Busan is good

Busan Modern and Contemporary History Museum Weaves Busan’s Memories into Books, One Record at a Time

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□ The Busan Modern and Contemporary History Museum announced that it is releasing three publications that compile the outcomes of its collection, research, and documentation projects carried out throughout 2025.
○ Each publication captures different facets of Busan’s life—local living culture, personal records from the Korean War period, and the cityscape of Busan in the 1980s and 1990s—through distinct approaches, offering a multidimensional portrayal of the city. The publications include the academic research series Encounter of Gupo and Wheat: Gupo Guksu, the documentation report Diary of Lee Won-ho, a Korean War Veteran, and the archival photo collection Archival Photo Collection of Photographer Lee Chun-geun.
○ Although the three publications employ different formats—oral history, written records, and photographs—they all place citizens’ experiences at the center, presenting new perspectives from which to read the history of Busan.
○ Through these efforts, the museum has laid a foundation of archival resources that can be expanded into future research, education, and exhibitions.

□ [Publication 1] Encounter of Gupo and Wheat: Gupo Guksu is an academic research series that examines local living culture, industry, and community memory through Gupo guksu, one of Busan’s representative local foods.
○ The project was launched after finalizing its theme and planning direction through an expert advisory meeting in April 2024. Over the course of one year, the research team conducted literature and photographic material reviews, on-site surveys of Gupo Market and noodle production sites, oral history interviews with residents, and photographic documentation, establishing a multifaceted research basis for exploring the formation and transformation of Gupo guksu.

□ The research series analyzes Gupo’s geographical and transportation environment and the development of its market to identify the regional foundations on which Gupo guksu took root.
○ It also examines images of noodles in literature and newspapers alongside changes in food culture, demonstrating that noodles function as a cultural element reflecting regional identity and sensibilities.
○ In addition, it provides a comprehensive analysis of changes in noodle-making techniques, broth preparation methods, and the role of the noodle industry in the local economy.

□ The academic research series is composed of research commentary, oral history records, and photographic materials.
○ The research commentary offers a comprehensive overview of Gupo’s spatial context, market structure, and the evolution of its food culture.
○ The oral history records reveal the realities of everyday living culture through residents’ accounts of labor, skills, family histories, and market changes.
○ The photographic materials include documentary sources, scenes of noodle production, and views of Gupo Market, allowing readers to engage with both text and on-site imagery.

□ Notably, the series includes the oral life histories of nine individuals—including factory operators, workers, merchants, and long-term local residents—vividly illustrating how Gupo guksu was produced and consumed within the daily lives of the local community.
○ Encounter of Gupo and Wheat: Gupo Guksu is evaluated as a meaningful achievement that goes beyond food studies to integratively restore the historical flow of local living culture, industry, and community, thereby broadening the scope of research on Busan’s everyday history and regional food culture.

□ [Publication 2] Diary of Lee Won-ho, a Korean War Veteran is a documentation report that reconstructs everyday life during the Korean War based on handwritten records left by a young man of that era.
○ The related materials were acquired by the museum in 2024 when Lee Dong-hyeok, the veteran’s grandson, donated 11 diaries along with a personal reflection journal, a collection of discharge letters, a military songbook, and photo albums.

□ The diary’s author, the late Lee Won-ho (1928–2024), fled south to avoid conscription by North Korean forces and later enlisted in the Republic of Korea Army.
○ From 1952 to 1956, he recorded his military service almost daily in his own handwriting, offering detailed depictions not only of combat situations but also of young soldiers’ mindsets, language, urban scenery, and everyday habits.
○ Due to its nature as a long-term, continuous record of a soldier’s daily life, the diary is considered a rare and invaluable primary source for researching the social and cultural history of the Korean War period.

□ While preserving the original text as a principle, the report includes explanatory commentary to facilitate academic use.
○ Chapter 1 outlines the documentation project and explains the historical significance of the diary.
○ Chapter 2 presents five volumes of the military service diaries, compiled by meticulously deciphering and transcribing thousands of handwritten pages.
○ Chapter 3 reproduces images of the original diary pages, allowing readers to directly observe the handwriting and recording style.
○ The appendix organizes basic information on 16 donated items along with oral testimonies from family members, enhancing the materials’ research value.

○ The Diary of Lee Won-ho enables readers to view the Korean War not merely as an event, but as a flow of lived experience, filling gaps in Korea’s modern history and offering broad potential for use in future research and education.

□ [Publication 3] Archival Photo Collection of Photographer Lee Chun-geun documents everyday life and urban landscapes of Busan during the 1980s and 1990s.
○ Lee Chun-geun (born 1939), a teacher and photographer, is a field-oriented photographer who consistently documented Busan and the Nakdong River area. This collection is based on film photographs he captured over several decades.
○ Hoping that his photographs would serve as records conveying the vanished or transformed 모습 of Busan to future researchers and citizens, Lee donated his film archive to the museum. The materials are of particularly high archival value for their vivid portrayal of spaces that have disappeared or undergone significant change.
○ The collection is the result of organizing and analyzing approximately 12,000 film photographs donated by Lee Chun-geun to the museum in 2024.

□ From this archive, 246 photographs that clearly illustrate Busan’s living culture and patterns of urban transformation were carefully selected for inclusion.
○ The main body is organized into four sections based on shooting locations and types of daily life.
▲ Section 1, titled “The Estuary of Busan and Subsistence Culture,” captures the natural environment of the Nakdong River estuary and scenes of livelihoods practiced within it.
▲ Section 2, “Riverside Village Landscapes and the People of the Nakdong River,” documents the daily lives and living culture of riverside communities such as Gupo, Deokcheon, and Mandeok.
▲ Section 3, “The Old Downtown That Disappeared from Memory but Remains in Records,” restores commercial and residential spaces of the old downtown area and the cityscape of Busan in the 1980s and 1990s.
▲ Section 4, “From Mountains to the Sea: Diverse Landscapes of Eastern Busan,” presents the mountainous and coastal scenery of eastern Busan and spatial changes during periods of urban expansion.
○ Each photograph is accompanied by explanatory notes detailing the time, place, and characteristics of the scene, enhancing usability of the materials. Two scholarly essays are also included at the end, enabling interpretation of Lee Chun-geun’s photographs within the context of Busan’s modern history.

□ In particular, this collection holds significant regional historical value in that it focuses not on specific events, but on capturing the “time of everyday life.”
○ It represents a case in which one individual’s sustained observation expanded into an archive of collective community memory, serving as an important resource for empirically reconstructing Busan’s living culture and urban transformation during the 1980s and 1990s.
○ As a visual record that encapsulates citizens’ lives, the city’s trajectory, and the sensibilities of place at a glance, it holds high potential for use across research, education, and exhibitions.
○ Overall, the publication is evaluated as a meaningful achievement that broadens the scope of Busan’s archival culture and further solidifies the foundation for living culture research.

□ Kim Gi-yong, Director of the Busan Modern and Contemporary History Museum, stated, “Although the three publications take different forms, they are all connected by a single axis—the everyday lives of Busan’s citizens,” adding, “The museum will continue to discover and study diverse records to more richly accumulate the time Busan has traversed and the memories of its people.”