#Dia korean linguist how to#
#Dia korean linguist full#

How did you get into photography? Why did you shoot mostly slides? Did you have any training to learn how to use your camera? It had changed from a primitive backwater place to avoid, to a modern and beautiful resort destination. I was stunned at the development, new architecture, new roads, a complete transformation. The only western medical help we could get was the nuns at Hallim. Matt got sick also with really bad eczema. Mom got sick just after she came with you from exhaustion probably and almost died when she got antibiotics that she was allergic to. Finally after a few weeks we got a much better apt from JNU. The first apt JNU put us in had holes in the walls behind the cabinets and rats would come in. We were the only western family at Jaewon Apt. Really turbulent times.Īn almost impossible challenge. Then the massacre in Daegu happened and things got really serious. Park Chung-hee was a total dictator then and there was a big pro-democracy movement led by academics and students and the Jeju kids, although backward then, were just catching on to things. All of my Jeju students looked at me like they never heard English. I became the tape and wore my voice out so many times. The “language lab” was a bunch of broken down tape machines. What was it like teaching English at Jeju National University? It was really hard but we learned a lot about how Koreans lived back then. Your mom came a few weeks after I got there in 1972, and because Korea was so primitive then, dependents were not allowed for enlisted men so we lived off base in Korean style housing with yeon tans and an outhouse. Army Security Agency in Pyeong Taek at Camp Humphryes. I had spent a year as a Korean Linguist for the U.S. What did you know about Korea before you went? I ordered from a picture menu, lobster and octopus. My first dinner there after I got off the plane in Jeju City I’ll never forget. Your mom was pregnant with Matt and I felt really guilty about leaving her and you. My first night there was stormy, cold and dark. What was your first impression when you arrived in Jeju? You went over first and then we came a couple months later. In addition I wanted to do an article for Nat Geo and continue a Korean art business I started with three of my army buddies and Jeff. Koh, knew I had been a Korean linguist in the Army and had spent a year in Pyeong Taek already and asked me to go back to his home island of Jeju to begin an exchange relationship teaching English at Jeju National University. So I asked him a few questions about that part of our lives, and here’s what he had to say.ĭad: An independent study course for my masters in International Studies at Central Connecticut State University. My advisor, Dr. I wanted to know why my father made the choices he made. Now that we’ve digitized the photos, I wanted to find out the story behind them. Extinct volcanoes or oreum as they are known on Jeju. A small village in front of Halla Mountain.

The sign reads “Dog Soup.” Boxes of fish by the market. A model poses during a photo shoot at Hyopjae Beach. Older women or ajummas helping out with construction.

#Dia korean linguist full#

Horse pulling cart full of coal yuntans or coal.

Locals in front of choga-jip or Jeju stone house.

Tony DeMarco with village elder and kids Honeymooners take a photo on Jeju. The following is a small collection of some of those images, along with an interview with my father. Whether it was for educational purposes, or purely for entertainment value, we both felt a need to share them. Ever since I came back to Korea in 2007, my father and I talked about digging up those old photographs and converting them to digital files. Time went on and the photos and slide shows disappeared with it. The exotic images and my own experience living in Korea as a child were enough to convince me to travel the world as much as possible, and one day go back to Jeju. The carousel made a clicking sound as the slides dropped in and out: a Korean grandfather in traditional clothing, Hallasan Mountain, or the ubiquitous haenyo or woman diver. Whenever friends would come over, my dad would pull open the big white viewing screen, turn on the slide machine – I can still hear the whizzing the of the fan cooling down the bright viewing light – and then dim the lights. I remember seeing the Jeju photos as child when we came back from Korea. But they got buried away in a pile of boxes, stored along with all the other stuff families collect. While we were there, my father took a bunch of photographs. 35 years ago my family moved from America to Jeju Island.