55-Year Diary Shows Life, History
By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
An individual experience and memory weaves history like a collection of patches that complete a quilt.
Here is an individual who has written a diary to catch every single moment of daily life over the last 55 years.
Park Lae-uk, who made it into the Guinness Book of Records in 1997 for having the longest-running diary, has donated the journal to the National Folk Museum of Korea.
The museum will hold an exhibition to commemorate the donation of the personal writings which he had kept for 55 years under the title ``Essential Part of My Life, Fifty Five Year Diary-Donated by Park Lae-uk'' from Oct. 1 to Nov. 3.
The ledger consists of 98 volumes and 250 pieces of related items. The daily records cover 20,000 pages, containing 10 million letters.
Objects from Park's daily life, such as cashbooks, medical prescription forms and miscellaneous receipts as well as diary journals, are presented to show visitors how thoroughly he documented his life.
The unprecedented exhibition provides fresh insight into the extraordinary value of a personally recorded history and diligent attitude towards life through the five themes.
Park was born in Jangseong, South Jeolla Province in 1938 and has run a herbal medicine shop since 1971.
The journals were penned every day from 1950 to 2005. The diary represents a history of modern Korea as it covers the Korean War, the iron-fist dictatorships, industrialization and other incidents.
Park not only kept a diary but also included prescriptions, receipts, and other documents. He also recorded the hottest words of the time, and the most popular films and songs.
One of his diaries includes an incident on Sept. 2, 1950, which describes North Korean guerillas invading his house in Gwangju, taking food and clothes in the house at the time.
He also wrote down the prices of various items, such as a bottle of sesame oil in 1956 was 100 hwan (10 hwan per 1 won). A public bathhouse was 50 hwan, a haircut 60, a movie 30, and a bus ride 10 hwan. A roll of film cost 400 hwan, the same price as 2.4 kg of pork at that time, highlighting how prices have changed over time.
The museum says it will release the contents of the diary once it has looked over the material.