Face Facts

Shades of Ricky Gervais' wonderful Derek today, as we visited Lucy's Grandmother in her nursing home.

With a face that hints at a thousand stories, Im Dae Rai is just a few years shy of a century old, and Korea was still a monarchy when she was born.
The Japanese annexed the country in 1910, keeping the final emperor, Sunjong, in confinement right up until his death aged 52, in 1926.
Whilst Korean culture did benefit in a few small ways from the occupation (such as the instillation of a public education system), Japanese rule was often brutal and ruthless and included slave labour, the torture and murder of independence activists, the sexual slavery of Korean women, the forced adoption of the Japanese language (including taking Japanese names), and even reports of biological experiments (such as deliberately infecting victims with diseases) in an attempt to create weaponised 'germs'.

When independence finally came, in 1945, there would be just five years of peace before North invaded South, and the horrific 'Forgotten War' began.
1945's Liberators the USA and Russia's decision to temporarily divide the country as they tried to agree on future plans would prove to be incredibly costly.
Fighting lasted three long years and saw approximately 1.2 million military casualties, with civilian deaths estimated to be around the 1.5 million mark.

By the end of the Korean War (which ironically saw North and South divided on virtually the same lines they started) the country was in ruins.
Korea was now one of the poorest countries in the world, and per capita income in the time after the war was around seventy dollars per year.

And so began the final epic event seen through the wizened eyes of Lucy's Grandmother, the Miracle on the Han River, a truly amazing turnaround which sees Korea's per capita income today hover around the $31,000 mark.
Beginning in the 1960's, dictator Park Chung Hee combined the huge amounts of US aid with the astonishing work ethic of the Korean people to rapidly industrialize, make vast technological strides, and create a successful export-driven economy.
Cheong Hee is a highly controversial figure in Korea (as was the recent appointment to the presidency of his daughter, Park Geun Hye) and was eventually assassinated by his security chief. Considered by many a brutal and murderous dictator, he is viewed by others (most notably those who can remember Korea's post-war poverty) as the country's saviour.
You only need to look at life in North Korea however (who recieved their own massive amounts of aid from the likes of China and Russia) to see that things could have turned out very, very differently.