This review is being written to the clack of steel on steel as I ride Amtrak from Charlottesville, VA to New York City. My origin and destination stations today are practical rather than civic architecture. Train stations that proclaim civic greatness and interconnectedness such as Washington, DC’s Union Station or New York City’s former Pennsylvania Station (demolished in 1963) are from a past era. Today scant political weight is given to the civic value of this country’s physical plant. And yet, public buildings have not ceased to carry enormous cultural freight and communicate copious civic meaning.
Jumping geographic and cultural tracks: Though no longer functioning as a train station, as civic architecture the Old Seoul Station remains a politically and culturally potent structure. Designed by Tsukamoto Yasushi and finished in 1925, the station stood as both a product and a symbol of the Japanese occupation. While some civic buildings from this period were demolished, in 1947 the station was very practically renamed and continued to function as Seoul’s main rail hub until 2004 when Korail’s new Seoul Station* was completed. In 2011 the old station reopened as Culture Seoul Station 284, a cultural center with space for performances, exhibits and events. The name alludes to the station’s position as an intersection of historical, spatial, cultural and civic symbolism.
Corners (interview, review 1, 2), has undertaken a “Railway Library” of three books. The first book in this series is 경성역 (Gyeongseong Station). It is focused on a nuts and bolts representation of the Old Seoul Station. It begins with an essay, describing the physical building and the history of its construction and use, followed by a barebones timeline of the station from the construction of the first station building in 1900 through the renaming of the 1925 building in 1947. The blurb on Corner’s website describes using the railroad as a filter for critical cultural and historical examination.
The meat of the book is archival photographs of the station that detail the ostentatious grandeur and Western influence of its multitudinous architectural styles. The building is clearly a statement. Like any colonial architecture, the function of the building was as much cultural and political as practical. The same can be said of the photographs. It is telling that only a single train appears in any of the photographs and then only incidentally; nor are there any photographs of any of the functional aspects of the building: switches, signals, or other mechanical infrastructure. There are only two photographs showing the tracks of the station; these are, like the single train, incidental to the architectural view behind them. The importance of the building was not in its function as transportation infrastructure but in its function as a cultural and political symbol.
We are shown the station as a particular set of physical facts; we are not shown the base function of the building or the complex web of human interaction that sustains it. It is a grand, modern and industrial physical fact. We do not see any planning sessions nor a groundbreaking ceremony. We do not see workers constructing the building nor installing the interior decoration. We do not see people manning (nor patronizing) the barber’s chair. We do not see people sitting down to dinner in the restaurant nor anyone in the kitchen preparing meals. With exception of the first and last photographs in the book we see no people; in these we are shown two crowds. In the first we see a crowd facing away seated inside the main dining room during the dedication or opening ceremony. In the second we see the hoi polloi stretching to Namdaemun and facing us; the caption ambiguously describes “citizens” filling the street outside the station without describing the purpose or occasion of their doing so. The cultural implications of this representation were certainly as intentional as the architecture itself.
Photographs are not simple carriers of absolute fact. Photographers make a host of decisions about what to record and how to do so. These photographs are not the simple documents that they purport to be. They are as much a depiction of the colonial system of which they are a functional aspect as the station they show. The decisions of what is shown and how it is shown are made by editors and designers as well. The designer, Jo Hyo Joon, made a conscious decision to use these particular photographs and to present them in the way that he has. It is an interesting decision to choose to situate a process of reconciliation or reclamation on such contested ground. It is as though Jo is letting us know that every square inch of the conversation will be contested ground.
Corner’s continued use of the Risograph printing process is another interesting choice. Taken in the first half of the twentieth century, the photographs in this book appear to have been shot and printed with a variety of techniques. The clipped corners suggest dry plate negatives (dry plate materials were certainly used by the Japanese authorities at this time). The odd shapes of some images suggest albumen prints, and silver gelatin materials were almost certainly used for the later photographs. These photographic processes create richly beautiful objects. The Risograph printing eliminates the differences between these techniques’ visual styles. They become artifacts; their creation as functional government documents is emphasized.
경성역 is not so much a book of photography as a book of political and cultural critique that uses photography to make its argument. It is clear that these photographs are telling us something about the world but it is up to the reader to examine these facts critically in order to come to terms with the Old Seoul Station and its past, present and future meaning in the fabric of Korean culture and history. The stage is set for additional books in the Railway Library.
*The new Seoul Station represents a contemporary example of exactly the kind of civic-minded architecture discussed above.
This entry was posted in Black and White, corners, Documentary, Historical, Large Format, Military, Seoul, Travel, Urban Landscape on October 19, 2015 by mnm207.	
Assessment of Low Impact Development (LID) Integrated in Local Comprehensive Plans for Improving Urban Water Cycle
Recently, Low Impact Development (LID) has been emphasized as a critical strategy for improving urban water cycle and adapting to climate change. LID is needed to be incorporated in urban planning and development process for effective implementation in the real world. However, little research has examined the relationship between urban planning and LID in Korea. This study addresses this critical gap by 1) examining whether current urban planning institutional system considers LID or not and 2) assessing the extent to which local comprehensive plans integrate LID in seven large cities. Study results show that a few planning guidelines declaratively mention the need of LID but they don`t include specific LID strategies. In addition, we found that 7 local comprehensive plans in the sample received a mean score of 11.71, which represents 19.52% of the total possible points and there are wide variations among cities. These findings indicate that there is still considerable room for improvement of local governments on LID. We propose the revision of planning guideline by incorporating LID principles and non-structural and structural LID technologies.
A Basic Study on the features of LID-related Ordinance Enactment conducted by Local Government - mainly on Seoul City, Suwon City and Namangju City -, Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment, 2016, 25, 1, 25
Development and Application of a Low Impact Development (LID)-Based District Unit Planning Model, Sustainability, 2017, 9, 12, 145
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Members of civic groups for the disabled hold a rally, calling for the cancelation of the operation license of Gwangju Inhwa School in front of Gwangju City Hall, Wednesday. The school’s hearing-impaired children were sexually assaulted by their teachers and school staff for years for over a decade and the incident was recently made into a film. / Yonhap
The entire nation has been venting a collective fury over the past several weeks following the release of a film based on a true story about sexual assaults against disabled students by teachers at a regional school.
From President Lee Myung-bak to regional police officers, policymakers and law enforcement officers, people are belatedly pledging to take countermeasures and take preventive steps.
The movie, titled “Dogani” or “The Crucible” in English, was released late last month, featuring sexual assaults against hearing-impaired children by teachers and school staff on students at Gwangju Inhwa School for years since 2000.
However, many members of human rights organizations who have worked for a long time to promote the welfare of the disabled say the current public backlash should lead to more profound solutions to tackle prevalent human rights violations against the disabled.
“What we saw in the movie is nothing unusual,” said Yang Baek-yong, an official at the Research Institute of Differently-able Persons’ Rights. “Various abusive and discriminative treatment as well as sexual assaults against the disabled take place everywhere all the time. People are just ignorant or don’t want to pay attention to this fact.”
Yang, who works as a human rights consultant for the disabled, hopes the movie will be a chance for people to become more aware of the violations of human rights of the disabled and make efforts to prevent them.
“What is necessary in the public uproar and growing media attention surrounding the film is a calm approach to more fundamentally tackle the problem,” he said.
Teachers at Inhwa School raped or sexually harassed students but were punished lightly, with some of them continuing to work at the school.
Park Jang-woo, an official at the Human Rights Forum of Persons with Difficulties, expressed his concern that the “Dogani” phenomenon may end with punitive actions without leading to concrete preventive measures.
“I don’t want this phenomenon to boil up quickly and cool down fast without producing more practical measures,” said Park. “What we want is not just due punishment of people involved in the sexual assaults but also more profound solutions that can prevent such horrible things from happening again.”
He also requested politicians to come up with preventative measures, including amendments to relevant laws, so that violations of human rights against the disabled can be systematically prevented.
Other human rights activists for the disabled also called for the government to abolish special welfare institutions for the disabled, claiming such institutes themselves are discriminating.
“At such institutes, the disabled tend to be isolated within society,” said Kim Dae-sung, an official from Disabled People’s International. “Welfare institutes for the disabled themselves are a violation of human rights as they deprive them of a chance to live as part of the society by isolating them.”
If such institutes exist, problems in “Dogani” will be never solved as the disabled suffer from discriminative and abusive treatment without being properly taken care of, he said.
“The ideal solution is to help the disabled live with us. They should be given a chance to receive education with other people, get a job and lead a happy life, just like us, in our society.”