By 
My mother Elly Smothers in June 1960 on the southern side Namsan Mountain, south of Seoul, Korea. In the background is the Han River and parts of Itaewon and Yongsan. Elly is looking north. The modern day Grand Hyatt Hotel is located on the ridge about 1/4 mile behind my mother where the road is in this photo. The house my family lived in 1959-62 in “New” Itaewon is off-picture to the right about 1/4 mile – the road in the lower right corner of this photo led to our home. The area where Elly is sitting and where our home was located is now part of Namsan Park.
Picture from Smothers Flickr Album.
I just can’t get over how clear and blue the skies are in the photo much less how developed the area is now.
10:13 am on September 5th, 2010 1
It almost looks like there are still patches of snow on Mt Kwanaksan in the backdrop.
Anecdotally, Seoul was colder then (the Han River typically froze over to allow people to skate and icefish), but snow in June?
It's not high enough for such late snow (I did see snow late this past June on Mt Baldy in SoCal and Mt Charleston in Clark County, Nevada, near Las Vegas, but those are some 10K and 12K feet and follow what were very cool spring and summer temps).
11:45 am on September 5th, 2010 2
That might just be bare rock- not as many trees back then.
12:05 pm on September 5th, 2010 3
I was thinking of that as a possibility, but it seems the wrong color. If it were a problem with denuded mountains — Japanese colonial policies and then the Korean War wreaked havoc on the trees — we'd have open areas of dirty or grass, not bare rock.
1:20 pm on September 6th, 2010 4
It's so hard to imagine where this is on Namsan today since the areas are so different!