South Korea made a miraculous recovery from the ashes of war and territorial division to achieve unprecedented economic growth. Korean ary photographers turned their lenses toward those left behind amid the rapid industrial development. Among those photographers who chose to the lives of marginalized people was Choi Min-shik (1928-2013). Having graduated from the Department of Design at Chubi Central Art School in Tokyo in 1957, Choi taught himself photography and began taking pictures of people. Throughout his career, he published a total of 14 photo books that form his “Human” series, portraying the suffering of disadvantaged people, laying bare the human soul and nature.

“I focused my lens on the lives of the less fortunate struggling on the fringes of society. For five decades, my subjects have been those living in poverty and deprivation. No matter how often I pressed the shutter, there was never a single moment in which I doubted their integrity as human beings,” Choi wrote in one of his books.

Having struggled with poverty himself throughout his life, Choi did not regard the poor as mere subjects; he held deep affection for his destitute neighbors and sought to vividly record images of those pushed aside in the race for economic development.

There was another photographer who saw that industrialization and economic growth did not necessarily bring happiness. Kim Ki-chan (1938-2005), who had previously worked at a television network, used to sling his camera over his shoulder every weekend and head to the hillside shantytowns in Seoul. “The alleyway in Jungnim-dong was my spiritual home. When I first set foot there, the boisterous atmosphere brought back memories of the alley in Sajik-dong from my childhood. It was then that I decided that the views of those alleys and the joys and sorrows of the residents would become the lifelong theme of my works,” Kim once recalled.

Kim published six photo books under the theme “back alley views,” as well as a collection of photographs that captured the images of rural people who came to live in Seoul and camped out in front of Seoul Station, and the changing landscape of the farming villages they had left behind. Over decades, he ed the scenes of the narrow alleyways and the lives of their residents, developing an intimacy with his subjects, while his works continued to be reappraised. More often than not, the cost of the country’s relentless push for economic growth was the loss of ties to family, neighbors and hometown. But Kim’s heartwarming images of people living in the back alleys, encouraging and comforting one another through thick and thin, remain an invaluable testimony to this remarkable period in modern Korean history.

After the death of former president Park Chung-hee, who had launched a series of economic development plans during his prolonged iron-fisted rule, Korean society was swept up in the fever for democratization. Students took to the streets in protest against the military dictatorship, and other citizens, who had been sitting on the sidelines, soon joined in. But with the government’s tight control over the media, the public had no way of learning the full truth about the democratization movement or what the ruling elites were plotting. However, despite the clampdown on the media, people became aware of the violent acts committed by the authoritarian regime, particularly the tragic circumstances of the civil uprising in Gwangju on May 18, 1980. And so they stood together at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement.

Critical moments in Korea’s contemporary history since 1945, marked by a vortex of change and the frenetic pace of political, economic and social development, have been chronicled mainly by professional photojournalists. However, the “candlelight revolution” that began in October 2016 showed how times have changed, as ordinary citizens participating in the rallies all became ary photographers.

Earlier, on April 16, 2014, young students trapped inside the sinking Sewol ferry on a school trip recorded their last desperate moments with their cellphones. The heartrending photos and videos caused deep grief among the public and served as crucial evidence of the tragic incident - how hundreds of students met their death as the capsized ferry was virtually abandoned without appropriate rescue efforts by the concerned authorities.

In the days of analog photography, photojournalists packed their equipment and carried it to the scenes of accidents and incidents. But in the digital age, anyone at the scene, even without professional expertise or equipment, can take pictures from their own perspective thanks to high-quality smartphone cameras. In this sense, one could say that photography has also become “democratized.”

During the candlelight rallies at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul, which continued through the winter of 2016, protesters taking selfies with their families or friends were a common sight. The countless snapshots they took there will forever remind them of the day they joined the act of defiance against a scandal-tainted president with a burning passion for democracy.