Love Locked

These 'love padlocks' can be found at a lookout point on the Chosun University campus that overlooks part of the city. There aren't very many as yet, but special wire cables have been installed along the fence to encourage love-struck teens to add a pair of their own.

A popular way for young couples to express their love in Korea (most notably at Seoul's landmark Namsan Tower) I had always assumed this to be a Korean tradition or perhaps one inherited from Japan, I think mainly because this cutesy approach to romance is often seen over here (I hope to one day blip some couples wearing their full-on matching 'couple set' outfits. There are clothes shops here which cater solely in the exact same outfit, one for the boyfriend, the other for the girlfriend, and it's not unusual to see young couples dressed in identical clothes, from their baseball caps right down to their matching designer trainers).
When I stumbled upon the padlock phenomenon on a footbridge in Paris however, I began to wonder where the whole thing started.

It transpires that no one is sure of any one specific origin regarding the locks, and whilst there are clear literary references in both Serbia and Italy, the global popularity of this padlocked display of affection seemed to spring up in a short space of time around the turn of the millenium, in a whole host of countries around the globe.

The locks can now be found in a wide variety of places the world over, certain councils even encouraging them, or building specific structures to house the locks (in other cases they've been deemed damaging by local councils and removed).
In one instance, thousands of locks on one Paris bridge vanished overnight, and when the council denied responsibility, the culprit turned out to be a local artist who melted down the locks into a shard-like sculpture, stating he wanted to 'explore the paradox of transforming metal that was imbued with love into an unemotional geometric object'.

Love padlocks invade the world!