Kim Suoh, Korean medicine doctor by day, Jeju oreum photographer by night. From SNU electronic engineering to Kyunghee Korean medicine to island nights with a camera.
Kim Suoh's day splits in two.
By day, at a Korean-medicine clinic, he treats the sick. By night, he takes the camera out into Jeju's mid-mountain fields and oreum. Within one person's body, the hand of a doctor and the eye of a photographer work by turns.
A Child of the Volcanic Island, a Young Man Who Left, a Doctor Who Returned
Kim Suoh was born in Jeju. A child who played by the Topdong sea below Sarabong. Turn stones at low tide and crabs and whelks appeared, sea urchins eaten on the spot. A man whose body remembers that sea.
In 1984, he left home to study engineering. He graduated from Seoul National University's electronic engineering and worked at a research institute for about six years. He then re-entered Kyung Hee University's Korean Medicine program, earned a PhD, and returned to Jeju in his early forties. From engineering to medicine, from mainland to island — two shifts inside one life.
But the sea he returned to was no longer the sea he remembered. A sea where life disappears to development and pollution. "The sea is dying." That is how Kim Suoh says it. A sentence carrying sorrow and urgency.
Picking Up the Camera at Gangjeong Village
The real trigger for picking up the camera was Gangjeong Village.
A time when the navy base construction was pushed through after blasting Gureombi Rock. When Kim Suoh finished his daily clinic, he crossed Hallasan to run to Gangjeong. He treated injured residents at the protest tents with acupuncture. He returned to Jeju City near midnight — days that repeated through all four seasons.
