Until 1989, both Germans and Koreans suffered the same fate of living in a divided land. The historical reasons for the separation of Germany into East and West and Korea into North and South are very different and therefore difficult to compare. Still, the many similarities of Korea’s division?the segregation of its citizens, the tearing apart of families, the suffering of those who attempted to escape?make it almost impossible for Germans to visit Korea without thinking of their country’s own experiences.



In 2006, the German architecture photographer Dieter Leistner had both the opportunity and official permission to photograph public spaces in Pyongyang, North Korea. In 2012, Leistner visited Seoul, South Korea, where he sought and found similar locations with a very different feel. Korea?Korea is a collection of his images whose “visual concordance” speaks for itself and needs no commentary.



In addition to its striking selection of photographs, the book contains excerpts from two diaries?one by a writer who grew up in East Germany and accompanied Leistner to Pyongyang and the other by a German-Korean curator who has regularly visited Seoul since her childhood. Their texts give readers two distinctly German interpretations of this foreign land.