My church is located in Myeong-dong, so I’m pretty familiar with the small underground shopping center in the area. There were many interesting stores selling unique items back in the 1990s when I was a kid.
A postage stamp store filled with old coins and seemingly valuable old postage stamps featuring former presidents; an old vinyl record store always packed with fashionable guys with fedora hats where I was confused about where to start looking around; and a camera store where vintage cameras where I wondered if they actually worked were displayed side by side behind shiny glass windows.
These are places in my memory from 20+ years ago. Surprisingly, these places are still there at exactly the same locations. So, the shopping center in Myeong-dong and Hoehyeon area is like a time capsule for me.
Amongst these stores, there is an obscure place. The store is about 100 square feet big and has various military items that stimulate instinctive curiosity. This is Memphis Belle, a military vintage shop that has been in the underground shopping center since 1997.
Youngsik Kim, in his mid-50s, is a Uijeongbu native. His mom worked at one of the biggest US military camps in Uijeongbu when he was a kid. So, he spent a lot of time in the camp growing up. He recalled that the camp felt like the States. Unlike the unpaved roads in Uijeongbu, nicely paved roads were spread in the camp and beautiful lawns were here and there. Vending machines were filled with various candies and chocolates. There was even a Baskin Robbins 31 ice cream store in the camp.
It was the military camp in Uijeongbu where new albums imported from the US were circulated first before they became available anywhere else in Korea. He could listen to AFKN anytime on the radio in the camp. At a camp library, then rare magazines and periodicals like National Geographic and Life were mounted high.
Youngsik grew up unknowingly eating abundant cultural fruits harvested from rich American soils. He believes his upbringing must have had significant impact on his commitment to military vintage.
He worked at a defense contractor after graduating college. Maybe that’s not a coincidence either. It could be his childhood memories of the military and the US settled stably in his unconscious that took him there.
On a business trip to Japan while working for the defense contractor, Youngsik found that military supply shops were run in a large format and surprisingly popular. Brands like Ameco, Avirex and Alpha which reproduce original military items in modern styles were very hot as well.
“It’s gonna work in Korea as well,” thought Youngsik. Coming back to Korea, he quit his job at the defense contractor and started working for a military vintage shop when such places were still rare in Korea. In 1997, he left the shop and finally started his own military vintage store—Memphis Belle.
If Memphis Belle sounds familiar to you, you must have watched the movie “Memphis Belle.” Released in 1991, the movie is about fiery air battles in 1943 Europe. It makes a lot of sense that this movie was engraved deep in his heart as he grew up watching the Harrier, a fighter jet that takes off vertically, in Uijeongbu. Without a second thought, Youngsik named his vintage shop Memphis Belle after the movie.
It was quite challenging to market Memphis Belle as a military vintage store in the 1990s. Some public workers at Korea Department of Defense or Seoul local government expressed discomfort with media exposure of Memphis Belle given strong tensions between South and North Korea. He needed to find a sweet spot and manage Memphis Belle to the extent not to bother them too much.
Memphis Belle sells military products, but not only military products. That’s because Youngsik thinks of military vintages as fashion, not military supplies, from the moment that he started Memphis Belle. He has been introducing outdoor and motorcycle gear brands to the Korean market, two categories that he believes have a tangential point with military vintages. Old folks sometimes stop by to get a full military uniform with nostalgia for their youth but Youngsik kindly explains that Memphis Belle is not a store for that.
Also, Youngsik doesn’t go to places like Dongmyo where military items could be easily procured at affordable prices. He is more than able to vet military vintages to pick the very best of them with his decades-long experience and insight but is afraid he might get stuck in a rut.
M-51 field jacket, which got spotlighted as it was worn by the main character of the Japanese movie ‘Bayside Shakedown’, was supplied in bulk by Memphis Belle. Memphis Belle tried many initiatives centered around military vintage products, including export, in its early days, but none of them could fill a void in his heart. That’s how Youngsik started military upcycling projects.
Military upcycling probably sounds strange to you. In general, armed forces mass produce and reserve a huge number of military items just in case of emergencies. Inevitably, there will be a moment when these items need to be disposed of. As new products more technologically advanced are made available, whether be it new fabrics or sewing methods, prior generation items quickly lose their value.
Military upcycling takes such military surplus and transforms them into something new. It has been a while since upcycled military products earned popularity in Europe and Japan. Memphis Belle initially started with selling upcycled military clothes imported from them. Youngsik finally decided to dive deeper into it.
Youngsik was talking with one of Memphis Belle’s loyal customers one day, who suddenly suggested that he make something on his own, whatever it would be. He recalls it was around 2011–2012 when boutique local brands started getting noticed little by little in the fashion industry.
Sometime later, Youngsik happened to visit a small store in England. He saw the store produced various private label goods and thought he could do it at least as well as they did. The experience boosted his confidence and he jumped on private label military upcycling projects as soon as he came back from England.
The first item was bags. The reason is because bags are his favorite piece and are available in greater numbers than any other product. It was natural that he picked the category he knew the best.
His first military upcycling project was helmet bags. Helmet bags are bags that look like tote bags widely used by the US military. Youngsik secured all materials for the production, including vintage military fabrics and zipper, and produced the bags in accordance with old production procedures reflecting characteristics of original vintage helmet bags.
He initially made 60 helmet bags and supplied them to a multi-designer retail shop to test the water. Voila! They were sold out in two weeks. The retailer ordered 70 or 80 more bags, which were sold out again in about a month. “Wow, it works,” thought Youngsik. Since then, he runs a couple of military upcycling projects every year.
There’s an interesting story for this project as well, like how Youngsik came up with the name Memphis Belle for his military vintage store.
Memphis Belle is a name for a B-17 Flying Fortress and her crew based in England during World War II. They crossed over the strait of Dover for bombing missions. When 100 bombers went on a mission, only about 20 of them came back successfully. The Memphis Belle crews got a promise that they would be dispatched to wherever they wanted if they successfully completed 25 bombing missions. They risked their lives to finish the missions and finally got their 25th mission done.
Youngsik got inspired by this story. When he decided to do the military upcycling projects, he promised himself that he would run at least 25 projects however it goes. He has completed more than 10 projects so far.
New fabrics developed these days are so technologically advanced that they barely get distressed or fade. So, aging is almost impossible. But fabrics in the 60s to 80s, or even prior to that, age beautifully and stay strong and sturdy at the same time. Some people are crazy about them, including myself.
Also, Memphis Belled hand stencil upcycled military products using vintage ink, stencil tools and methods. You can also mark your initial on a large kit bag.
Memphis Belle doesn’t mass produce upcycling project items. So, each of them has a distinct number that proves they’re limited editions. They usually make no more than 100 items per each project, but exceptionally produced ~700 helmet bags. Fabrics used for the helmet bags could be secured relatively easily back in the day. But limited supply, like other vintage fabrics, pushed up the fabric price. Sadly, it would be hard to produce the helmet bag at the old price even if it’s further produced.
25 years into the business, Memphis Belle has a lot of long-standing customers. Some of their loyal customers even passed away. A little boy who frequented Memphis belle holding his dad’s hand has become a loyal customer himself. Recently, a chef in Sweden who loved Memphis Belle when he was a kid stopped by to catch up with Youngsik. He also helped a grad student studying design in one of the design schools in New York write a research paper on military clothes. Memphis Belle has a wide range of customer age distribution representing its long history over two decades.
Youngsik believes the Korean market has enough potential to come up with global military brands like Real McCoy’s or Avirex. Also, Korea has experience in actual modern warfare and has great manufacturers working with global brands on military reproduction items.
He wants to fully incorporate these elements into his military upcycling projects. His goal is to create clear images for Memphis Belle which people can immediately associate with its name.
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