own majority stakes in the companies, the descendents of the founders often retain control by virtue of long association with the businesses.

 Among the largest chaebols are Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and the Lotte Group.

In America, those morbidly rich white families who enjoy generations of inherited wealth and corporate welfare in tax write-offs, less taxes or no taxes, have deep connections with each other that involve a road that goes through Choate Rosemary Hall, a private secondary school and usually leads to Harvard or Yale.

 Debutante Balls in America are passé – yet it used to be an occasion for morbidly rich white men to offer up their well-bred daughters to promising well-bred sons of other morbidly rich white men.  

 To regard this longtime annual ritual as sophisticated slave auctions is too crass and too cynical. These were business arrangements that were good for the two families, the basis for virtually all marriages for thousands of years, before the fleeting notion of Romantic Love screwed with that time-honored business model.

Arranged marriages among upper-class Arabs is still the norm, and this is sometimes the case in India.

In 1954, Joseph Kennedy (1888-1969) offered Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-1994) $1m to marry his son, John (1917-1963). She took the money. This is a fact.

“A rose by any other name is still a rose.”

From New York City’s Times Square-to-La Vida Loca en Juarez-to Bangkok’s Nana Plaza, there is a name for a woman who takes money for sex, and it’s not Rose.

In Korea, the chaebols wield enormous influence over business and political affairs, and the families have deep connections with each other by attending the same private schools and universities, and marrying within the same class system.

This is to say the chaebols in Korea invest heavily in the politicians of the National Assembly to advance their agendas.

“A rose by any other name is still a rose,” and this version of corrupt Squid Game politicians is called Congress in America, the House of Parliament in the United Kingdom, the Knesset in Tel Aviv and the Diet in Tokyo. Same as it ever was.

As American street philosopher George Carlin (1937-2008) said: “Forget the politicians. They are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything.”

Part V

Since 2018, I have covered political demonstrations and rallies in Seoul as a freelance photojournalist.  I’m a retired American living in Seoul with my Korean wife. I’m not interested in generating money from my photography. There are any number of reasons why I use a camera to document life, and every reason becomes the same: it’s the way I’m wired.

 I can more or less acquit myself on any charge of having a serious knowledge about Korean culture and politics. I’m still a work-in-progress, and have no authority on any subject – including the ones that resulted in two different American college degrees.

 As Peter O’Toole (1932-2013) once said with wonderful Irish eloquence: “I’m here because I’m not there.”

 I live in Seoul, and have called the city home for over a dozen years.  Yet I still cannot master enough of the language to express myself in a simple sentence. I could admit to some diminished intellectual capacity, though to say I experience bouts of mental ennui is more to the point. Thankfully, my fate was to be born an American at a time when English is accepted as the unofficial international language.

It is important to note that in the Orient, which is commonly referenced as China, Japan and Korea, a person’s family name precedes a given name.

 Until recently, former President Moon Jae-in was a lightning rod for weekly demonstrations in Seoul. He served as the 12th president of Korea from 2017-2022. In Korea, the president is directly elected to a five-year term, with no possibility of re-election. If a presidential vacancy should occur, a successor must be elected.

Moon inspired countless protests in Seoul because of his advocacy of reconciliation with Kim Jong-un and the subsequent reunification of the Korean peninsula.  It didn’t help that Moon Jae-in’s family is from what is regarded as North Korea. The Koreans south of the DMZ – the 38th parallel, regard the north as a Communist country, which is hardly the case. Kim Jong-un operates a totalitarian gangster state that routinely performs cyber bank robberies to finance his regime.

Kim Jong-un had his older half-brother killed by VX nerve agent at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13, 2017. These things happen among freedom-loving dictators in Asia.

 Putin’s adversaries, critics and enemies – a clumsy lot, keep falling out of windows from the upper floors of apartments and hotels around Europe, like a scene from Atomic Blonde (also 2017).

“Clean up on Desolation Row.”

Yet any man who hangs out with a certified freak like Dennis Rodman and a certified sexual predator like Donald Trump is truly a Black Belt Loser.

January 2020 Anti-Moon Jae-in

Part VI

What never endeared President Moon to many of the older, conservative Koreans and fueled their contempt for him is that he seemed to take office at the expense of a political scandal that resulted in the impeachment, conviction and imprisonment of President Park Geun-hye, his immediate predecessor.   

For the unfamiliar, the 71-year-old Park Geun-hye is a woman, the first female President in Korean history. Park broke the glass ceiling of the chaebols, and was always going to have to pay a price.

Sometimes our story is foretold. Sophocles examined this theme through Oedipus Rex. The Arabs were no doubt influenced by Hellenistic values when Alexander’s generals stayed behind in Egypt to rule. Arab fatalism is expressed as: “It is written.”

 David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) features Gasim murdering a member of Auda Abu Tayi’s tribe (played by Anthony Quinn), and T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) is forced to kill him with his own hands to prevent a blood feud on the eve of a successful operation. Auda Abu Tayi’s comment says it all: “It is written.”

Yet in the case of Park Geun-hye, there is more to a story perhaps foretold.

 Her father, Park Chung Hee (1917-1979), is considered the single most influential figure in South Korean politics during the 20th century. He ruled the Republic of Korea from 1961-1979, leading the country through a period of rapid economic development and transforming South Korean society. 

Park was a high-ranking general and his resume includes a military coup in 1961, when he ruled briefly as an authoritarian dictator, before becoming elected as President in 1963.

There is much more to this story, which fits the mould of a classic Shakespearian tragedy.

On October 29, 1979, in a meeting with Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) Director Kim Chaegyu, an argument broke out between Kim and Park with the President criticizing the KCIA for not doing enough to end political demonstrations critical of him. Frustrated with the criticism, Kim pulled out a pistol and shot Park dead on the spot. The KCIA Director also killed the President’s bodyguard.

Five years before Park’s assassination by his KCIA Director, the President’s wife, Yuk Young-soo, was shot dead by Mun Se-gwang, a Korean born in Japan who was a North Korean sympathizer. He arrived in Seoul on a Japanese passport to assassinate President Park, but missed and killed his wife instead.

It is against this background that Park Geun-hye came of age, gained leadership experience and was elected as the first woman President of Korea in 2013.

 November 2021 Anti-Moon Jae-in

Part VII

Most people have experienced a turning point, a serious peripeteia when they realize ideals are not going to be borne out in reality.

Yet despite this harsh truth, people “beat on, boats against the current,” like Nick Carraway muses foolishly about the elusive butterfly – our unattainable dreams at the end The Great Gatsby (1925).

In 2013, Koreans were optimistic about the return of a Park political family member as President. This was not exactly the Kennedy Camelot illusion, but close enough. 

 However, within four-years, Park had completely squandered her political star on corruption, kick-backs, a horribly mishandled national tragedy (the 299 deaths in the Jeju ferry sinking), and she was impeached and tossed out of office.

The sins of the father.

 Park’s troubles had only just begun.

 Moon Jae-in was elected President following Park’s downfall, and he ordered an investigation into her alleged corruption. Moon appointed Yoon Suk Yeol as special prosecutor.  Yoon had served in Park’s administration, yet was demoted for pursuing corruption among the KCIA for helping her win the election in 2013.

Ultimately, Park was sentenced to 25-years in prison.

Politically, Park was a conservative and took a tough stance against North Korea. Moon upended that approach in favor of reconciliation with Kim Jong-un, the third generation of the Kim family to rule the northern part of the divided peninsula since 1953, which is essentially one large prison camp.

Kim Jong-un likes to posture and threaten to destroy Seoul, yet the city – and the rest of the southern peninsula is a cash cow for him. Every time Kim Jong-un threatens destruction in the south, property taxes in Seoul increase and the north simmers down for a while. There’s no reason to solve for X, the government in the south sends some shut-the-fuck-up money north to the Kim dynasty, a very pale and sixth-rate imitation of the Joseon dynasty.

By 2018, the combined circumstances of Park’s lengthy imprisonment and Moon’s overtures toward Kim Jong-un are when more and more demonstrations started to occur in Seoul on Saturday afternoons. The group was primarily older, retired Koreans who favored Park Geun-hye for her firm stance against Kim Jong-un.

While many Koreans can speak English, the ability to read English is not always on the same par. Yet the demonstrators – both men and women, carried placards in English that called for Moon’s resignation, called for his imprisonment, even called for his execution.

Other signs – in English, called for the Americans to kill Kim Jong-un.

In Korea, public demonstrations can only occur with advance planning, and this means a parade permit. Once approved by the city government, a large contingent of police is assigned to the event to maintain security.

Unlike the United States, guns are outlawed in Korea. There are no gun shops, no gun sales on the parking lots of a strip mall, no mass shootings, and school classrooms are not used as shooting ranges by deranged males with AR-15 style rifles.

Korean police carry batons, yet I have never seen any used anywhere at any time.

Korea maintains a strict policy of mandatory military service, which requires all able-bodied men between the ages of 18-and-28 to serve in the armed forces for about 18-to-21-months. This obligation includes K-Pop idols like BTS, despite how much money the group generates for the national treasury.

If the military ranks have met their quota, Korean men fulfilling their military obligations often serve with the local police units in an auxiliary capacity. While unconfirmed, it’s frequently assumed that for a generous contribution to an influential political fund, the families of young men can arrange for assignments with police units rather than the military.

No surprise: A Korea Times article noted that young chaebol men have a disproportionate number of exemptions compared to the general public. About 35.1 percent of chaebol family members from the top 11 conglomerates do not serve in the military.

This was common among American patricians during the Vietnam War era. The phrase that best explains this entitlement: “Money talks, and bullshit walks.”

Part VIII

The cast of characters

Park Geun-hye was sentenced to 25-years in prison for corruption. She refused to attend her trial or her sentencing, claiming she was being framed and unjustly accused.

Moon Jae-in continued a policy of reconciliation with North Korea, and higher taxes that squeezed the middle-class. Moon’s detractors continued to denounce him as a Communist stooge, a traitor and all-round loser.

Anti-Moon demonstrations continued until the COVID Pandemic put the brakes on crowd gatherings in Korea.

Even though Moon could not run for a second term, he ultimately sprung Park from prison after five-years with a full pardon. Moon was just using Park, hoping this would “chill out” the Gray Panthers who took to the streets so often to express their contempt for him. Moon also hoped this would cement his party’s hold on the presidency.

After three months in a hospital gobbling colorful meds, Park returned home, labeled as “the disgraced former president.” 

Moon’s attempt at altruism, benevolence and charity of heart fooled no one. His party lost the National Election, and there is still an outburst of “Two-Minutes of Hate,” at small rallies across from Gwanghwamun Square on Saturday afternoons. This is no different than when the Party directed a similar campaign against the non-existent Goldstein in 1984.

The small rallies across from Gwanghwamun Square on Saturday afternoons alternate between a well-dressed older man on stage exhorting the mostly geriatric folks to “accept Jesus into your heart,” reminding those still alive in their seats that the Jewish zombie died for their sins.

This message of someone dying for our sins 1,992-years-ago is delivered in both Korean and English, and remains bewildering and contradictory regardless of language. And then it’s back to two-minutes of hate for Moon Jae-in, everyone’s favorite whipping boy.

Yoon Suk Yeul, the prosecutor demoted by Park Geun-hye for investigating her cronies that helped her become President, went on to become Moon Jae-in’s handpicked special prosecutor who advocated a harsh 25-year prison sentence for “the disgraced former president.”

Moon out, Yoon in.

Last May, Yoon Suk Yeul was sworn in as the 13th President of Korea. Six months is the usual “honeymoon” period for a President elected directly by the people in a democracy.

There was the heartbreaking Itaewon crowd crush late last October that shocked the world.  But so far, President Yoon has not become the object of dissent, disgust and pure white hate, like Moon Jae-in.

Kim Jong-un is still in control of North Korea, and still acting out like a petulant madman. A few months ago he dispatched a drone that was spotted flying near the Blue House – the name for the Korean Presidential residence. 

People who pay attention to politics in the Orient know that the centennial of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is 2025.

With Putin’s effort to re-establish Imperial Russia in Ukraine – and later the Baltic States, people here are bracing for Xi Jinping to finally put his boot on the throat of Taiwan in 18-months with precise cyber attacks on that country’s banks, media and transportation networks, reinforced by a naval blockade. 

There is the 80-year cycle view of American history, and it goes like this:

1. 1781 – 1861;

2. 1865 – 1945;

3. 1945 – 2025.

 The American Century – starting with the end of World War II in 1945, will be hard pressed to last until 2045.

Richard Nixon and that monstrous war criminal Henry Kissinger may have opened the door with Mao Tse Tung and Chou En-lai in 1971 – but it was Ronald Reagan, that third-rate Hollywood actor, right-wing stooge and one of Miss Cleo’s favorite clients, who kicked in the door and helped fuel Chinese’s rise as a superpower.

The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, which destroyed the unions, decimated the car and steel industries, gutted the middle-class and helped create an exclusive billionaire-class of 400-elite families that enjoy corporate welfare with an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent.

Our Day of Reckoning with Japan has come and gone: nearly 80-years in the rearview mirror. Yet Our Day of Reckoning with China may be our Appointment in Samarra.

We are 18-months from China’s centennial of the PLA, as Mao’s Revolution started to get serious. We are 18-months from potentially conforming to another major turning point in American history.

 Geography is destiny, and Seoul is half-way between Beijing and Tokyo.  And the largest build-up of U.S. military forces in the Pacific are stationed at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, about 44-miles or 70-kilometers south of Seoul – out of range of North Korean artillery.

It stands to reason that spies from America, China, North Korea, Japan and Russia pass each other on the streets of Seoul. 

Where is George Smiley when you need him?

And yet demonstrations continue on most Saturday afternoons in downtown Seoul, with approved parade permits, because freedom of speech matters.

2022

2023

Fini

I will be 72-years-old in a few months, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m not sure if I’ve learned any valuable lessons in life – except one:

 “Do what makes sense to express a passion for life, and the money will follow.”

What makes sense for me is to express my passion for life through writing, photography and travel.