Street Gyms

I lived in South Korea for three and a half years, and in that time I took thousands of photographs.  I really wanted my first post about Korea to be something special; something that really “embodied” Korea.

It was always going to be street photography, as it’s my favourite kind of photography.  And for the subject I chose something quintessentially Korean, something which reveals so much about life in Korea through a photograph:  street gyms.

Street gyms are ubiquitous in Korea, as ubiquitous as the neon-clad, visor wearing adjumas and adjoshis (men and women) who use them.  The over-sized hula-hoops, pulleys, stretching bars and weights, along with some mind boggling rotation platforms and things that simply dangle you upside down, are in every forest and on every mountainside and more surprising for the new arrival, on many a city street.  And they are well-used.

The pictures below are from one of my favourite outdoor gyms in Busan.  It’s situated on a riverbank at the bottom of one of the biggest university areas in the city, which made for some interesting contrasts between the generations:  those exercising their bodies, and those exercising their thumbs.  It was a freezing cold December day and the light was harsh but I really love the way the pictures came out.