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‘Ghosts’ of the Exclusion Zone. Portraits of Self-Settlers in the Project of South Korean Photographer Jung Sungtae

‘Ghosts’ of the Exclusion Zone. Portraits of Self-Settlers in the Project of South Korean Photographer Jung Sungtae

Ivan Chernickin

To convey the invisible, to feel the destructive impact, to comprehend the tragedy that you heard about as a child only from the news is one of the long-term themes that South Korean photographer Jung Sungtae is working on. In his works, he visualizes the invisible manifestations of the Chornobyl disaster through portraits of people. Invisible to society and to each other, the self-settlers continue to live in the exclusion zone they were forced to leave and eventually returned to. Zaborona publishes Jung Sungtae’s photographs and tells the stories that the photographer has documented.


Jung says the following about his project: “In April 1986, there was an explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Since the accident, invisible ghosts have ruled the land here in the Chornobyl exclusion zone. One of them is the radiation that consumes the space, and the other is the hearts of those who call this space home. They have faith that their home will return, and they feel sad that they have been abandoned and become ‘ghosts’.”

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