Seung-Woo Yang entered the universe of the Korean Yakuza in his teens. The death by suicide of his friend drove him to start capturing the world, to cement his memories with his friends, some of whom are still active members of organized crime in South Korea.
When he moved to Japan in 1997, he started photographing the Yakuza elite of Tokyo’s underworld. There he discovered the intricacies of honor, pride and violence in the subculture.
Over the years, he’s intimately captured the soft underbelly of South Korea and Japan and has seen some pretty sordid things. He’s widely renowned for the rare access he has to the Japanese and Korean Yakuza.
We follow him on his news assignments, capturing the gambling games of fairground workers called the Tekiya and glitzy life of the Host bars in Japan, all while he shares one enrapturing story after the other of his noir life with the Yakuza.
Check out more of the artists work here: https://www.shashasha.co/jp/artist/yang-seung-woo
Click here to SUBSCRIBE to VICE Asia: https://bit.ly/2LhqAR9
Connect with VICE Asia:
Check out our full video catalog: https://bit.ly/2P3Y0pv
Videos, daily editorial and more: http://vice.com/en_asia
More videos from the VICE network: https://fb.com/viceasia/videos/
Like VICE Asia on Facebook: http://fb.com/viceasia
Follow VICE Asia on Twitter: https://twitter.com/viceasia
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/viceasia/
