We met “Korea’s Zorba” in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, on a spring day in March when the plum trees were in blossom.
He said he had spent the past winter around the Mediterranean, beginning on the Isle of Man and moving on to places such as Sorrento in Italy. Back in Korea, he had travelled between Jeju, Seoul and Gyeongju before coming to Suncheon, and he would soon leave for France again.
Wearing jeans he has patched and re-patched for thirty years, he leaves on a whim and returns just as suddenly — that is his style. He has a mobile phone, but calls rarely get through. “I have slept anywhere all my life, so I never get tired wherever I sleep. Wherever I sleep is my home,” he said — words that sounded like a line from Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek.
If one were to find Zorba in Korea, this man would be the one: photographer Bae Bien-U, 67.