Seoul, South Korea, January 1959: Standing wood and applying a special plaster, these older orphans of the Seoul Police and Soldiers Orphanage are learning lacquerware manufacture, a centuries-old profession for which there is still a ready market. The Seoul Police and Soldiers Orphanage received support from the Headquarter Detachment, Special Troops unit in 1959. The program — which started in October 1958 — teaches the orphans the process of traditional lacquerware manufacturing.

Pictured here is a scan of the original 1958 print created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department to run in the print newspaper. The red marks indicate the crop lines. Only the middle part of the image would appear in the newspaper. As the vast majority of pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963, the prints developed from the late 1940s through 1963 are the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those decades — with the exception the negatives of some 190 pre-1964 photo assignment found recently. Stars and Stripes’ archives team is scanning these prints and negatives to ensure their preservation.

Looking for Stars and Stripes’ historic coverage? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/