Sung Jin Park’s Portraits of Seoul Youth in the 2000s

In Kid Echo, published by Session Press, the photographer returns to pictures of Seoul schoolkids he’d once set aside

Kid Echo, the new book from Sung Jin Park, is a nostalgic glimpse of Seoul’s youth in the 2000s. A 152-page hardcover monograph consisting of previously unseen pictures, its pages show teenagers hanging around after school, cuffs rolled up, schoolbags slung loosely over shoulders, hair styled with subtle intention, all despite the constraints of a strict uniform code and wider societal expectations. They carry a flavour of punk rebellion, reminiscent of British teens in the Seventies and Eighties, only more understated and rendered in tonal black and white. Some pictures feel almost staged, as though a styling team might be waiting just out of shot, but Park shot this series candidly in neighbourhoods and alleyways he already knew well. 

The images were left out of Park’s 2014 book, Kid Nostalgia, after publishers in Seoul felt they did not present Korean youth appropriately. But he knew he would return to them, though perhaps not quite so many years later. There’s a strange familiarity to these images – kids everywhere are still finding ways to dress up to stand out – shot at a time not so far away but somehow still distant. 

Born in Seoul, Park moved to New York as a teenager, discovering photography while studying painting at Pratt Institute, before returning to South Korea. Kid Echo is published by Session Press, run by Miwa Susuda, who also works at Dashwood Books, a mainstay of New York’s photography scene. The book will launch at Dashwood in November, and Park describes the release as a “homecoming”. Here, he speaks about his connection to both cities, the unique fashion sense of teenagers in Seoul during the 2000s, and what it means to revisit youth, identity and memory so many years on.

ALBIE FAY Uniforms are obviously restrictive by design, but kids always find ways to bend the rules. I remember wearing black Dickies to school as my way of standing out within a strict uniform. I’ve noticed rolled cuffs and shortened hems. What were the small rebellions you kept noticing when shooting for this project?

SJP I felt they were confined in the uniform, yet they expressed their personalities by customising it to their liking. There were boys who wore school trousers in a bell-bottom style, while, on the other hand, some boys wore them really skinny. They were quite contrasting looks, but I liked both of these styles.

Some kids south of the river wore them in a hip-hop style. Girls in the early 2000s wore big, long skirts, then around 2006–7 started rolling them up to make them mini, though they still had to roll them back down to their knees inside school. All throughout the 2000s, different styles coexisted despite school uniform restrictions.

AF If you had to describe their look in a sentence, what would you say? Do you feel Korea’s history came into these rebellious looks at all?

SJP I’d probably have to use too many words, but I’ll try. It was the “look” that caught my attention, not the uniform itself, but the way they expressed themselves in it. For some reason, I felt they looked kind of retro. I felt they were lost in translation, which helped them create their unique ‘look’ and ‘vibe.’

I did not feel or think of anything related to modern history of South Korea while I was shooting these images. I think it was more about a universal feeling of youth, a regional colour of youth that I found in them, both strange and familiar at the same time. 

AF The tonality of the images gives them so much depth. Was that the reason behind choosing to shoot in black-and-white?

SJP Black-and-white photography came very naturally to me and I also enjoyed the fact that I could develop the images in a small darkroom. In my younger days in New York, I would spend time looking at Bruce Davidson, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans and others from that period at MoMA. I love that black-and-white photography is not entirely real.

AF Why did you leave these pictures out of Kid Nostalgia, your previous photo book project?

SJP I felt that I could not show everything when I was making Kid Nostalgia in 2014. It was not easy to publish the book in Seoul at that time, as the public would not have seen these images as representing the youth in an appropriate manner. I believed that the right time would come to show them as well. It was late 2024 or early 2025 when Miwa Susuda contacted me, expressing her interest in making a book. I showed her the selection of photos that had not been published previously and the ball started rolling. Miwa has an amazing eye for portraiture, and we selected mostly frontal, straight portraits.

AF You moved to New York as a teenager in 1987, then returned to Seoul. How has living between the two affected your idea of home and the process of creating this book?

SJP I feel like a stranger sometimes being back in Seoul, but looking back, I was a stranger in New York as well. A camera can be a best friend for a stranger who walks and travels alone.

AF Kids bunking off school in a distinctive uniform, doing their own thing, it feels like something that’s still happening somewhere. Is there a version of Kid Echo happening now, in Seoul, or even in New York?

SJP I have not been to New York in so long. I have no idea what the kids are like in New York these days, although I would be more interested in those who hang out around 7-Eleven, drinking beers to the music from a car stereo in the outer-city suburbs, than the skate kids in Tompkins Square Park.

AF How does it feel to look at these images together now, so long after you photographed them?

SJP I felt that I was among them, dancing with them while directing them at the same time. I feel that I am merely an observer now, looking at these photographs just like anyone else. I received so many dull reactions from people when I showed these pictures to them around the 2000s. I get a bit emotional looking at them as a whole. There, I see the growing pains of all of us, meaning the kids and myself. It feels like an old-school album without my picture in it. A portrait of our younger days.

Kid Echo by Sung Jin Park is published by Session Press