Photographer capturing lives of Korean War veterans

Lee Byung-yong

By Yi Whan-woo

Lee Byung-yong, a 58-year-old professional photographer, has been taking photos of Korean War veterans since 2007.

He has continued the project despite time and budget constraints because he believes that they are “worth a shot” and this is “the best choice I have ever made.”

“My belief remains unchanged although time and money problems continue to bring challenges to my project,” he said in a telephone interview with The Korea Times, Monday.

Lee said he realized the importance of “capturing and preserving the memories” when his house was flooded in the early 2000s and he lost all of his artworks.

He was also shocked when descendents of the 1950-53 Korean War veterans from Ethiopia sought political asylum during their visit to Chuncheon, Gangwon Province in 2006.

The descendents were visiting South Korea to attend a ceremony for the establishment of a memorial in Chuncheon in honor of the Ethiopian war veterans.

A total of 6,037 Ethiopians, including 121 dead and 536 wounded, fought for South Korea during the Korean War. Chuncheon has a sister city relationship with Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

“It was then that I learned that we, South Koreans, barely know about Ethiopia and its sacrifices during the inter-Korean conflict,” Lee said. “And I thought something must be done to help the African country be remembered here as a U.N.-allied nation, not merely as a country suffering under dictatorial rule,” Lee said.

Ethiopia and Turkey are two of the 21 U.N. allied nations he has visited and where he has taken photos of Korean War veterans as part of his project.

“There are no rules in determining the order of the countries I will visit concerning my project. I especially felt close to the Turks because I had the chance to talk to some of them when they stayed here,” he said.

Some 15,000 Turkish troops fought against North Korea and its allies. A total of 741 of them died, 163 went missing and 2,068 were wounded.

He said carrying out his project in Turkey was a tough job because the Korean War veterans who lived in Turkey were “scattered nationwide.”

“The Ethiopian veterans were mainly concentrated in Addis Ababa but in Turkey I had to travel across the country to meet the veterans and their families at my expense,” Lee said. “The project in Ethiopia took less than a year while the work in Turkey took two years until 2010,”

To fund his project, he held photo exhibitions about the war veterans from the two countries from 2011 to 2015. He also published a photo collection of the Turkish veterans.

Lee plans to visit Colombia as the next step in his project, although he is uncertain when the visit will take place.