“preserving the invaluable treasures of Yongsan Garrison”

What is Yongsan Legacy?

By the end of 2017, USFK announced that the command units and most personnel who were serving and living on Yongsan Garrison would be relocated to Camp Humphreys in Pyungtaek. In order to make room for one of the largest urban parks in the world, the current master plan for Yongsan National Urban Park plans to demolish more than 90% of approximately 1,000 existing buildings inside the base. Once the buildings and places are removed, stories and memories of the place will also vanish into the past.

Yongsan Legacy project aims to capture and perpetuate personal memories, stories, life experiences from those GI’s and civilians who served and lived on Yongsan Garrisson. Through these stories and photos, Yongsan Legacy hopes to reveal the significance of Yongsan Garrison and Yongsan area. The magnitude of Yongsan Garrison’s influence on the development of modern South Korea is remarkable and deserves to be recognized; from fashion to K-pop, from friendships to families, from history to love stories, Yongsan Garrison offers a unique perspective in understanding Korea today.

Yongsan Legacy project is a crowd-sourced project that requires individual participation; this was a risky decision by the project team, but the team believed in voluntary act of crowd-sourced project to make this project more meaningful and completely open to public. Moreover, this is the only way the contents can be unaltered and unedited which will form a foundation for creative people to generate their creative works such as movies, novels, paintings and video games which we’re currently working on. The vision of Yongsan Legacy is to create a “virtual memorial” that personal stories and memories will inspire people from different generations and remain relevant yet true to its spirit of the place, Genius Loci, called Yongsan Garrison and Yongsan area.

Most people only see in Yongsan Garrison buildings built in various periods, and this is a part of a memory, but the buildings and the places are only empty shells once USFK move out of Yongsan Garrison. The project is interested in archiving the “soft memories”: human stories and interactions of people who spent time inside the garrison.

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“preserving the invaluable treasures of Yongsan Garrison” by capturing and perpetuating personal memories, stories, life experiences from those GI’s and civilians who served and lived on Yongsan Garrisson

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“preserving the invaluable treasures of Yongsan Garrison” by capturing and perpetuating personal memories, stories, life experiences from those GI’s and civilians who served and lived on Yongsan Garrisson