Photos of 1950s Korea taken by a former U.S soldier have been made available online by an American student Brendan Donley, whose great-uncle served in the U.S. Army after the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Donley’s great-uncle, at the age of 18, made the trip from Chicago to Seattle, and then across the Pacific to Korea’s southeastern port town, Busan. There he worked to help rebuild the war-ravaged country for approximately two years.

The rustic scenes captured through his camera lens during this period lends valuable insight to how people here lived some six decades ago. 



Donley himself visited Korea for the first time in 2011 after graduating from high school. He then entered Columbia University where he took lectures on the Korean language for three years. He revisited Korea three more times after that, taking language courses at Yonsei University over one summer and researching bilingual graffiti in Korea during another. 

Donley currently lives in Chicago. Visit his blog to read more about his great-uncle’s journey: www.paperluggage.com/2016/04/23/south-korea-1953-54/

More photos from Donley will be put up on The Korea Herald website in a follow-up article, tomorrow.  

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)

Photo credits to Brendan Donley.