Into Shadows (2026)

On a sultry July day last summer, I exited the bus to my daughter's apartment in Gwangju, South Korea. As expected in such mid-day heat, most other folks were at work or school, and the streets were virtually empty. I noticed only one elderly man near my stop, hobbling along as the elderly there usually do, in his long sleeves, long pants and trusty matching cap, the uniform of the halabeoji, the old grandfathers.

I snapped his photo and have since thought about him many times. To me, this old man represents the fading of "old" Korea as it is taken over by the "modern" era. As K-culture has spread around the globe, the old traditions are falling at the wayside. South Korea now boasts one of the highest and most influential economies and lowest birthrates in the world (who will eventually take care of the elderly who far outnumber their grandchildren?). But when this man was a youth, his country struggled for decades to overcome the poverty and political tension left in the wake of Japanese occupation, World War II, the aftermath of the Korean "conflict," and life under dictatorship until 1980.

I snapped this photo just down the street from the old man. My son-in-law later informed me that it is a memorial to the first martyrs of the uprising.

Then, on May 18, 1980, the first shots of the "Gwangju Uprising," took place right in this very location, signaling the beginning of the Democracy Movement in South Korea and eventually throughout Asia. You probably never heard of this uprising, and I hadn't either,

until my path crossed with my son-in-law's. The government shut down all communication with the outside world at that time and was afterwards accused of covering up the story for decades. Only recently have they begun to acknowledge the deaths of hundreds of college-aged students and their professors at the hands of their own government.

Staring at this photo time and again brought so many complex thoughts and emotions about this scene. It wasn't until later I discovered the significance of that location. So my painting isn't just about the haunting of the Gwangju city streets by those whose deaths were not widely acknowledged. It is also about the passing of time and tradition, even in my own experience, as I see so many things fading from life as I once knew it.

Mixed media has a wonderful way of representing textures and layers of consciousness, a mysterious blending of "reality" and "myth," memories and dreams, the physical world and the spiritual world. As I have been doing for a while now, the blending of traditional Korean Hanji paper with sewing tissue (representing my own heritage) and acrylic paint forges a new style that blends old and new, realism and abstraction, East and West. Even the ubiquitous yet obsolete KT phone booths speak to the passing of time and relevance.

As this halabeoji hobbles off, it seems as if his form is melding with the shadows of the quiet city street. He has seen so much. I hope he will be remembered well.