2020 Koreana Spring(English)

SPRING 2020

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS

SPECIAL FEATURE

Roomfuls of Memories; Apartments, Homes of the Middle Class; Shared Solutions; The Hanok Renaissance; A New Wave in Furniture

VOL. 34 NO. 1

ISSN 1016-0744

IMAGE OF KOREA

First Birthday Wishes

A

© Yang Jun-seok

photo sent to my cell phone is a welcome reminder of my granddaughter’s first birthday party. It took place on a sparkling day last June in a hotel banquet room. After much coaxing, she had surrendered to a traditional cap (jobawi) placed on her head. Then she tossed it off. Two small tables held rice cakes, fruit and colorful objects on a tray. A pouch embroidered with peonies and a decorative red sash were also laid atop an abundant coil of thread.

A golf ball on the tray captured my granddaughter’s attention, but her mother intervened. Removing the ball, she muttered, “What’s this thing doing here?” Presented with the tray again, my granddaughter beamed and picked up a large toy microphone.

In Korean tradition, the banquet held to celebrate a baby’s first year of life is called doljanchi. Dol means first birthday, signifying completion of one full cycle of 12 months, and janchi is a banquet or party. In the past, when basic needs for life were in short supply, many babies did not live to see their first birthday. Those who did were celebrated at a family banquet.

Going on to have one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world did not end this rite of passage.

The highlight of the day is doljabi. This is when the baby’s future is predicted by an object that the child plucks from a tray. Objects representing health and longevity include a skein of thread, noodles, white rice cake (baekseolgi) and sorghum cake balls covered in red beans (susu patteok).

Money, of course, foretells wealth.

Items such as paper and a writing brush, books and ink, a bow and arrow, and mapae (a horse requisition tablet bestowed upon public servants of the Joseon Dynasty) were typically placed in front of boys. For girls, housekeeping-related items were added, such as needles, scissors and an iron, spools of thread and cloth. But these days no such distinction is made.

Instead, for both boys and girls, modern-age doljabi objects often include a golf ball, microphone, stethoscope, judge’s gavel, and even a computer mouse.

As I imagined the future of my granddaughter who picked the microphone, I suddenly recalled what her mother – my daughter – had chosen some 30 years before. Reaching beyond the assorted objects displayed before her, my daughter snatched up one of the rice cakes stacked behind the mélange and took a big bite out of it. Perhaps that’s why she is now the happy mother of several children, with plenty of food on the dinner table.

Kim Hwa-young Literary Critic; Member of the National Academy of Arts

Editor’s Letter

PUBLISHER

Lee Geun

Housing: How Affordable Is It?

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Kim Seong-in

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Lee Kyong-hee

EDITORIAL BOARD

Han Kyung-koo

Benjamin Joinau

Jung Duk-hyun

Kim Hwa-young

Kim Young-na

Koh Mi-seok

Charles La Shure

Song Hye-jin

Song Young-man

It would take Ki-woo, the son of the destitute Kim family, 564 years to buy the house of the wealthy Park family in “Parasite,” according to the movie’s Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho. He wasn’t joking. To buy a home in Seoul, an average Korean wage earner would have to save up all of their earnings for 21.1 years. For those at the bottom quintile of the income ladder, it would take as long as 48.7 years.

South Korea, the world’s 11th largest economy, continues its battle with housing shortages and soaring home prices. The country’s breakneck economic development has centered on its capital Seoul, turning it into one of the world’s most populous and expensive cities. In this overcrowded metropolis with a yawning income divide, the young and the poor suffer most. Many of them end up in the city’s humblest abodes, such as rooftop rooms and semi-basement flats.

Older generations benefited from the government’s mass housing supply policy, which essentially provided construction of large-scale apartment complexes coupled with price regulation. Those who were lucky enough to win the rights to purchase the newly built flats secured stable housing as well as handsome profits.

As of 2018, apartments amounted to some 10.83 million units, or 61.4 percent of the total housing in the country, according to Statistics Korea.

Including row houses and apartment units in private homes, multi-dwelling units reached 75.4 percent.

Until a few decades ago, rented rooms in private homes were the most common dwelling type within the means of low-income households in large cities. Novelist Yoon Sung-hee recounts her memories of those days for our readers, opening the Special Feature of the present issue, “Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires.” It is followed by articles reviewing how apartments became the predominant housing for Koreans, alternative housing options and how traditional Korean houses are utilized nowadays.

Lee Kyong-hee Editor-in-Chief

Yoon Se-young

COPY EDITOR

Jamie Lypka

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Ji Geun-hwa

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Cho Yoon-jung

Ted Chan

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Kim Shin

EDITOR

Ham So-yeon

ART DIRECTOR

Kim Ji-yeon

DESIGNERS

Kim Nam-hyung

Yeob Lan-kyeong

LAYOUT & DESIGN

Kim’s Communication Associates

44 Yanghwa-ro 7-gil, Mapo-gu

Seoul 04035, Korea

www.gegd.co.kr

Tel: 82-2-335-4741

Fax: 82-2-335-4743

TRANSLATORS

Chung Myung-je

Hwang Sun-ae

Min Eun-young

Park Hyun-ah

Suh Jung-ah

SUBSCRIPTION/CIRCULATION Price per issue in Korea 6,000 won Elsewhere US$9 Please refer to page 104 of Koreana for specific subscription rates.

PRINTED IN SPRING 2020

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS Spring 2020

Samsung Moonwha Printing Co. 10 Achasan-ro 11-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04796, Korea Tel: 82-2-468-0361/5 © The Korea Foundation 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

Published quarterly by THE KOREA FOUNDATION 55 Sinjung-ro, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do 63565, Korea https://www.koreana.or.kr

reproduced in any form without the prior permission of the Korea Foundation.

The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent those of the editors of Koreana or the Korea Foundation.

Koreana , registered as a quarterly magazine with the Ministry

“Block Town” Yoo Han-yi 2013. Color on paper. 117 × 137 cm.

of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Registration No. Ba-1033, August 8, 1987), is also published in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires 04

SPECIAL FEATURE 1

26

SPECIAL FEATURE 4

Roomfuls of Memories

The Hanok Renaissance

Yoon Sung-hee

Jeon Bong-hee

10

30

SPECIAL FEATURE 2

Apartments, Homes of the Middle Class Park Hae-cheon

20

SPECIAL FEATURE 5

A New Wave in Furniture

SPECIAL FEATURE 3

Shared Solutions Park Seong-tae

© “Monthly Green Friendly House”

34

FOCUS

60

IN LOVE WITH KOREA

78 ENTERTAINMENT

Two Theatrical Takes on Bloody Uprising

In the Afterglow of Karma

Crossing the Gender Divide

Song Seo-yeon

Choi Sung-jin

Lee Hyo-won

40

64

80

INTERVIEW

From Heretic to Icon: Reinventing Traditional Music

ON THE ROAD

Yeoju: Perceiving Invisible Land Lee Chang-guy

Lim Hee-yun

46

GUARDIANS OF HERITAGE

Preserving the Taste of Slowness

ART REVIEW

The Lure of Korea’s ‘Big Fish’ Won Jong-won

56

TALES OF TWO KOREAS

Berlin Garden Evokes a Dream of Peace Kim Hak-soon

Namul: Versatile Greens Loved by Koreans Jeong Jae-hoon

72

AN ORDINARY DAY

A Fine Cut Above Kim Heung-sook

Park Mee-hyang

52

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

84 LIFESTYLE From Back Alleys, Toys for Us Baek Young-ok

76

BOOKS & MORE

‘Milena, Milena, Ecstatic’

88

JOURNEYS IN KOREAN LITERATURE

‘Bari’s Love Song’

Between ‘This Side’ and ‘That Side’ of the World

Verse of Healing from an Abandoned Princess

Choi Jae-bong

‘Indieful ROK’

Who Killed the Cat

A Story for a Little Spare Time

Wanna Know More Than Just K-Pop? Charles La Shure

Youn Dae-nyeong

SPECIAL FEATURE 1

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires

© Choe Gyeong-ja

“Jungnim-dong, Seoul” (1990) by Kim Ki-chan Jungnim-dong, located near the old city center of Seoul, retains the look and atmosphere of a typical 1960s neighborhood in this photo dated 1990. Narrow alleys and steep stairways still remain, making carts and strong bodies the only means of moving items.

4 KOREANA Spring 2020

In the past, residing in a cluster of rented rooms symbolized a weary urban life whereas families sharing space under a single roof conjured up heart-warming images. Today, with high-rise units as the most common housing style, those rented rooms are where nostalgia lingers.

Yoon Sung-hee Novelist

ROOMFULS OF MEMORIES

M

y parents started their married life in the front r o o m o f m y u n c l e ’s house. That was about 50 years ago.

Then, when my older brother was born, they moved into a rented room in a neighbor’s house. The house had a large front gate and a yard with rooms on three sides. The landlord’s family used the main wing and rented out the two side wings. My family lived in the room at the end of the right-hand wing.

Mother still talks about those days: “The only kitchen goods we had were a shoddy cupboard made of plywood and a kerosene stove.” To this she adds without fail that the landlady and all of

the other female lodgers were fond of my brother and eagerly took turns carrying him on their backs.

I was born in that house. Sometimes, I try to imagine the day I arrived. It was toward the end of February so no coal briquettes would have been spared to keep the room warm as the due date neared. Who was the first person to receive me from my mother’s womb? What did people think when they heard me cry?

The Communal Tap

When I think of that old house in Suwon, the capital of Gyeonggi Province, the first image that comes to mind is the water pump in the middle

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 5

of the yard. It was a communal tap.

Mother would prime the pump, using all her might to move the handle up and down. When the water came gushing out, pushed up from underground, all the female lodgers would sit around it in a circle and do their laundry. I liked to sit on the narrow deck and watch them. Waiting our turns at the pump, we all washed our faces and brushed our teeth. But it was such a long time ago that I’m no longer sure if these images stem from an accurate memory or an illusion, the result of layers of other images that have accumulated over the years.

I took my first steps in that yard.

Then I toddled around until I could run. I would sit in the yard, drawing pictures in the dirt with my fingers, so my clothes were perpetually dirty. I also remember crying when the neighborhood boys went to play on the hills behind the house and refused to take me with them. My brother, after glimpsing the landlord family’s television, would head straight for their room as soon as he woke up in the morning. When Mother went to fetch him at night, he often embarrassed her by kicking up a fuss and crying because he didn’t want to come back

to our room.

The year we moved into that rented room, Mother opened a five-year savings account. The next year she opened a four-year account, the following year a three-year account, and so on. When five years passed and all five savings accounts came due on the same day, she withdrew all of her money and our family bought a house. Her dream was thus realized: our old neighborhood did not have an elementary school and she had vowed to move before my brother reached school age. “We may have scrimped and saved, but we still fed you an egg each and every day,” she reiterated to me and my brother more than a hundred times.

Mother’s Wishes

Our new home was so close to our school that we could go home during break times to fetch anything we had forgotten. I faintly remember the day we moved into that house. The front gate opened onto the yard, which had neither trees nor grass. It simply had an outhouse in one corner. While the adults were busy carrying our things into the house, I stood and imagined the yard with a big tree and a swing.

Those who rented rooms at our place came from all over the country. I would ask them where they came from and then look up those places on a map.

6 KOREANA Spring 2020

I also imagined tending flower beds with my mother. I believed that my parents would soon make these things happen for their beloved daughter.

But that’s not the way real life turned out. My parents cleared the yard and built a shop. The house was divided clumsily in half and Mother started a restaurant in the shop. My disappointment did not stop there. The house had three rooms and yet I was not given one of my own. My parents slept in the room off the restaurant, and my brother and I slept with Grandmother in the main room. The other two rooms were rented out. The couple who lived in the smaller room had a newborn baby. By the time the baby had mastered crawling and began walking, but not yet running, around the wood-floored hall, the family moved out.

Mother’s restaurant was a success. We bought a television; we also bought a refrigerator. Then a few years later, a second floor with three rooms was added to the shop. The storeroom located to the left of the front gate was torn down and another room was built there. My parents became full-fledged landlords. They went on to put up another building next to the restaurant

© Choe Gyeong-ja

“Jungnim-dong, Seoul” (1980)

by Kim Ki-chan Girls sing and play elastics in a neighborhood alley, a rare after-school sight these days.

and a carpenter’s workshop moved in. The carpenter made me a wooden sword and I walked around with it stuck in my waistband. I played in the school playground until dark, so again my clothes were always dirty. Mother would slap my bottom and scold me for being sloppy. But I liked it when she did that. She wasn’t really spanking me; she was trying to beat the dirt off my pants.

Those who rented rooms at our place came from all over the country.

I would ask them where they came from and then look up those places on a map. Everyone used the outhouse in the yard, so naturally we all bumped into each other coming and going. If I were to choose the most memorable tenant, it would be the drunkard – no question about that. His eyes were constantly bloodshot, and in summer he wore nothing more than a white singlet and ramie shorts. When our eyes met, he would give me a friendly greeting. And now and then a woman,

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 7

“Haengchon-dong, Seoul� (1974) by Kim Ki-chan In the early years of industrialization, one of the most common dwellings was a house that had several families occupying a rented room each. These houses generally had a communal water tap and a terrace for condiment crocks in the yard.

8 KOREANA Spring 2020

seemingly his wife, came to see him and they would quarrel all through the night. The man died in his room; it was my first sight of death.

My dream was to move from one house to another. I always envied the new students who had just moved into the neighborhood. Going to a new school, making friends all over again, walking into the classroom with the teacher and introducing myself to unknown classmates – the mere thought of it was frightening. But it was something I ached to do at least once. I lived in the same house all through elementary, middle and high school. As a university student I had to live away from home for a while, but eventually I returned.

My Dream

After my brother married and got his own place, my father moved into my brother’s old bedroom. Then when I moved out about 10 years ago, he moved into my old bedroom. My brother’s room became storage. I realized that only when their children had moved out, one by one, did my mother and father each have a room of their own. Mother, one of eight siblings, had never had a room for herself, and it was the same for Father, one of five siblings. Afterwards, when I saw people my parents’ age on the street, I often wondered to myself: When did these people come to have a room of their own? Were they born in large families like my parents, and did they too start married life in a rented room, then have children, and then work their fingers to the bone to give their children their own bedroom? Did they buy their children books such as “World Classics for Boys and Girls”?

Some people may have never had a room of their own in their whole life of 70 or 80 years. Some people

may have first begun to use a room by themselves only after their spouse passed away.

My parents still live in the same house. It’s an ungainly house, as rental rooms were added whenever my parents had accumulated enough money.

The neighborhood is old and run down now, so it isn’t easy to find lodgers. I often go to have dinner with my parents. For many years I spent New Year’s Eve at their place. I wanted to wake up in the morning and make my traditional New Year’s greetings: “May the New Year bring many blessings!”

But that didn’t last long. I became more and more comfortable staying at my own place. And these days I rarely sleep over at my parents’ house.

I lived in that house until I was 40 years old, but strangely enough I can only recall my childhood days there. I remember the day I was playing elastics in the alleyway with the other kids when my brother came up to me and whispered in my ear, “It’s here.” The color television we had been waiting for had arrived. I can still clearly remember the happiness of that day. I ran home as fast as I could. It seems as if the child panting for breath as she watched the new color television still lives in that house.

Seeds of Stories

Those who moved in and moved out, those who fought and got divorced, those who stole away at night without paying their rent, those who were dragged away by the police – such people were my neighbors. The front door of my old house was made of glass with a bubbly surface. When I looked out, it always seemed as if a dozen more people were coming. The people I watched through that glass became the seeds of my novels. In that way I crafted my stories.

© Choe Gyeong-ja

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 9

SPECIAL FEATURE 2

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires

APARTMENTS, HOMES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS In her 2003 book “The Republic of Apartments” (Une République des appartements), French geographer Valérie Gelézeau described apartment complexes as symbols of Korea’s “compressed modernization” and a “three-way preferential alliance among the government, chaebol (family-run conglomerates) and the middle class.” These ubiquitous apartment buildings, homogeneous in design and structure, are an object of both desire and disdain.

Park Hae-cheon Professor, Department of Design, Dongyang University

T

here was a time when a family beaming in front of a 30-pyeong (around 99 square meters) apartment and midsize car was a fixture in the advertisements of Korean construction companies.

Who was this happy family enjoying the material affluence afforded by the country’s rapid economic growth? To answer this question, we need to go back in time to Seoul in the mid- to late 1970s, specifically to Gangnam, the area south of the Han River.

Rapid development of this area transformed what used to be farmland into a modern town of large apart-

10 KOREANA Spring 2020

ment complexes built on a grid-shaped plan. Occupants of these new housing units formed a burgeoning social class – one of white-collar workers born during the 1940s, around the time when the nation was liberated from

“Apgujeong-dong” (1978) by Jun Min-cho In this photo dated 1978, a farmer ploughs his field, one of the last remaining patches of farmland in Apgujeong-dong, south of the Han River, in Seoul. In just 10 years or so, the landscape of the area was completely transformed, with rice paddies, orchards and wooded hills giving way to an upscale town which is called Gangnam today.

© Jun Min-cho

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 11

Japanese rule. They had experienced the atrocities of the Korean War in their childhood, attended college in the 1960s and made up the workforce for Korea’s industrialization in the 1970s.

This cohort was in their mid-30s when the construction of apartment complexes began the Gangnam. Mostly migrants from other regions of Korea, they were working a stable job, raising a family and looking to purchase their first house. The government’s housing supply policy presented a golden opportunity for them to settle into a new way of life in modern apartments in the newly built town. In the 1980s they earned the name jungsancheung, meaning the “middle class.”

The Middle Class Emerges

The price cap system for new apartments that the government first adopted in 1977 played a crucial role in enabling these new residents of Gangnam to join the middle class.

The policy has since been repeatedly scrapped and then reintroduced, but it was first implemented at the time to enable mass supply of affordable

homes and thereby raise the low housing supply ratio. Those who beat the fierce competition and won the right, called bunyanggwon, to purchase one of these new apartments could acquire a home for less than the market price and then make a handsome profit when urban development boosted property prices. This, in turn, gave them the means to move to a bigger apartment. Thus the middle class grew to form the mainstay of Korean society in the late 20th century.

But there’s no gain without loss.

The housing policy resulted in construction companies copying the floor plans and designs of existing apartments. They had little incentive to make changes since prices were regulated by the state and the apartments would sell out completely even before they were built.

Large-scale apartment complexes appeared in the new districts of Seoul during the 1980s and, during the 1990s, in the planned towns like Bundang, Ilsan and Pyeongchon which were built up around the capital area.

These complexes were uniform in lay-

1 © Seoul Museum of History

12 KOREANA Spring 2020

out and design; they were slight modifications of the early apartments built in Gangnam in the 1970s by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation and private construction firms. The floor plans of those Gangnam apartments were mass copied to provide homogeneous living spaces across the country.

Lifestyle Shifts

Apartment living spurred a transition to a “chair-sitting” lifestyle. Koreans traditionally sat or lay down on the floor, which was warmed from underneath, a heating system called ondol. Instead of a bed, they slept on a mattress laid out on the floor. Even those living in a Western-style house with an indoor kitchen and bathroom would eat their meals at a low table, sitting on the floor, and watch television while sitting or lying down on the warmest spots. The main room, or anbang, where families watched television together, was therefore called the “home theater.” But the apartments that sprang up around Seoul accelerated the spread of a different lifestyle, with sofas, desks, dining tables and

2 © imagetoday

1. A typical living room of apartment dwellers in the late 1970s has a television, a table and sofas, and a picture on the wall. The photo shows a living room at Samho Apartments in Seocho-dong, Seoul, which were completed in 1978.

2. The interior of a recently built apartment with modern built-in furniture.

The deregulation of new apartment prices spurred competition among construction companies, prompting them to build more upscale housing.

3. A garden on the grounds of a large apartment complex in Ilsan New Town, north of Seoul. Parkland with ponds, miniature hills with waterfalls and expensive sculptures have become a key feature of high-end apartments.

beds replacing the old furniture in the living room, kitchen and bedroom.

This new lifestyle also led to changes in the arrangement of rooms.

In a “floor-sitting” environment, it was important to place everyday items within arm’s reach. Small tables were an essential piece of furniture for keeping objects close by.

But it’s easy to get up from a chair or sofa and walk a few steps to get what you need. So in a chair-sitting environment, placing things some distance away from where you would sit wasn’t a great inconvenience. More important than keeping objects close at hand was being able to spot them easily. For apartment dwellers, visibility became a bigger factor in the arrangement of objects. When people sat on the floor most of the time, objects were usually placed above eye level, so you had to look up; when people began sitting in chairs, objects were placed so that they were at eye level or lower to a person sitting or standing, so you had to look down.

If the apartments built in Seoul’s new districts during the 1970s and

3

1980s prompted a transition to a chair-sitting lifestyle and consequent shifts in interior arrangements, the new towns in the capital area with their huge, high-density apartment complexes constructed during the 1990s spurred changes in the way Koreans shopped. Until then, it was part of a housewife’s daily routine to stroll down to the local market or stores to buy groceries before preparing dinner. But the hypermarkets that opened in new towns offered a new experience. For many families, shopping became a weekend activity at these large retailers, where they purchased items in bulk at lower prices.

Shopping Modes Change

But bulk purchases came with new problems. Firstly, without a car, it was virtually impossible to take home all the goods that filled a 120-liter shopping cart. Secondly, at home, a bigger refrigerator was required to store all the groceries, frozen food, fruit, beverages, and so on. Driven by this increasing need for cars and big refrigerators, the automotive and home appliances industries boomed.

The modern lifestyle that spread in tandem with the proliferation of apartments changed fundamentally after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The government decided to lift the price cap on new apartments to rescue the floundering construction industry, which in turn stimulated construction companies in the private sector to venture into larger “luxury” apartments.

These high-rise residential and commercial complexes first appeared in Yongin on the outskirts of the capital area, and then spread to Daechi-dong in Gangnam and Jeongja-dong in Bundang. With the reconstruction of old apartment complexes in Gangnam, the “post-Gangnam” trend had begun.

© Cheonglam Landscape

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 13

© imagetoday

14 KOREANA Spring 2020

The housing policy resulted in construction companies copying the floor plans and designs of existing apartments. They had little incentive to make changes since prices were regulated by the state and the apartments would sell out completely even before they were built.

Surging apartment prices fueled by structural changes in the asset market were the catalyst for uplifting interior spaces to a whole different level.

Living rooms and kitchens grew more spacious, built-in furniture became commonplace and interior finishes more extravagant. Although there were concerns about hazardous substances in building materials causing sick house syndrome, including issues such as atopic dermatitis, the trend could not be reversed. Double-door refrigerators, kimchi refrigerators, European-style front-loading washing machines and island tables filled the large kitchen while European-style “antique” furniture of unknown origin and paintings by young artists occupied a corner of the living room or entryway. As the living room became larger, so did the size of the television screen. Cleaning was left to the robot vacuum cleaner.

Lush Apartments Sprout

At the pinnacle of this trend were premium refrigerators. After the huge success of refrigerators decorated with glamorous patterns created by famed fashion designer André Kim (19352010), consumer electronics manufacturers came out with similar products dubbed “art appliances” or “fashion appliances.” These gadgets were decorated with rhinestones or synthetic leather and were produced in collaboration with avant-garde designers.

Indeed, the famous maxim of modern

design that “form follows function” could be replaced in this case with “form follows apartment prices.”

The mid-2000s saw builders shift focus from the interior space to the outdoors in the reconstruction of old apartment complexes in Gangnam.

Parking lots, which had taken up the most space in these complexes, were moved underground. Instead, luxurious green spaces featured ponds, bridges, artificial hills, brooks, rest areas, kiddie kayak pools, and walking trails lined with ornamental trees and plants.

The idea was to build outdoor spaces and amenities that created the look and feel of a resort where residents could take a break from everyday life.

Green Spaces Beckon

The asset market boom and the widening income polarization in the first decade of the 21st century were the key drivers of this trend, triggered by the deregulation of apartment prices. Notably, around the same time, budget-friendly foreign furniture and home decor brands entered the Korean market and quickly gained popularity among young people who had yet to buy a home.

The Korean middle class of the 20th century symbolized by ownership of an apartment and car was fading into history. Nonetheless, the government’s housing supply policies have reaped significant results over time; apartments account for over 60 percent of Korea’s total housing today.

A residential area in Sejong, a new multifunctional administrative city in South Chungcheong Province, is densely packed with highrise apartment buildings. As of 2018, apartments accounted for over 60 percent of the nation’s total housing. Supply of new apartments continues to increase each year.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 15

Same Space, Varied Lives “Evergreen Tower” (2001), a series of family portraits by photo artist Jung Yeon-doo, captures 32 families living in the same apartment building in Seoul. How do these people live out their lives in spaces that are almost identical? What does the artist try to show us?

Park Hae-cheon Professor, Department of Design, Dongyang University

“Evergreen Tower” (2001) by Jung Yeon-doo Six images from among 32 photos in the series.

E

vergreen (or “Sangnok”) Tower, the

wallpaper. In fact, it seems that none of the

For this, let’s look back at an essay written

stage for this photo series, is an apart-

tenants have touched any of the fixtures

by literary critic Kim Hyun (1942-1990) in the

ment building completed in 1996 in Gwang-

installed by the construction company upon

late 1970s, entitled “Literature of Our Era:

jang-dong, southeastern Seoul, constructed

completion of the building. The differences

Thick Life and Thin Life.” He describes the

by POSCO for employee rental housing.

begin with the people, furniture and house-

particularities of apartment interiors, based

At the time, the architectural community

hold items.

on his own experience of living in one of the

apartment buildings made with reinforced

The Visual Order

Han River, as follows:

concrete, this was the first steel-frame resi-

This means that anything that cannot be

“In an apartment, objects lose their bulk

dential building in Korea. The 25-story tower

moved is entirely the same from one liv-

and become like a picture existing as lines on

also had an aluminum curtain wall, another

ing room to another, while the things that

a plane. Everything is arranged on a single

new piece of technology in Korea back then.

can be moved are of considerable variety,

flat surface, so it all comes into view at once.

Yet the living rooms captured in the photo

clearly exhibiting the characteristics of the

There is nowhere for anything to hide in an

series hardly appear different from those of

occupants. Since the residents don’t own the

apartment, whether it be a person or an

took note of the building; unlike existing

any other apartments.

early multi-block complexes overlooking the

apartments, it makes sense that their deco-

object. All is open. This openness, however,

The first thing that catches the eye is how

rating efforts are limited to movable objects

does not have any depth; it is a superficial

the interior design of each living room main-

and furnishings. Nonetheless, we can see in

openness.”

tains the elements that were already there

each photo hints of a very important feature

So, in the interior space of an apartment,

when the tenants moved in. All 32 homes

that most Korean apartments share: the vi-

everything is inevitably on display with

have the same ceiling lights and the same

sual order of the living room.

nowhere to hide. Precisely for this reason,

16 KOREANA Spring 2020

© Jung Yeon-doo

one’s gaze takes on an all-knowing, all-pow-

this order has no depth; it’s superficial. In

erful strength, and the space in which this

contrast to the function of a vanishing point,

apartment living room. On top of an identi-

strength is expressed in full force is the living

the flatness is the result of a vanishing plane.

cal background layer made up of the ceiling

room. Without resistance, objects in the

Yeon-doo captures the evolving order of the

lights and wallpaper, and a layer of furniture

living room are passively disarmed by the

Each to Their Own

set up in the form of a home theater, each

gaze of anyone who walks through the front

The visual order of the living room as struc-

photo contains the layer of a family in differ-

door, their identity exposed like “a picture

tured in this way underwent a transformation

ent poses. These three layers are arranged

existing as lines on a plane.”

during the 1980s, when the room came to

atop each other like images in a pop-up book.

Here we need to pay attention to the role

be reorganized into a sort of “home theater.”

In this way, “having lost their original

of the veranda window, which forms one

Until then, in earlier residential structures like

bulk,” the three layers are flattened together.

entire wall of the living room. In the living

detached homes, televisions were usually

Kim Hyun once observed that the apartment

room, one’s gaze automatically goes to this

placed in the main bedroom. But as a lifestyle

epitomizes the way of thinking of the Korean

window, the source of illumination for the

of sitting on chairs instead of on the floor

middle class. Jung Yeon-doo supplements

interior. But the role of this window doesn’t

became more common, the television moved

this assertion with another proposition: for

end there; it also serves as a kind of “van-

into the living room to be watched from a

Koreans, while they may try to make their

ishing plane,” making the living room reveal

sofa or chair. Naturally, the television was

apartments look different, they are each in

itself at a glance. The straight lines extending

placed against one wall of the living room, at

fact the stage for a sweet home where in-

from the four vertices of the window follow

a right angle with the veranda window, with

habitants act out their identity in ways that

the edges of the walls to section out the

the sofa taking up the wall that faced it.

are not so different after all. They are the

three-dimensional order of one’s gaze. But

In the frame of his photographs, Jung

mise-en-scéne of happiness.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 17

Recording Fond Memories An “apartment kid” who was born in the Dunchon Jugong Apartments on the southeastern edge of Seoul lived there for 17 years. When it became clear that the apartments would soon disappear due to redevelopment, she began documenting her “hometown” to memorialize the complex.

Lee In-kyu Editor of “Hi-Bye, Dunchon Apartments”

T

he Dunchon Jugong Apartments, com-

walking in a forest. The local grannies would

and hurry out again. I would run around the

pleted in 1980, were born under the

come out and chat the day away, sitting on

patch of grass and the playground near our

Korean government’s large-scale housing

chairs placed outside the entranceways or

home until my mom put her head out of the

supply policy. (They were built by the Korea

on the benches in the playgrounds.

window on the seventh floor and called me

Land and Housing Corporation, whose short-

in for dinner.

ened name is “Jugong.”) Over 100 apartment

My Beloved Hometown

blocks, all under 10 stories high, were lined

From the time I first started to walk on my

a friend who lived in a different part of the

up on a plot of some 150 acres. People called

small, plump feet, I would climb up and

complex, and the view outside the living

them the “matchbox apartments.” But it was

down the apartment stairs. I learned how to

room window would always be completely

really a beautiful place.

make friends on the playground below our

new to me.

Now and then I would visit the home of

The apartment blocks were spaced quite

unit, and along with those friends I entered

The neighborhood scenery would change

far apart, with stretches of grass and little

the elementary school located inside the

with the seasons, too. In spring, the yellow

hills between them. When you strolled along

complex. When I got home from school each

Cornelian cherry trees on the hill behind our

the meandering trails, it felt like you were

day I would throw my bag into my room

home would be the first to bloom, with the white magnolia and pink cherry blossoms following soon after. Then, before long, it would be time to crouch on a patch of grass to pick mugwort with my mom, which we would take to the local miller’s shop to be made into fragrant green rice cakes that we shared with our neighbors.

As I grew up and learned the cycle of the seasons, the once small and scrawny trees grew along with me, marking the years with their rings. My family moved away when I was in high school and by the time I came back to the neighborhood for the first time in my 30s, those trees had grown great and large, reaching up to the fifth floor of the apartment blocks.

1 © Raya

18 KOREANA Spring 2020

Once Seoul was completely full, new

towns were built all around its perimeter. But this expansion only

2

led even more people and things to converge on the metropolitan area. And then, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Korea was swept up in neoliberalism and many things changed. People wanted their own “goose that lays golden eggs” and apartment redevelopment was seen as the magic key to realizing that As one of the few low-density apartment complexes left in Seoul, the site promised huge profits through redevelopment.

© Ryu Jun-yeol

dream. My hometown, too, couldn’t escape this course of events.

3

Bidding Farewell When I heard that signs of the impending redevelopment were starting to show, I simply couldn’t believe that my hometown, the place that held all the memories of my childhood, would disappear without a trace. Before that happened, I wanted to create some kind of record, no matter how inadequate it might be. So, in 2013, I self-published a book and opened a Facebook page to kick off a project I named “Hi-Bye, Dunchon Apartments.”

It turned out that an unexpectedly large number of people felt the same. Although we had never gotten together and ac-

recording a neighborhood that was about to disappear grew and continued, and now spans four books and a documentary film

© Lee In-kyu

tually talked about it, there were plenty of residents, past and present, who dreaded being bereft of this place. The work of

4

entitled “A Long Farewell.”

The night before the massive slide – an unofficial emblem of the Dunchon Jugong Apartments – was torn down, everyone who had taken part in the project got together to let off fireworks and thank each other. In the autumn of 2017 when almost all the residents had moved out and demolition was just about to start, many of those people came back to say their last goodbyes. Two years later, the vast complex was gone, extinct like the dinosaurs.

1. Dunchon Jugong Apartments, completed in 1980, had 143 blocks with a total of 5,930 households. Reconstruction plans for the complex were confirmed in 2017 and demolition was finished by the end of 2019. A “mini new town” with a total of 10,032 households is currently under construction on the 150-acre site, scheduled for completion in 2022.

5

2. A redbud tree is in full bloom as spring arrives in the gardens around the Dunchon complex.

3, 4, 5. The Dunchon complex took on a different look every season with numerous trees and flowers blooming in turn. In the bottom photograph, a young Lee In-kyu, the author of this article (in red), is playing with her brother in a snow-covered playground.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 19

SPECIAL FEATURE 3

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires

SHARED SOLUTIONS Exorbitant property prices and a lost sense of community in cities are changing attitudes about home buying, encouraging housing options that emphasize shared space for healthier, more affordable living.

Park Seong-tae Executive Director, Junglim Foundation

P

aralleling decades of industrialization and urbanization, residential life in Korea has undergone sweeping changes. Most notably, the community culture of the past has virtually disappeared even though only a single wall separates households in today’s high-rise apartment complexes. In fact, neighbors have grown emotionally distant, finding interaction awkward.

In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, Seoul had about 1.5 million residents. In the wake of the conflict, the capital’s population swelled exponentially. A postwar baby boom that started in the mid-1950s overlapped with robust economic growth that created more and more urban jobs. By 1990, Seoul’s population had reached 10 million.

The only solution for accommodating the exploding population was to construct large-scale apartment complexes. But as real estate value climbed in desirable neighborhoods, apartments came to be seen as objects of material desire and investment rather than as places to live. They also bred collective individualism, conflict

20 KOREANA Spring 2020

among residents and disconnection.

Today, heightened mobility and the consequent breakdown of traditional ties among individuals and families have led to the disintegration of communities.

Alternative Options

The reality is that although people may have amassed more wealth, not many can say that they are happier.

Loss of community has impeded the social connections that nurture emotional well-being and interaction.

Countering this trend are new housing models that emerged in the 2010s, such as co-living, shared houses and housing cooperatives.

One- and two-person households underlie the rapid changes in Korea’s housing culture. Until the 1980s, the number of single households was statistically insignificant. By 2018, they constituted around 30 percent of all households. When added to the number of two-person households, they aggregate to well over 40 percent. This trend is certain to accelerate.

The number of vacant houses has also been steadily rising. In 2019,

there were 1.4 million unoccupied and abandoned homes nationwide, with nearly 3,000 in Seoul alone. For a long time, purchasing a house was a lifelong goal for many Koreans. However, the breakdown of extended family living, the rise of single households and childless couples, and exorbitant property prices have dented the desire for home ownership. Residential units are regarded more and more as places to occupy rather than to own. Reflecting this changing perception, the number of single-person residential officetels (multi-purpose buildings) and studio apartments has soared. These housing options have, in turn, deepened social isolation.

But shared housing diminishes social isolation without sacrificing privacy. Though the concept is not yet widespread, it has made steady strides in recent years and is projected to expand further. Some notable examples include Junglim Foundation’s Tongui-dong House, Architects Office SAAI’s Uhjjuhdah House and dwellings managed by Woozoo.

Most shared houses are remodeled buildings. But Tongui-dong House in

Jongno District, central Seoul, was designed and built specifically for shared living. Junglim Foundation and architectural firm Seoul Social Standard collaborated to give careful thought to efficient use of resources while minimizing discomforts that might arise from living with strangers.

Distribution of Resources

The current housing style of choice among singles is an officetel, which typically includes a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom in a small space. Occupants have complete privacy and need

not interact with their neighbors. But co-housing buildings encourage community interaction and relationships by making housing units less self-contained.

Tongui-dong House accommodates seven people. The private bedroom of each resident is relatively small in order to facilitate a large communal kitchen over 10 pyeong (around 33 square meters) in size where residents can socialize and share food.

The bathrooms and laundry room are also communal areas, allowing for larger living spaces.

In his 2015 book “How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today,” futurologist John Thackara cites Harvard University psychologists in writing that humans are more inclined to cooperate rather than compete for limited resources. He predicts that the sharing economy will become a fixture in our future lives and that use value (a commodity’s usefulness) will come to surpass exchange value (the same commodity’s market price). A communal living environment spares tenants from having to purchase house-

Residents of a shared house operated by the social enterprise Woozoo chat in the living room. To enhance a harmonious environment, the company pays attention to shared interests and common tastes when screening tenant applications.

© Woozoo

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 21

1

1, 3. The first floor of the Junglim Foundation’s Tongui-dong House in central Seoul is occupied by the foundation’s office. Residents of the shared house can use it as a library and attend the foundation’s forums and other events for free.

2. Tongui-dong House is a three-story building with seven bedrooms on the second and third floors. To maximize space for the shared kitchen, living room and bathrooms, the size of individual rooms was reduced, but each room has a large window and efficient storage space.

2 © Rooming

22 KOREANA Spring 2020

sick neighbor to the hospital. But in a loose community, members would ideally spring into action in this sort of situation.

Loose Community

3 © Kim Yong-kwan

hold items such as kitchen appliances, for instance, because furnishings are shared, reducing waste.

Co-living buildings with residential units can naturally feel desolate when residents empty out during the workday. But mixed-use buildings housing both residents and commercial outlets such as a café or a store provide more frequent opportunities for residents to interact.

Junglim Foundation occupies the first floor of Tongui-dong House and uses the space to conduct its forums and meetings. The foundation also receives deliveries for tenants when they are away, and since the lights are always on, tenants can feel like they are being greeted by family when they come home from work at night.

Can co-housing be considered a

community? Perhaps not, but that is ultimately a moot point. What shared housing seeks to restore is not community per se but a “sense of community.” In pre-industrial Korea, there was far less mobility, so families, friends and acquaintances tended to stay in their home area. They involved themselves in others’ affairs, often to the point of being considered intrusive by today’s standards. Co-housing aspires to a sense of community that adopts the virtues of traditional living but rejects its negative aspects.

This is a “loose community” where members don’t feel lonely or isolated and can help each other out when needed, while also maintaining a certain amount of distance. For example, people living in an apartment building would not be expected to take their

In co-living spaces, maintaining respect for personal privacy is of utmost importance. Consequently, at Tongui-dong House, private and shared common areas are separated on different floors. Residents are also required to abide by house rules, such as putting shoes away in individual shoe cupboards rather than leaving them out at the common entrance, or using the laundry room only during designated hours. Sometimes residents write rules of their own that they feel are necessary.

Interestingly, residents who move in expecting a more tight-knit community, eager to forge intimate bonds, are usually the ones to move out after a short period. Nowadays, people are more wary of excessive closeness.

This is one reason why the shared housing company Woozoo brings together tenants who share interests, for instance, a house for would-be entrepreneurs or women who are baseball buffs.

In addition to shared houses for single people, housing cooperatives targeting families of two or more are steadily increasing. The most successful case is Sohaengju (meaning “happy house with communication”) in Mt. Seongmi village, western Seoul, where nine households live together. Whereas developers typically build a house or apartment building first and then search for tenants, the residents here participated in building their homes from the planning and design stage.

Individual tastes and preferences, such as an attic or veranda, were accommodated as best as possible to give

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 23

Shared housing diminishes social isolation without sacrificing privacy.

Though the concept is not yet widespread, it has made steady strides in recent years and is projected to expand further.

1 © Junglim Foundation

each unit a unique character as if they were detached houses. There are separate spaces for communal child care, dining and mingling. Each household paid the price of roughly one pyeong (3.3 square meters) to create the common spaces. There is also a common storage room where residents can stow infrequently used items, and the building additionally houses three community enterprises.

Completed in 2018, Yongdu-dong House in eastern Seoul is another co-living residence operated by Junglim Foudation. It is for six households: a couple in their 70s, couples in their 30s to 40s, a family with four children and a family with three children. They share a kitchen, laundry room and small library. Probably the biggest attraction of such family-oriented shared houses is shared child care. Children freely play and sleep over at each other’s house and the adults take care of other families’ kids.

Neighborhood Hub

One other goal of Yongdu-dong House is to be a neighborhood hub. Among the residents is a Korean language teacher for foreign students; these students eat in the shared kitchen and study in the library. Likewise, if parents can’t pick up their children from daycare centers due to work, teachers will leave them in the common area where they can play with other children until their parents come home.

1. Residents of Yongdu-dong House mingle at a party held in their communal kitchen and dining room. Six households share the co-living residence in eastern Seoul. It has a small theater, a bookstore-cum-café, a library and a study room for children, among other common spaces.

2. Sohaengju #1, the first cooperative housing project in Mt. Seongmi village, Seongsan-dong, western Seoul, has a characteristic appearance. The residents participated in the design process, suffusing uniqueness into each living space. It was built in 2011.

2 Courtesy of “Monthly Design”

24 KOREANA Spring 2020

Small is Beautiful How big is the house? Is it located in a good school district? How much can I expect the price to appreciate? These are the questions most Koreans might ask when determining the value of a house. In recent years, however, more and more people want to construct a small but one-of-akind house where they can pursue a simpler life.

V

ery few Koreans live in a house contain-

es with yards on modest plots of land they

ing their childhood memories. If their

had purchased in the city or on inexpensive

parents couldn’t afford to buy a house, the

land in the suburbs.

family would have had to move from one

Peanut house dwellers no longer judge

place to another every couple of years as

the value of a house by its size, number of

leases expired. If their parents purchased

rooms or school district. They have come

a home and the value spiked upward, they

to appreciate finer details such as a window

would have sold it and moved to a bigger,

that frames the beautiful landscape outside,

nicer home, or a place in a better school dis-

structural openings and interiors that change

trict, hoping to improve the chances of their

the effect of sunlight, the joy of a small yard

children getting into a top university.

and the privacy of an independent space.

These small houses can take on a vari-

Value Redefined

ety of forms and designs depending on the

The “peanut house” (duplex home) surfaced

topography of the sites on which they are

in the Korean media around 10 years ago,

built, the surrounding environment and the

presenting an alluring alternative to stan-

family structure of the inhabitants, as well as

dardized apartments. A peanut house is es-

their preferences and expectations.

sentially two identical living units attached to

Courtesy of “Monthly Green Friendly House”

Seroro is a five-story residence built on a 33.7m² plot adjacent to the Seoul City Wall in Changsin-dong, Seoul. As its name suggests, the house choreographs verticality, with each floor devoted to a different type of space: from the ground floor upward, garage, workroom, kitchen, bedroom, and dressing room and bathroom.

a two-story peanut house, a staircase acts as a hallway. Children’s and parents’ rooms

each other and separated by a common wall.

Building Upward

are usually on separate floors, guaranteeing

The name is inspired by the image of two

Most people who opt for a small house are

more privacy.

peanuts in one shell. This is a cheaper option

not particularly rich. Purchasing land and

In a large house, items are sure to pile up

for those wanting to build a single-family

building a house on a limited budget entails

in proportion. Many of these things may be

house since the two households split the

certain inconveniences. Since the house is

excessive, such as an outsized sofa, or hardly

cost of the land and construction.

constructed on a limited patch of land, the

used, such as exercise equipment.

People were drawn to the concept of

solution to creating more floor space is to

The desire to seek fulfillment through a

creating a living space with unique character

build vertically. For couples, a two-story

bigger house and more material possessions

at an affordable price. The peanut house

house may be sufficient, but families with

has no place in a small house. Downsizing

gained popularity particularly among families

children need to create more space. An attic

cannot be avoided; the moment you move

weary of apartment life, young couples with

or split-floor plan to add more height to a

into a small house, a lot of your stuff will

differing values from the older generation

room can be feasible options.

need to be discarded. This makes you realize

and elderly couples whose children had

In the shift from the wide, horizontal lay-

moved out. They began building small hous-

out of the traditional single-story house to

how beautiful a simple life free from material obsessions can be.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 25

SPECIAL FEATURE 4

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires

© imagetoday

26 KOREANA Spring 2020

THE HANOK RENAISSANCE Once perceived as inconvenient and unsuitable for modern life, traditional Korean houses are being revived. Hanok, preserved mostly due to development restrictions imposed on historic quarters of large cities, are coming back to life as attractive commercial facilities, if not everyday dwellings.

Jeon Bong-hee Professor of Architecture, Seoul National University

I

nsufficient air-conditioning, poor insulation against outdoor noise and weather, and security issues – these were among the practical problems that made traditional Korean houses unpopular for day-to-day living in the modern era. Now, with these problems solved, modified hanok are coming into favor and being cherished for their unique beauty.

Downtown Clusters

The reappraisal of hanok started in old inner-city areas where clusters of the traditional houses remained untouched by urban development. Most notable among these areas is Bukchon in Seoul. Located close to important state institutions including Cheong Wa Dae, the presidential office, and between two Joseon-era palaces, Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, the neighborhood was subject to regulations

restricting the construction of high-rise buildings.

Bukchon, meaning the “northern neighborhood,” was thus left intact with its meandering alleyways lined with shabby old homes. In the late 1980s, regulations were relaxed, leading to the haphazard emergence of small buildings of three or four stories. Then the property bubble burst in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, raising awareness that reckless, overcrowded development would benefit neither landowners nor the public. Eventually, the Seoul metropolitan government drafted a plan to preserve the traditional homes as unique assets of the neighborhood.

The hanok clusters were typically run down but their inner-city locations had great commercial potential. Thus the traditional homes were renovated and transformed into cafés, shops,

Constructed during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) to contend with the Japanese merchants who dominated the local market, the hanok village in Jeonju is now a famous tourist attraction. The overlapping tile roofs of over 600 houses create an impressive view.

hospitals, libraries and community service centers, among other facilities.

Now, many Koreans enjoy spending time in commercial facilities housed in hanok while living in modern apartment complexes, contrary to the early period of the country’s modernization when most people lived in hanok, dressed in traditional clothes, and went to work in Western-style buildings.

The regeneration of hanok clusters began in Seoul and spread to provincial cities. As Korea’s urban development, which started in the late 20th century, focused on creating new urban centers on the outskirts of cities, old downtown areas tended to fall into neglect.

To prevent historic quarters with their mazes of alleys and small buildings from turning into slums, one feasible option was to develop them into tourist destinations. Accordingly, many cities started preserving the landscape of their old downtown areas where traditional buildings were concentrated.

Civil society has supported the policy of preserving traditional houses

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 27

for a number of reasons. First, growing tired of the uniform housing style of concrete apartment complexes, people have started to look for alternatives. They have also become increasingly aware of quality of life and healthy lifestyles, leading to the rediscovery of hanok as classy and tasteful places to live.

Eco-Friendly Housing

The current buzz about hanok can also be attributed to a heightened awareness of environmental issues. Compared to reinforced concrete buildings, the construction and demolition of wooden structures causes less carbon dioxide emissions and creates far

less industrial waste, and this has given hanok their eco-friendly reputation.

Another significant factor has been the progress of globalization. The number of incoming tourists to Korea, which barely reached one million per year before the 1988 Seoul Olympics, has gradually increased to over 18 million per year, with a similar number of Koreans traveling abroad. As international exchange grew more active, so did an appreciation of Korea’s unique urban landscape. Although tourists enjoy the convenience of using credit cards and tasting a standard coffee wherever they go, they also look for the sights and experiences that only their chosen destinations can offer.

Where architectural style is concerned, traditional Korean houses have considerable merits in creating a distinct urban landscape. Their characteristics can be discussed in terms of the structure and use of interior space.

The basic hanok structure is a framework of wooden pillars and beams fitted vertically and horizontally, above which rafters and a sloping tiled roof are placed. This framework allows the house to be compartmentalized in various ways, resulting in diverse wall surfaces and composition of doors and windows.

In addition, as the sloping roof results in limited diversity of form, a pleasing coherence can be observed in

1

1. Located in Goseong County, Gangwon Province, the house named Gamsolchae, or Three Pines, was built by combining lightand heavy-timber framing systems, the beauty of the hanok manifest in the exposed wooden pillars and beams. The kitchen-cumliving room has an island in the middle for cooking and storage. The house was built by the architectural firm Studio The One. 2. Onion, a bakery café in Gyedong-gil, Seoul, is housed in a hanok renovated from a police station of the Joseon period. Sitting at low tables placed in the open main hall, customers can enjoy the expansive view of the surroundings.

Courtesy of “House Full of Happiness”

28 KOREANA Spring 2020

3. A gallery in Jongno District, Seoul. An increasing number of old hanok have been renovated into cultural facilities that make the most of the unique atmosphere of the traditional buildings.

4. This urban-style hanok built in the 1940s in Hyehwa-dong, central Seoul, has been remodeled into the local community service center. It is the first public office accommodated in a traditional Korean house.

© Moon Ji-yeon

2

3

4

© gettyimages

© Park Young-chae

Now that the inconveniences have been addressed, the current popularity of traditional houses may not be a temporary phenomenon but the beginning of the “hanok renaissance.” the rooflines of hanok houses that are closely packed together. Nowadays, an increasing number of these traditional houses are being refitted for non-residential purposes, with the original structure maintained intact and the interior spaces renovated to satisfy modern sensibilities and needs.

Floor Heating

One of the defining characteristics of hanok as a dwelling is the arrangement and use of interior spaces, divided into wood-floored areas and ondol rooms.

Ondol, a method of underfloor heating, is a unique feature of hanok.

The original ondol system consists of

stone slabs laid under an earthen floor with flues running underneath them.

The heat generated from a furnace, often the kitchen stove, travels along the flues and passes out through the chimney on the other side of the room.

The earliest form of ondol found on the Korean peninsula had flues laid only in one part of a room. The current system with flues running underneath the entire floor was developed around the 12th century. This brought a great change in people’s lives as they started to sit and sleep on the floor to make the most of its warmth. Consequently, the floors inside the house had to be kept clean at all times and shoes had to

be removed upon entering the house.

The use of ondol created the warm, hard and clean floors of traditional Korean houses. Even today, Koreans take off their shoes as soon as they step inside the front door, proceeding to the living room or bedroom either barefoot or in slippers. The same is true for those who live in apartments since the floor heating system from ancient times has been adapted for use in modern housing. The hanok interior has been partially transplanted into the nation’s ubiquitous apartments.

Modern Facilities

Hanok have long been regarded as cold, poorly insulated houses with a bathroom and kitchen arrangement incompatible with modern equipment and appliances. However, these shortcomings have been remedied by advanced technologies. Now that the inconveniences have been addressed, the current popularity of traditional houses may not be a temporary phenomenon but the beginning of the “hanok renaissance.”

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 29

SPECIAL FEATURE 5

Housing Today: Abodes of Dreams and Desires

Š Bae Se-hwa

1

A NEW WAVE IN FURNITURE

M

ulti-dwelling housing, such as apartment complexes and multiplex houses, often comes with a uniform set of built-in furniture and lighting, regardless of the residents’ tastes. Perhaps for this reason, until recently, Koreans tended to show little interest in interior decor and furniture design. The furniture market was largely divided into luxurious imported goods and works by traditional artisans for a small, specialized market, and cheaper plywood furniture for everybody else. In the 2000s, however, personal tastes became more important and demand increased for more individual furniture. Spurring this change was the emergence of young, creative designers. Here are some of the representative works of four furniture designers who have invigorated the market with their original pieces incorporating traditional design elements.

30 KOREANA Spring 2020

© Song Seung-yong

2

3

1. “Steam 11” by Bae Se-hwa. 2010. Walnut.

120 × 70 × 71 cm (WDH).

Steam bending is a woodworking technique that involves heating wood for four to five hours to make it pliable and then quickly bending and stretching it into the desired shape, in about 15 seconds, before it cools down and hardens again. Bae Se-hwa employs this Western technique to express Korean aesthetics. The chair echoes the supple beauty and elegance of the roofline of a traditional house.

2. “Sarangbang” by Song Seung-yong. 2011.

Birch wood, mulberry paper, compound material. 279 × 76.2 × 174 cm (WDH).

Song Seung-yong is mostly inspired by the structure and materials of hanok. Applying the function of the sarangbang in a traditional upper-class residence (the room where the master of the house slept, read and received guests), the designer created this simple but graceful space. The latticed wooden frame covered with mulberry paper creates a cozy ambience in this foldable piece of furniture.

3. “Dami” by Song Seung-yong. 2012.

Valchromat. Lamp: 40 × 40 × 127 cm; Rectangular table: 140 × 38 × 45 cm; Big round table: 60 × 60 × 30 cm; Small round table: 48.5 × 48.5 × 25.2 cm (WDH).

Composed of lines rather than planes, the pieces in the Dami series are light. This set of tables and a lamp features neatly intersecting lines that are reminiscent of the latticed windows of a traditional Korean house; there is a unique aura to the simple, austere forms.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 31

1 © Kim Jin-sik

2

1. “Playful Wave” by Kim Jin-sik. 2017. Marble, stainless steel. 220 × 105 × 74 cm (WDH).

Kim Jin-sik explores the physical properties of his materials. This table came from an imagined ping pong game above the billowing sea. The designer attempted to describe the surging waves across the tabletop and base using the patterns and texture of marble. The “net” was inserted into a metal frame via a method similar to the joinery technique of traditional Korean wooden architecture.

32 KOREANA Spring 2020

2. “HalfHalf Low 120” by Kim Jin-sik. 2016. Marble, mirror stainless steel. 120 × 70 × 38 cm (WDH).

The strong patterns and colors of the marble base are reflected on the curved surface of the semicircular stainless steel plate, creating a novel visual texture.

This table is part of a series of furniture that embodies the formal combination of circles and rectangles and the textual contrast of stone and metal. The designer’s rigorous craftsmanship has produced a work with a high degree of perfection, devoid of the flaws often found in works of simple forms and proportions.

© Ha Ji-hoon

3

4

3. “Dazzi” by Ha Ji-hoon. 2012. Plywood, powder-coated steel. 100 × 45 × 85 cm (WDH).

This cabinet is one of Ha Ji-hoon’s series of furniture pieces that adopt the various designs of metal fittings (jangseok) used on traditional wooden chests (bandaji). The designer’s artistry and commitment to the reinterpretation of tradition has resulted in a work of timeless beauty combining classical grace and modern simplicity.

4. “Pittsburgh” by Ha Ji-hoon. 2015. Oak wood, aluminum. Desk: 150 × 75 × 72 cm; Chair: 47 × 38 × 72 cm (WDH).

The structural elegance of traditional portable tables from Naju, called naju soban, originally used on the floor, is reflected in this table and chair set. Produced in collaboration with a master artisan in crafting the Najutype tables, it was commissioned for the opening of the Korean Heritage Room in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 33

FOCUS

Adapted from a novel about the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, two theatrical productions in Korea and Poland presented contrasting depictions of the bloody movement that still incites painful and contentious reactions decades later.

Song Seo-yeon Producer, Namsan Arts Center

Two Theatrical Takes on Bloody Uprising

T

he Gwangju Democratic Uprising and the massacre of the city’s pro-democracy activists in May 1980 is a watershed moment in Korea’s political development. Today, “Gwangju” is without a doubt synonymous with the popular struggle against the iron-fisted rule of the nation’s postwar military regimes; the uprising continues to cast a long shadow in the Korean people’s collective public consciousness.

When we decided to produce a stage adaptation of the 2014 novel “The Boy is Coming” at the Namsan Arts Center, the sensitivity of the project was palpable. The book (English title: “Human Acts”) was written by Han Kang, recipient of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. It paints a harrowing and poignant portrait of the ill-fated pro-democracy movement that unfolded in Gwangju and its aftermath. Born in Gwangju in 1970, Han remembers the bloodshed firsthand.

As the arts center prepared our adaptation, entitled “Human Fuga,” we learned another production was underway in Poland.

34 KOREANA Spring 2020

Polish director Marcin Wierzchowski had read the very same novel and, deeply moved by it, had contacted the author about his plan to adapt it for the stage.

The scheduling of the two productions overlapped, so we agreed to eventually stage our plays in each other’s country. We believed that our two nations shared a common sentiment born from haunting pasts with which we are still grappling: Korea from the Gwangju Democratic Uprising (among others), and Poland from the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz during World War II. The Korean production team visited Poland in October 2019, and in November, the Polish team paid a return visit.

A Longer Run-Up

Research and rehearsals for “Human Fuga” spanned 10 months, starting in January 2019.

That was an unprecedentedly long time considering that Korean plays typically have a three-month preparation period before opening. This short turnaround was the case even when the Namsan Arts Center staged “High-

A scene from the play “Human Fuga” which premiered at the Namsan Arts Center in Seoul in November 2019. Rather than reproducing the narrative of the original novel, “The Boy is Coming” (Human Acts)

by Han Kang, body language, music and mise-en-scène conveyed the hidden grief of the characters.

Photograph by Lee Seung-hui; Courtesy of Namsan Arts Center

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 35

36 KOREANA Spring 2020

Courtesy of Namsan Arts Center

way Number 7,” which revolved around Samsung semiconductor employees who were stricken with leukemia, and “From Pluto,” which marked the fifth anniversary of the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking that killed hundreds of students. Both dealt with subjects concerning unhealed emotional wounds that remain in Korean society.

We felt that simply reproducing the novel’s narrative would not pay appropriate homage to the historical significance of the uprising or the book itself. So we avoided the conventional route of explaining or acting out the story and delivering the narrative through dialogue. Instead, we focused on conveying the visceral pain and inner grief of the characters through the actors’ physicality – their restrained motions and vigorous movements akin to a dance.

“Fuga” (Italian for “fugue”) in the title refers to a compositional technique in music characterized by imitation or recurrence of a single theme. Thus, the play is structured to convey how the suffering caused by a single event is repeatedly manifested in various characters. As such, the dialogue may seem disconnected; the stories of different characters are delivered in a fragmentary style through their memories and testimonies. But this also allows the audience to feel and connect with the characters’ raw emotions.

“Human Fuga” premiered at the Namsan Arts Center in November 2019. The play, co-produced with Performance Group TUIDA, received critical acclaim, with the International Association of Theatre Critics-Korea naming it one of the top three plays of the year. The association applauded it as “a masterly production that delves into a still unresolved, painful part of contemporary Korean history with a creative approach that encompasses drama, dance and installation art using the human body as a medium.”

The Polish adaptation titled “The Boy is Coming” is a five-hour play. The first part is based on the novel while the second part is set in Poland, telling the story of two families. Staged at the National Stary Theater in

1

Krakow, which first opened in 1781, the play portrays each scene in the novel in meticulous detail, moving through eight different spaces within the theater.

Contrasting Approaches

Wierzchowski said that he was unaware of the Gwangju uprising until he encountered the novel, and that he wanted to draw the Polish public’s attention to state-inflicted violence.

He wished to deliver the message that tragedy of this scale was not a historical event that was confined to Korea in 1980, but could happen anytime, anywhere, whether in Poland or somewhere else across the world. That is why he was committed to faithfully rendering the narrative of the original Korean novel, he said.

After watching “Human Fuga” during his visit to Seoul, Wierzchowski effused, “I was struck by a wondrous, extraordinary beauty,” and hugged director Bae Yo-sup. He also met with Korean audience members after the play, sharing with them an amusing account of how he discovered the novel: he was introduced to it by Amazon’s online shopping service. He went on to give his perspective of “The Boy is Coming,” and the audience showed particular interest in the stark difference in the directional approaches taken by the two troupes.

2

1, 2. The posters for “Human Fuga” (left) directed by Bae Yo-sup and the Polish adaptation titled “The Boy is Coming” directed by Marcin Wierzchowski. The “Human Fuga” poster has a bird’s-eye view picture of the fountain in front of the South Jeolla provincial government building in Gwangju. The poster for “The Boy is Coming” features an image of the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising recorded by photojournalist Kim Nyung-man.

3. A scene from the first part of “The Boy is Coming” that opened at the National Stary Theater in Krakow, Poland, in October 2019. It is a recreation of demonstrators’ coffins placed in front of the provincial government building in Gwangju after government troops killed the activists. Unlike “Human Fuga,” the Polish play faithfully renders the narrative of the original novel.

The Korean production explored the emotions and thoughts of the characters. In contrast, the Polish play focused on the Gwangju uprising itself as an incident and how to convey its cruelty to the audience in greater detail.

3 Photograph by Magda Hueckel; Courtesy of National Stary Theater

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 37

However, the preparation process for the Korean and Polish production teams was fundamentally similar: both teams researched relevant materials and watched videos and movies on comparable incidents. It is likely that the two adaptations differed so much because of differences in the general theatrical direction that prevails in each country. Korean theater today tends to focus on the senses rather than on reenactment, and so the Korean production explored the emotions and thoughts of the characters. In contrast, the Polish play concentrated on the Gwangju uprising itself

38 KOREANA Spring 2020

as an incident and how to convey its cruelty to the audience in greater detail.

Exploring Hidden Truths

The entire run of “Human Fuga� from November 6-17, 2019 sold out and the production received rave reviews. But far more rewarding was the audience response: many people said that they had learned the truth about Gwangju, while survivors of the tragedy expressed their appreciation for keeping their story alive.

Indeed, there are still many unanswered

Photograph by Magda Hueckel; Courtesy of National Stary Theater

Part Two of “The Boy is Coming” tells the story of two Polish families living in fear after a government massacre of citizens.

guestions. When unidentified human remains were discovered at the former Gwangju Prison site in December 2019, a family member of a missing victim said in an interview, “I will dance if my son’s remains are recovered.

Really. Then I will finally be able to let go of my grief.”

The victims and their families have remained trapped in time and place, continuing to relive the horror. And yet, they have been met with hostility from some corners of society who discredit their cause and their sacrifices. Gwangju is very much an ongoing

trauma for many Koreans, with hidden truths yet to be uncovered.

In May of this year, which marks the 40th anniversary of the pro-democracy movement, “Human Fuga” and “The Boy is Coming” will be staged at the Namsan Arts Center in Seoul and the Bitgoeul Citizen Cultural Center in Gwangju. Then, in November, “Human Fuga” will travel to Poland. I believe these two theatrical productions, derived from the same novel, will continue to make a meaningful impact and resonate with even broader audiences in both countries.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 39

INTERVIEW

From Heretic to Icon

Reinventing Traditional Music Singer Lee Hee-moon delights and surprises audiences with genre-bending performances that tap into his native Korean folk music roots. Once called a “heretic” in the gugak (traditional Korean music) community, he is now an icon of funky fusion music.

Lim Hee-yun Culture Reporter, The Dong-A Ilbo

E

rudite and entertaining, Tiny Desk Concerts is an eclectic video series of live music hosted by National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, D.C. and uploaded to YouTube. With performances in hundreds of genres already on file, it was easy to assume there would be no surprises when the Korean band SsingSsing showed up.

And then the group’s cross-dressing singers unleashed a mixture of rock, disco and psychedelic music, all based on traditional Korean folk songs. Shocking. Bob Boilen, host of NPR’s “All Songs Considered,” called the performance one of the most memorable Tiny Desk Concerts of all time.

That was in September 2017. At the time, the six-member band was on the road to wider fame. Its gigs in Washington, D.C. also included a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a venue that has eluded even the most famous entertainers. But in 2019, the band suddenly broke up.

On a winter day, lead vocalist Lee Hee-moon, 43, sat down in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, a longtime haunt for tourists, expats

40 KOREANA Spring 2020

and U.S. servicemen, to explain.

Lee was born to sing. His mother, Ko Ju-rang, was a master singer of minyo, or traditional Korean folk songs, and as soon as Lee began to speak, he began to sing. In his teen years, however, Korean and Western pop singers bedazzled him. He wanted to be a singer-dancer. Later, he studied visual arts in Japan, and after returning to Korea, he produced music videos working as an assistant director.

It was not until he reached his late 20s that Lee returned to traditional folk songs. He recalls feeling like he was “possessed by a spirit.” It is apparent now that being the unisex lead vocalist of SsingSsing was just one stage of his artistic identity, which continues to morph.

The Band

When I first watched SsingSsing perform, I was reminded of the musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” I wonder where your inspiration came from.

The visual presentation of the band was

Lee Hee-moon performs at the Elgar Room in London’s Royal Albert Hall in September 2017.

Part of the program for the 4th K-Music Festival hosted by the Korean Cultural Center UK, “Korean Men” was planned by Lee and jazz band Prelude, and their concert also featured NomNom, a duo of traditional singers. The highly acclaimed show, which premiered in 2016 at the National Theater of Korea, fused Gyeonggi minyo and jazz.

Photograph by Kii Studios Photography & Film; Courtesy of Lee Hee-moon Company

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 41

inspired by the film “Moulin Rouge,” singers like Madonna and Min Hae-kyung, and most of all, by choreographer Ahn Eun-me, whom I’ve known personally for years. Ahn is a pioneer of powerful visuals. In her production of “Princess Bari: This World,” which premiered in 2007, I was cast to sing as the princess. At first, I squirmed at the idea of taking a woman’s role, but I eventually realized that I could be pretty good at it. If you have to force your emotions, it’s mere play-acting, but something in me was expressed spontaneously when I sang in that role.

SsingSsing performed concerts in Korea regardless of the size of the venue or audience. But recording for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts must have been somewhat different from other shows. How was it?

Having hardly any knowledge of NPR or the program, we got it done like it was just another gig. We were a little flustered when told to sing to the air while standing at the corner of an office with no monitors or speakers. If we’d known the show would attract huge interest and would last forever on YouTube, we would have tried to do better. When we performed “Hangangsu Taryeong” (Han River Song), I even got the lyrics wrong and improvised them on the spot. But the video came out nice all the same, perhaps because their sound engineer was an expert.

I expected that SsingSsing would grab worldwide attention, following in the footsteps of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” but then you split up at the height of your popularity. Why? Each of the six members had a distinct individuality. And that was our strength when we were together, having our own ways on stage and never interfering in what the others were doing. But the same tendency seemed to make it easier for us to go our separate ways, as with any relationship that goes through changes. Now, we’ve all found our own places: Jang Young-gyu, the music director, formed a new band called “Lee Nalchi” to tell his unfinished story of music, and Chu Da-hye and Shin Seung-tae are also working

42 KOREANA Spring 2020

on their own music. And the same is true for me.

How was SsingSsing created?

In 2014, I performed in a concert entitled “Kwae” (Hearty Pleasure), a modern interpretation of gut, the traditional shamanic ritual.

Jang Young-gyu, who was the music director for the concert, proposed that we perform minyo at clubs. Soon, we invited guitarist Lee Tae-won, drummer Lee Chul-hee, and singers Shin Seung-tae and Chu Da-hye, and the six of us formed SsingSsing.

My Own Sound

Recently, you’ve been performing concerts under the title “Project NAL” and you also released the album “Obangsingwa” (meaning “along with the deities of the five directions”). You must be very busy. Where do you think you’re headed with your art?

I wanted to test my sound without the label of “somebody from SsingSsing.” So I’ve forced myself to the extreme, appearing on a series of experimental stages. Project NAL features my voice combined with a sound performance that consists of the Korean percussion instrument janggu (hourglass drum), a Western drum and a modular synthesizer. As with SsingSsing, the repertoire consists mostly of Gyeonggi minyo (folk songs from Gyeonggi Province), with the addition of other genres like japga (miscellaneous songs), santaryeong (mountain songs) and hoesimgok (songs of remorse). However, my approach to these songs differs from the one I took when singing for SsingSsing.

How is the visual direction of Project NAL different from that of SsingSsing?

I adopted the image of a new bride, representing my rebirth after leaving the world of SsingSsing. I wear a white men’s suit with a white skirt attached to the back, with exquisite bridal makeup on my face.

Let me bring you back in time. How did you start singing minyo?

When I was still working in the field of music video production, I accompanied my mother to a minyo concert where I couldn’t

Lee performs at the premiere of “Project NAL” at the Grand Performance Hall of the National Intangible Heritage Center in May 2019. To isolate the essence of his sound, melodic instruments were omitted; only three percussion instruments – a janggu (hourglass drum), a Western drum and a modular synthesizer – accompanied him.

“ Sometimes, it feels like I’m not the one who ’s doing it. The audience gives me energy. I absorb it and return it to them through my performance, and I’m completely exhausted after the show is over.”

Photograph by Kwak Ki-gon; Courtesy of Lee Hee-moon Company

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 43

Captured from a Youtube video of NPR Music

1

2

Photograph by Lee Jin-hwan; Courtesy of Lee Hee-moon Company

44 KOREANA Spring 2020

help myself and sang along. Master singer Lee Chun-hee, my mother’s friend, was with us and she must have listened attentively to my singing and humming. A few days later, without my mother’s knowledge, she called and cautiously asked me if I would like to sing professionally. My mother didn’t want her son to become an artist in traditional music because she knew better than anyone how hard the path would be. Master Lee hesitated before calling me because she knew all too well how my mother would feel. I started to learn from her and then went to college to major in traditional Korean music in my late 20s. Most traditional singers called “sorikkun” begin their formal training as children, so I got into this career quite late.

Even before you joined SsingSsing as lead vocalist, you were known as a certified trainee in Gyeonggi minyo, which is Korea’s Intangible Cultural Property No. 57. What about minyo was so enticing to you that you changed the course of your life at that relatively late age?

Gyeonggi minyo is characterized by its cheerful mood and lilting melodies. It employs a lot of vocal techniques. The songs are merry and exciting but they somehow make you feel sad and tearful. Let me take the lyrics of “Cheongchunga” (The Song of Youth) as an example: “Time flows like the river, and a man gets old like the wind.” Singing these plaintive songs with a gleeful dance fills you with complicated thoughts, and it’s like black comedy.

This is the difference between Gyeonggi minyo and namdo sori, or folk songs from the southern provinces. Pansori (narrative song) is mostly in minor keys (gyemyeonjo), overflowing with sorrows and lamentations.

In contrast, Gyeonggi minyo expresses sadness more cheerfully than mournfully. Someone who posted a comment on a YouTube clip of my performance asked, “Why are my eyes filled with tears listening to this cheerful music?” This is an inherent quality of Gyeonggi minyo and that person instinctively recognized it.

Do you ever get emotional while performing on stage?

When the Project NAL concert premiered at the National Intangible Heritage Center in Jeonju in May 2019, we asked all 250 members of the audience to sit on the stage in order for them to better enjoy the sound. The last song of the repertoire was “Odolttogi,” a folk song from Jeju Island, and I was filled with indescribable feelings singing the refrains together with all of these clapping people sitting so close to me. This was a reinterpreted version of the original folk song which I’d written much earlier but had no opportunity to perform with SsingSsing before it disbanded.

Tearful Mirth

On stage, it looks as if you turn into a shaman or a kind of spiritual being. Have you ever fallen into a trance while performing?

Sometimes, it feels like I’m not the one who’s doing it. The audience gives me energy.

I absorb it and return it to them through my performance, and I’m completely exhausted after the show is over. Recently, when I was performing at Senggi Studio in the Hongdae area, the place was so packed with people. It might have reduced the oxygen level and I actually felt out of breath. At the end of the concert, I expressed that feeling through a performance of fainting.

I’m curious to know what kind of music or performances you’ll be putting out into the world in the future.

Throughout this year, I’ll carry on with the “Ego Project,” a series of extemporaneous concerts combining jazz and minyo. I’ll also devote some time to the preliminary work for the production of a musical monodrama.

Recently, I came across a book entitled “The Birth of Gangnam” which intrigued me to consider dramatizing it. I myself grew up in Gangnam, so I could create a relevant story – maybe about a young man raised in this stylish, modern area who becomes a minyo singer. More than anything, it would be an interesting project for me.

1. SsingSsing performs for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts in Washington, D.C. in September 2017.

The mix of glam-rock and Gyeonggi minyo generated wide interest.

The members are: from left in the back, Lee Chul-hee (drummer), Jang Young-gyu (music director and bass guitarist) and Lee Tae-won (guitarist); at front, Shin Seung-tae, Lee Hee-moon and Chu Da-hye.

2. Lee Hee-moon Company presents “Minyo Samcheolli” (Folk Songs from Every Corner of Korea) at Space Seoro, a small theater in Ogindong, Seoul, in May 2018.

Exploring the theme of female traditional singers of modern times, the show is the final project of the “Deep Love Trilogy,” produced by Lee from 2016 to 2019. Lee is the guitarist on the right.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 45

GUARDIANS OF HERITAGE

Preserving the Taste of Slowness 46 KOREANA Spring 2020

Fermentation, which requires time and care, is an essential feature of traditional Korean cuisine. Of all the fermented Korean foods known for their deep, savory flavors, ganjang (soy sauce) is a basic ingredient treasured in every household. One family in particular has preserved its soy sauce for 360 years, with the duty of safeguarding the heirloom sauce passed down through the eldest daughters-in-law.

Park Mee-hyang Food Culture Reporter, The Hankyoreh Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

“I

hope it wasn’t too much trouble coming all the way out to this remote place where there’s nothing much to see,” Ki Soon-do said with a gentle smile. She had the elegant, generous aura one might expect of the mistress of the head family of a clan, and her words had a pleasant hominess reminiscent of well-fermented soybean paste (doenjang). A white dog followed her around, receiving guests with her.

Ki has made jang (fermented condiments) for the last 48 years, and her commitment was recognized in 2008 when she was bestowed the title of Master of Traditional Korean Food No. 35. This certification from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is an honorary title granted to traditional food producers who have either specialized in a specific food item for over 20 years or trained under a master for over five years and specialized in one particular item for over 10 years. Ki was named master in the production and processing of jinjang, which refers to soy sauce aged for over five years.

Located in Asia’s first “slow city” authorized by Cittaslow International (a designation awarded to cities that prioritize quality of life, cultural preservation and environmental protection), her home in Damyang, South Jeolla Province has a spacious courtyard with a terrace holding some 1,200 earthenware jars standing in rows like well-trained soldiers. These jars contain a variety of condiments in diverse stages of fermentation.

“Why don’t you try smelling them?” asked Ki, leading me by the elbow to one of the jars. I opened the lid and an extraordinary aroma came from its contents: the unique musty smell of a fermented food, but with a peculiar sweet scent.

Ki largely makes three kinds of soy sauce. Cheongjang, thin sauce fermented for less than a year, is used for seasoning clear soups like kongnamul guk (bean sprout soup) and oi naengguk (chilled cucumber soup). Jung ganjang is dark-

er and saltier, fermented for less than five years, and is best for dishes such as bulgogi (sliced, marinated and barbequed beef) and jangjorim (meat boiled down in soy sauce). Lastly, jinjang, aged for over five years, is the thickest kind and is used to make yukpo (beef jerky) and yakgwa (sweet fried cookies), among other foods.

To make each of these soy sauces, freshly harvested yellow soybeans are boiled, crushed and shaped into blocks called meju, which are dried on rice straw to ferment. The blocks are then immersed in brine for a few months before they are finally separated into soy sauce and soybean paste.

“On the day that I boil the soybeans, I take a bath beforehand to cleanse myself of all impurities. I never go to a house that’s in mourning around that time, however close I might be to the deceased. I devote myself to the work, body and mind.

I’ve always regarded the first step in making soy sauce as a sacred task,” Ki said.

Utmost Devotion

Thanks to her decades of dedication and care, Ki’s name is also known abroad. Some of the world’s most renowned chefs, like Eric Ripert from New York and René Redzepi from Copenhagen, have visited her. And when U.S. President Donald Trump made a visit to Korea in 2017, her soy sauce made headlines for its use in marinating the beef ribs served at the state banquet. Press reports said the dinner featured a vintage soy sauce which was a century older than the United States itself.

“I’ve always taken good care of this seed sauce, which

Ganjang (soy sauce) is a basic seasoning used in Korean cuisine. In the past, making soy sauce was an important yearly event for every household, with the subtle difference in taste at each household highly appreciated. But most Koreans use store-bought soy sauce these days.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 47

“ There is no practice run. The soy sauce, made just once a year, determines the taste of the family’s food for the whole year.”

48 KOREANA Spring 2020

The rows of over 1,200 earthenware jars in the courtyard of Ki Soon-do’s home in Damyang, South Jeolla Province, make a spectacular sight. Ki has made condiments using traditional methods for the past 48 years. In 2008, her contribution to sauce making and the quality of her products earned her the title of Master of Traditional Korean Food No. 35.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 49

is rarely used except for special family events. Every year, I add the best soy sauce from the new batch to make up for the consumed portion,” Ki said.

Ki carefully chooses each ingredient in her soy sauce, using only bamboo salt and domestically grown soybeans.

But her sauce’s secret, she says, lies in the water, the most basic ingredient, which is pumped up from the ground as deep down as 167 meters, and in the locally grown bamboo canes used for baking the salt in her brine. Her home county of Damyang is famous for its bamboo. Great ingredients naturally make for great taste, but it is skill that ensures soy sauce of the finest quality. Ki’s bamboo salt is different from any other on the market. “Bay salt from the west coast is baked for four days in a red clay kiln heated to about 700ºC, and this is repeated nine times to produce the salt that I use,” she explained with pride in her voice.

“In the eleventh lunar month, we cook soybeans to make meju. The meju blocks are fermented for a month, and ready for soy sauce making around the 15th day of the new lunar year,” Ki said. “Selecting the day for the job is very important. There is no practice run. The soy sauce, made just once a year, determines the taste of the family’s food for the whole year.” Her fermentation room, built with red clay, removes the musty smell unique to meju and creates the sweet aroma of her soy sauce.

“You must be hungry by now. Would you like some of these? There’s almost no sugar in them,” she said, bringing in a small portable table laid with danggeun jeonggwa (carrots preserved in honey), doraji jeonggwa (bellflower root preserved in honey) and some yakgwa cookies.

Heirloom Recipes

Ki’s culinary skills are not confined to condiments; she is famous for various traditional dishes. Indeed, one bite of her sticky honeyed bellflower root was paradise in my mouth, the taste so elegant that the word “sweet” could not truly do it justice. The initial sweetness was followed by a pleasant bitterness. The cookies also had a delectable texture, not too crunchy or brittle. The grain syrup creating their lovely flavor needs to be made from scratch, Ki said, instead of using ready-made starch syrup, convenient as it may be.

As if she sensed that I was thirsty, she served me a bowl of sikhye (sweet rice drink), which also tasted different from the kind I had drunk before. It was less sweet and had more rice grains floating in it. The gentle sweetness came from the cooked and fermented rice, and the malt for the drink was also made from scratch by sprouting barley.

Ki is the 10th-generation jongbu of the Yangjinjae (House of Cultivating Truth) branch of the Ko clan, which hails from Jangheung, South Jeolla Province. Jongbu refers

1

1. Ki ties meju blocks with straw ropes to dry them. An essential ingredient that determines the taste of the condiments, meju is usually made around the time winter sets in.

Yellow soybeans are boiled, crushed and shaped into blocks, which are left in a warm place to grow fungi for fermentation and then hung in a sunny spot to dry.

2. Ki’s family has a set of heirloom recipes, one of which is perilla seed soup with burdock root (deulkkae ueongtang). The soup, best when seasoned with soy sauce aged for two to five years, is a healthy dish. It is made by stir-frying sliced burdock root, mushrooms and onions in perilla seed oil, then boiling them all in water and adding ground perilla seeds, chopped scallions and garlic.

50 KOREANA Spring 2020

© Kisoondo Traditional Jang Co., Ltd.

to the eldest daughter-in-law of the head family of a clan (jongga), who is invested with the duty of preserving the family’s traditions, including its dietary culture. Most clan head families developed their own dishes, with recipes passed down through the generations. These are high-quality local foods that make the most of regional produce.

The Ko family’s recipes include perilla seed soup with burdock root, pan-fried bamboo shoots, soy sauce kimchi, and rice wine brewed for 100 days. The perilla seed soup is made by stir-frying sliced burdock root, mushrooms and onions in perilla seed oil, then boiling them all in water and adding ground perilla seeds, chopped scallions and garlic – a healthy dish with a mild and delicate flavor. The pan-fried bamboo shoots are a rare delicacy marked by the natural taste of the ingredients. The most unique of the family’s recipes, however, is their spicy kimchi made with soy sauce instead of jeotgal (salt-fermented seafood).

Ki never dreamed of being the jongbu of a time-honored family. She was born in the county of Gokseong, a 40-minute drive from Damyang, the youngest sibling to her one brother and four sisters, who were all given the traditional upbringing of the nobility of the Joseon Dynasty, which included etiquette and table manners as well as filial duties toward their parents. As the baby of the family, however, she was pampered and knew nothing of housework. But when she married at age 23, she found herself ceaselessly toiling in the kitchen to prepare for ancestral rites, which had to be conducted around 30 times a year. She also helped her mother-in-law with the yearly soy sauce making. She has now accepted this life as her destiny.

“When my mother-in-law was alive, we had around 50 jars on our sauce jar terrace,” Ki recalled. “As soon as we made our soy sauce, relatives and neighbors would come to ask for some because it was so delicious.” As word spread, the family launched a soy sauce business.

“When my husband was a young man, he studied Buddhism at Dongguk University and wanted to become a monk.

But it was unthinkable in a clan head family,” she said. “It’s the eldest son’s greatest duty to have a son to carry on the family line. He had no choice but to give up his wishes.”

Since her husband, Ko Gap-seok, passed away 20 years ago, Ki has taken sole responsibility of caring for the clan head house and continuing the family’s traditions. Her efforts have been rewarded both at home and abroad. Her soy sauce is sold at Le Bon Marché, a department store in Paris, and she was invited to take part in SIAL Paris (Salon international de l’alimentation, or Global Food Marketplace), one of the world’s three largest food fairs, in 2018. In 2019, she partic-

2

ipated in the Namdo Jongga Treasure Hunt, co-sponsored by the Korea Tourism Organization and the Association of Clan Head Families of South Jeolla Province, to explore traditions handed down in the province’s age-old clan head families.

Slowing Down

These triumphs, however, were overshadowed by a tragic loss. Her second son, who earned a doctorate at a prestigious school in a field that would allow him to carry on the family business, was killed in an accident. It was an excruciating time, but Ki had to hold herself together. In devoting herself to her work, she was able to rise above the grief. Her company Goryeo Traditional Foods (a.k.a. Kisoondo Traditional Jang) produces not only traditional condiments but also modernized versions, as well as jang-based food items.

Today, when “Faster, and even faster!” is the motto of the times, the master soy sauce maker’s mission is to preserve the taste of slowness in traditional Korean condiments. “If my products are no different from what other people make, there’s no reason for me to make them,” she said.

Her resolve not to succumb to any commercial temptations resonating in my mind, I left the old residence. Once again, the white dog accompanied its mistress to see me off.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 51

ART REVIEW

Six years after its Broadway debut in 2013, “Big Fish,” a musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s fantasy drama film by the same name, hit the stage in Korea. A CJ ENM production, the show adroitly incorporated new ideas, resulting in heart-warming performances that resonated with the audience.

Won Jong-won Musical critic

Six years after its Broadway debut in 2013, “Big Fish,” a musical adaptation of Tim Burton’s fantasy drama film by the same name, hit the stage inmusicals Korea. Agenerally CJ ENMcost production, ickets to a lot morethe thanshow ticketssuccessfully for amongincorporated other movies, have all been turned into movies or plays.

The higher financial burden may be one rea- that hit musicals.

These productions are at the height new ideas, resulting in heart-warming performances resonated son why theater-goers don’t want to make the wrong choice, of their fame on New York’s Broadway and at with the audience. and so they do their research first, checking the buzz, the media, critLondon’s West End theaters, the places-to-be for ics’ reviews and friends’ recommendations.

Jukebox musicals featurglobal hit musicals.

Won Jong-won Musical critic ing old-time hit songs or “movicals” (movie-to-musical adaptations) It is hard for movicals not to be attracare popular precisely because they are safe bets, guaranteed to be tive when their stories, previously told on a flat entertaining and of a certain standard. screen, come to life on stage. Movie companies “Billy Elliot,” “Moulin Rouge,” “King Kong” and “Kinky Boots,” who own the film rights can also benefit as new

T

52 KOREANA Spring 2020

“Big Fish” staged at the Seoul Arts Center’s CJ Towol Theater from December 2019 to February 2020 was entertaining in a uniquely Korean production, different from Broadway or West End shows. © LORGNETTE

energy is breathed into existing content, maximizing added value.

From Screen to Stage

“Big Fish,” which opened in Seoul toward the end of 2019, is a typical movical. The 2003 fantasy film it is based on, directed by Tim Burton, was itself an adaption of a novel by Daniel Wallace published in 1998. Burton’s movies play out

in versatile ways as they traverse stage and screen, characterized by fabulous colors, fanciful images and grotesque motifs. His classic 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands” was made into a musical by Matthew Bourne, and the 2005 fantasy “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was similarly adapted for the stage by Marc Shaiman. More recently, the hit musical “Beetlejuice” premiered on Broadway in the summer of 2019, adapted from the comedy film dating back to 1988.

There is even a word – Burtonesque – to describe the unique quality of Tim Burton’s movies. “Big Fish” is certainly deserving of the

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 53

label. The story travels through the past and present, passing back and forth between reality and imagination. The director’s personal history is also reflected within; Burton lost his father around the time the movie was made. The son’s pathos in the film, expressed in his longing for his father and his eventual acceptance of his father’s tall tales, were all related to the director’s personal situation.

Ten years later, “Big Fish” was staged as a musical for the first time. Writer John August, who had participated in Disney’s “Aladdin,” wrote the script, and Andrew Lippa, Tony Award nominee for “The Addams Family,” wrote the music. Susan Stroman, five-time Tony Award winner and recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, was director and choreographer.

After a tryout at Chicago’s Oriental Theater, “Big Fish” premiered on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre. As is often the case with movicals, this version of “Big Fish” did not simply transplant the movie onto the stage. All kinds of experiments and alterations were attempted, referring back to the book from which the film had been adapted. It was a huge challenge to maximize the elements that could both entertain and be accommodated on stage. After the show closed on Broadway, it was staged in Sydney and London in 2017, where it was a popular draw.

Novel Attractions

The Korean production of “Big Fish,” which ran from December 2019 to February 2020 at CJ Towol Theater in the Seoul Arts Center, was entertaining in its own special way. It combined all the good points of the Broadway and West End versions to increase the fun, while also introducing giant puppets for the first time.

In the movie, the roles of young and aged Edward Bloom were played by Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, respectively. In the Korean musical, one actor plays Edward over a span of 50 years, building the character as he ages.

The show presents a visual spectacle of objects that reproduce on stage the fantasy previously executed in the book and movie. It follows other foreign licensed musicals produced in Korea in terms of artistry and pitch-perfect localization. Taking the audience on a fantastical journey beyond imagination, the beauty of the musical comes full circle when the de-facto theme song “Be the Hero” is played. The show is so heart-warming that the smile on your face remains long after you leave the theater.

The cast of this production have once again proved their acting caliber, reaffirming that they are the jewel and pride of the local musical industry. Edward Bloom is played by Nam Kyung-joo, a veteran actor with nearly 30 years of experience. The other two leads are rounded out by Park Ho-san, who has displayed a wide spectrum of acting in his previous works, and Son Jun-ho, a familiar face thanks to his appearance on a TV variety program. All three demonstrated their remarkable individuality and different strengths.

54 KOREANA Spring 2020

Other actors, both seasoned and up-and-coming, form an admirable ensemble and top-of-theclass talents were also recruited in the areas of translation and lyrics, music and arrangement, stage design and projection design. At the helm of the production was the acclaimed musical director Scott Schwartz.

Impressive Finale

It would be unfair to define movicals as simple reproductions of box office hits. There is no denying the halo effect of the original film, but a story retold on stage offers the audience enjoyment of a different kind. The most basic change is the shift from a two-dimensional screen to a three-dimensional stage. Although movies may feature King Kong climbing up the Empire State Building or Avatar in 3D or even 4D, nothing beats actually seeing a live-action rendition, which is why movicals can sometimes be more moving than the films on which they are based.

“Big Fish” the musical stands out especially in its final scene. CJ Towol Theater has a deeper backstage than other performance halls and this structural advantage was well employed to portray the final journey of the father to the deep sea.

When “Big Fish” premiered on Broadway, CJ ENM was one of the show’s associate producers.

Going beyond simply seeking overseas opportunities for creative local productions, the company strives to grow the Korean musical industry by participating in the co-production of famous foreign works. These include productions already staged, such as “The Bodyguard,” “Moulin Rouge,” “Kinky Boots” and “Big Fish,” as well as upcoming works like Broadway’s “August Rush” and West End’s “Back to the Future.”

1. The lead character Edward Bloom (played by Park Ho-san), his wife Sandra (played by Kim Ji-woo) and their son Will (played by Lee Chang-yong) share a happy moment together.

2. Edward and Sandra are deep in conversation. The Korean production of “Big Fish” was acclaimed for its magnificent visual elements and wonderful acting.

Nam Kyung-joo, Park Ho-san and Son Jun-ho were especially praised for their seasoned portrayals of Edward over a span of 50 years.

1

2

The show presents a visual spectacle of objects that reproduce on stage the fantasy previously executed in the book and movie.

It follows other foreign licensed musicals produced in Korea in terms of artistry and pitch-perfect localization.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 55

TALES OF TWO KOREAS

Berlin Garden Evokes a Dream of Peace “Das dritte Land” (The Third Country), a temporary art garden in Berlin, is a space where Germany and the two Koreas can share the pain of division and the importance of reunification. The three South Korean artists who built the garden keep their fingers crossed for inter-Korean relations to improve and for North Korea to send its plants and flowers to complete their project.

Kim Hak-soon Journalist

1

© Keum Art Projects

56 KOREANA Spring 2020

1. Installation artists Han Seok-hyun (left) and Kim Seung-hwoe tend to “Das dritte Land” (The Third Country), a temporary art garden which opened in Berlin in May 2019.

Marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and wishing for peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula, the garden is at Potsdamer Platz, near the wall’s remains. It will be open until October 2020.

2. Windflowers, which grow in an alpine climate north of the central part of the Korean peninsula, are in full bloom. To give an impression of an ink and wash landscape painting, windflowers and other white wildflowers, such as creeping catchfly, European starflower, silver meadow-rue and gooseneck loosestrife, were planted in a bed of soil on black rocks.

2

N

ear the remains of the Berlin Wall lies an art garden that promotes a unique theme: “Nature Knows No Borders.”

Here, visitors can enjoy a landscape adorned with plants and flowers from across the Korean peninsula, imagining that land as undivided. The atmosphere exudes an appeal to quietly pray for peace and reconciliation.

Kim Keum-hwa, the curator of a contemporary art planning agency in Berlin and manager of the garden project, calls the floral work “The Third Country.” She borrowed the idea from Jacopo Bonfadio, an Italian humanist and historian of the Renaissance period who defined gardens as “terza natura,” or a “third nature” – a natural space created and upgraded by man to the level of art.

“Humans created gardens because of their yearning for nature and desire to establish order within it,” Kim says.

“The name of this garden reflects that idea. It is intended to spark a utopian imagination about the Korean peninsula so that visitors can look beyond the present day of our divided land.”

The Berlin garden’s centerpiece is

a model of the Baekdu Daegan chain of mountains, a theme inspired by “Clearing After Rain in Mt. Inwang” (Inwang jesaekdo), an ink and wash landscape painting of the 18th-century Joseon era which is well-known not only in both Koreas but abroad as well.

The Baekdu Daegan (Great White Head Ridge) mountain chain forms the backbone of the Korean peninsula. It flows like a colossal river, aptly starting with the peninsula’s highest peak, Mt. Paektu (a.k.a. Mt. Baekdu), on the northern border, passing through Mt. Kumgang (a.k.a. Mt. Geumgang) and Mt. Seorak, and reaching Mt. Jiri and the south coast.

Collaboration

The garden, built in the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz, is the result of a threeyear collaboration involving Kim and two installation artists, Han Seok-hyun and Kim Seung-hwoe. Its opening on May 23, 2019 was among many events of the year commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kim Keum-hwa managed overall planning while Han conceived of the

visual representation of ideas for the project and Kim Seung-hwoe arranged and organized the plants and flowers.

Han seeks to combine contemporary art and ecological practices, shuttling between Berlin and Seoul.

Kim Seung-hwoe focuses on social, urban-architectural and ecological changes that have arisen around the Berlin Wall before and after its fall. He uses public art as a tool to enable communication between art and landscape.

Han conceived of the idea of an art garden when he was a resident artist in Berlin. He explains, “When I first arrived in Berlin in the spring of 2016, everybody here looked so peaceful and happy. It occurred to me that the reunification of Germany brought them stability and peace. I was moved to tears when I watched a documentary about the moment that the Berlin Wall came down.

“I thought it would be necessary for both North and South Koreans to meet and talk with each other more often instead of simply waiting for a political decision to materialize, just as the Germans achieved their reunification after both sides expressed their

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 57

1. The two artists built a replica Baekdu Daegan (Great White Head Ridge) with basalt and soil and installed a water mist system to produce fog to create the image of the chain of mountains, which Koreans regard as the backbone of their territory.

2. “Das dritte Land” (The Third Country), covering 1,250 square meters (25 × 50 m), is located in front of St. Matthew Church.

The artists originally planned to put together 3,000 plants representing 60 varieties (37 from South Korea and 23 from North Korea). However, North Korea’s tepid response limited the garden to only 1,500 plants of 45 varieties (31 South Korean and 14 North Korean).

1 © Keum Art Projects

desire for it and began to travel freely among themselves. Then it flashed through my mind that I hadn’t talked with anyone about Korean unification for over a decade. I suddenly felt like working on something related to the two Koreas.”

The Vision

Han believes that the geographical features of the Baekdu Daegan have had a significant impact on the cultural and emotional homogeneity of ethnic Koreans. The uninterrupted chain of mountains running through the Korean peninsula is now a treasure trove of ecological biodiversity. In the process of designing the garden, Han contemplated how to visually express such symbolism.

58 KOREANA Spring 2020

“Clearing After Rain in Mt. Inwang” was drawn by Jeong Seon (pen name Gyeomjae; 1676-1759), who pioneered the art of real-life landscape with his paintings depicting actual Korean scenery, a departure from the conventional conceptual landscapes of previous eras. Han regards the work as a masterpiece that reflects the cultural sensibilities handed down on both sides of the divided peninsula. “With this cultural background in mind, I wanted to express the beauty of the foot of a mountain shrouded in a thick, swirling fog after rain,” he said.

He thought over and over about how to embody the landscape of Korean mountains in garden art. Finally, he was able to create the effect of an ink

and wash painting with white wildflowers coming into bloom beneath a black rock and a water mist system to produce fog. He used basalt and soil to create a miniature model of the Baekdu Daegan, conjuring up a dreamy atmosphere as if it is shrouded in a thick cloud of fog.

The Opening

The garden project did not transpire unencumbered. Obtaining administrative approval to build a park from the Berlin Industrial Development and Park Authority was the highest hurdle.

A maze of regulations had to be navigated and compromises reached to manifest the artists’ ideas while also satisfying local standards and specifications for civil engineering works.

“Everybody told me it’d be impossible when I said we wanted to plant flowers from North Korea in this garden.

But I believed that it was an artist’s duty to give wings to the imagination of visitors by making what looks impossible possible.”

2

Next, a financial problem cropped up. Fortunately, crowdfunding successfully garnered 32,500 euros just two months before the garden’s opening. In this process, famous actors and musicians back in South Korea sent messages of encouragement, with donations coming in from the Arts Council Korea, the Korean Cultural Center in Germany and the Hans and Charlotte Krull Foundation, as well as from individual donors.

The project finally kicked off on a hopeful note. Jo Sumi, a world-famous soprano, performed on the opening day. She said, “I wanted to give my best wishes to the organizers of this art garden built for peace and inter-Korean exchange in Berlin, a symbol of the division of Germany and of its reunification.” In addition, Ju Bo-ra, a gayageum player, performed duets with Jin Sung-eun, a player of handpan, a fusion percussion instrument.

Lee Lang, a singer-songwriter who rose to fame for a performance of the North Korean song “Imjin River” created with sign language, gave a concert on June 7 at St. Matthew Church.

On November 8, Venerable Jeong Kwan, a Buddhist nun and chef, presented an assortment of vegetarian temple dishes at the church, wishing for Korean unification. Berlin-based artists from various countries also performed at opening events organized by curator Kim Keum-hwa under the theme of “Borders and Utopia, Politics and Arts.”

Initially scheduled to last six months, the garden has been extended to October 30, 2020 thanks to support and encouragement from Berlin citizens and the cultural office of the borough of Mitte. Yet the garden still falls short of what the artists envisaged.

North Korean officials had been cooperative during the initial stages,

but backed off from the project after the second U.S.-North Korea summit broke down in Hanoi in February 2019. Consequently, the garden currently has only 1,500 plants and flowers of 45 varieties, about half of the 3,000 items of 60 varieties originally planned. Wildflowers from the Baekdudaegan National Arboretum in Bonghwa in the South Korean province of North Gyeongsang had to be brought in as substitutes for plants indigenous to the North Korean side of the mountain chain.

Substitutes

The three artists are still trying hard to procure North Korean plants and flowers to make the exhibition whole and perfect. They are in contact with the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum of the Free University of Berlin; the Korea National Arboretum in Gwangneung, in South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province; and the Central Botanical Garden in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

“Everybody told me it’d be impossible when I said we wanted to plant flowers from North Korea in this garden,” Han said. “But I believed that it was an artist’s duty to give wings to the imagination of visitors by making what looks impossible possible.”

Desperately and resolutely, he went on, “We’ll keep trying to turn our imagination into reality. We’d be happy if we had a chance to see people from both Koreas chat over Korean rice wine, makgeolli, in this garden before too long.”

Meanwhile, Kim Keum-hwa said wistfully, “I just hope that inter-Korean dialogue will proceed smoothly and ecologists from the two sides can gather together in this garden to hold a symposium on plants of the Baekdu mountain chain.”

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 59

IN LOVE WITH KOREA

In the Afterglow of Karma Anton Scholz

Anton Scholz stands in front of his house, which was built three years ago in Jangdeok-dong, Gwangju. He settled with his family in Gwangju while holding a professorship at Chosun University from 2003 to 2011.

60 KOREANA Spring 2020

Three decades after he began learning taekwondo, Anton Scholz is now a soughtafter Korea expert, hard at work as a journalist, businessman and TV celebrity from Gwangju.

Choi Sung-jin Executive Editor, Korea Biomedical Review Ha Ji-kwon Photographer

A

t 16, Anton Scholz knocked on the door of a taekwondo studio. Call it fate or simply an impulse derived from his interest in Asia. He says it was karma. Now, 32 years later, Scholz is one of Germany’s most well-known Korea experts.

“As a middle school student, I had lots of interest in the Eastern world – its philosophy, religion and culture,” Scholz said, recalling his teen years in Hamburg, Germany. “My taekwondo master, Shin Boo-young, taught his students not just fighting skills but how to seek the do, or spiritual cultivation.”

While practicing taekwondo, Scholz became interested in Buddhism as well. In 1994, six years after that momentous knock, came the advice of a Korean Buddhist monk who was visiting Germany. Scholz followed that advice and arrived for the first time on Korea’s doorstep. “I intended to go back to Germany after a year or so. Now, as you can see, I’ve been living here for almost half of my life,” he said.

First Visit

During his early years in Korea, Scholz studied the Korean language at Seoul National University while immersing himself in East Asian studies, delving into topics such as meditation, the Eight Trigrams (bagua, or palgwae in Korean) and Lao Tzu’s thoughts. He then went back to Germany to attend the University of Hamburg. It was one of the few German universities with a Korean studies concentration at the time, and in his first year, he was the only Korean major.

Japan and China were the more popular areas of Asian studies.

Since returning to Korea, Scholz has been a consultant, journalist and teacher – alternately or simultaneously. Much of his work involves helping foreigners do business in Korea and advising Koreans about Germany.

Scholz set up a one-stop service company to help foreign businesses smoothly get settled and begin operations

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 61

1

in Korea. His company also assisted international participants of the Yeosu Expo 2012, the 2011 IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Daegu and the 2002 Korea-Japan FIFA World Cup finals. Scholz also opened a media firm to arrange translation services, accommodation and transportation for visiting foreign journalists.

From 2003 to 2011, Scholz held a professorship at Chosun University, where he taught German language and international communication. During those years, his family settled in the southwestern city of Gwangju where the university is located.

Formerly an official producer of ARD, a public broadcaster in Germany, Scholz is currently a freelance journalist. He appears as a regular panelist in TV debates and talk shows, and contributes opinion pieces to newspapers. On his business card, he is identified as an “Honorary Representative of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg to Korea.”

“My happiness comes from work. I often think it is regrettable that a day has only 24 hours,” Scholz said. This self-professed workaholic’s relationship with Korea, a country known for having long working hours, is probably inevitable. He is especially busy when inter-Korean relations attract global attention and international TV news crews request help.

Collaborating with these foreign TV crews affords

62 KOREANA Spring 2020

another chance for Scholz to serve as an unofficial cultural ambassador, as he did in 2002 when Korea and Japan co-hosted the World Cup football tournament. At the time, staff members of certain German broadcasters said they preferred Japan, complaining that Koreans often did not honor promises and had poor manners. “I told them their impression was based on misunderstanding,” said Scholz.

“And I took them to Korean historic sites on weekends and explained Korean culture. By the time the World Cup was over, my German friends said they liked Korea better.”

Candid Criticism

Scholz does not hesitate to criticize his host country, specifically its media and educational system. He has misgivings about the way news beats are operated, with certain reporters permanently assigned to cover government agencies or chaebol (family-run conglomerates). His criticism boils down to the media being “too close to sources and too closed to outsiders.”

Another issue is the validity of press reports. Scholz pointed out the news coverage of some 550 Yemeni refugees who arrived on Jeju Island in 2018. The refugees’ applications for asylum sparked a controversy in Korean society, with a debate forming as to whether the government should afford them legal refugee status.

“ My happiness comes from work. I often think it is regrettable that a day has only 24 hours.”

2

© EDAILY

1. As a part-time journalist and consultant, Anton Scholz keeps busy in his study. A well-known Korea expert, he also serves as an unofficial cultural ambassador to promote Korea abroad.

2. Anton Scholz (second from left) participates in the “Economic War: What’s to Gain?” section of the 10th EDAILY Strategy Forum, held at the Shilla Seoul in June 2019.

3. Scholz appears on KBS network’s “Journalism Talk Show J,” in its segment “Ex-President Roh Moo-hyun and Media Reform.”

Recognized for his acute analysis and candid remarks, Scholz is a frequent guest on TV current affairs programs.

3 Captured image of “Journalism Talk Show J”

“Opponents spread fake news to incite hateful sentiments about the refugees,” Scholz said. “Even some established media outlets conveyed the stories through their social media sites without checking facts. It turned out later that quite a few of those stories were not true.”

Discussion of the integrity of news media naturally turned to Jürgen Hinzpeter (1937-2016). The German TV journalist filmed the brutal crackdown of Gwangju citizens by government troops during the democratic uprising in May 1980. Owing to his bravery, the world learned about the situation in the Korean city, which was isolated from the rest of the country under martial law. “I respect Hinzpeter.

He was a great journalist,” Scholz said. “But I also believe there are still many journalists today who would risk their lives to get newsworthy stories.”

Scholz has helped to make a documentary film about Hinzpeter. He also played a minor role in the 2017 film “A Taxi Driver,” which tells the story of Kim Man-seop.

The character is based on a real-life taxi driver named Kim Sa-bok, who helped Hinzpeter in his coverage of Gwangju.

Moving on to the topic of German unification, Scholz emphasized that West and East Germany worked strenuously toward that goal and had a dose of good luck and perfect timing. “I think South and North Korea can do the same, although the situation is more complicated on the Korean

peninsula, which is surrounded by big powers pursuing different interests.”

Tips on Unification

Korean unification may be difficult to achieve anytime soon.

Still, Scholz noted that the two Koreas may adopt the “one country, two systems” principle like China and Hong Kong or some other way of unification. The German way should not be the only option, he added.

He expressed regrets about the tendency of Korean people to shun critical advice. “Many Koreans say, ‘You don’t understand our situation.’ But the truth is that many foreigners can understand Korea’s situation, but Koreans often seem unready to accept different views and solutions,” Scholz said.

Regarding Korea’s educational system, Sholz believes the emphasis is misplaced. “It seems to put focus not on the quality but rather on the quantity of education, thereby destroying students’ creativity,” he said. “Children need to play more and study less. And study should focus on actually learning something and not on just preparing for tests.”

After decades in Korea, Scholz enjoys his second home but does not dismiss the possibility of moving on to new challenges, another door on which to knock. “Time will tell,” he said.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 63

ON THE ROAD

64 KOREANA Spring 2020

Yeoju

Perceiving Invisible Land Located in the center of the Korean peninsula, Yeoju is a river city long appreciated as a hub of both shipping and the ceramic industry. Rice from this region is also highly regarded for its quality. But opinion is divided on the strengths of Yeoju’s storied ancient temples and surrounding environs as a must-see tourist destination.

Lee Chang-guy Poet and Literary Critic Ahn Hong-beom Photographer

The Pasa Fortress in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, provides a clear view of the Namhan River and surrounding mountains.

Built by Silla in the mid-sixth century during the Three Kingdoms period, the fortress walls are some 950 meters in circumference and up to 6.5 meters high. Any hostile forces approaching on the river were easily detected.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 65

“M

y Exploration of Korean Cultural Heritage” was something of a sensation when the inaugural book in the series appeared in the early 1990s. It became the first Korean humanities book to sell over a million copies and sparked a nationwide craze for exploration. In an eloquent, approachable style, art historian Yu Hong-june introduced a new way for Koreans to appreciate their cultural heritage while simultaneously enlightening international visitors.

In the eighth volume of his series, Yu suggests two courses for visitors who have only one day to explore the country’s culture and natural environment. One of these is a tour of Yeoju, an hour’s drive from Seoul.

The author’s reasons include Yeoju’s treasures: Silleuk Temple, which has “the warm, comfortable atmosphere of a Korean Buddhist temple”; the site of Godal Temple, where the “ambience of the ruins of an ancient temple” can be felt; and the tombs of King Sejong and King Hyojong with their “dignity and solemnity.”

Yeoju, he also points out, offers wonderful views of the Namhan (or South Han) River. In 2012, CNN GO picked Silleuk Temple as one of the 50 most beautiful places to visit in Korea.

While these attractions may entice international tourists, they are simply pedestrian to many Koreans: ordinary and familiar.

Domestic readers are hardly persuaded by Yu’s explanations of the temples’ aesthetic values. Why does he bypass other historical sites with more obvious splendor and scenic spots whose beauty has been rhapsodized? Why does he recommend plain old Yeoju?

The Invisible Land

When Western doctors first encounter Asian medicine, they are often surprised to see that its diagrams of human anatomy scarcely show any muscles. Instead, they focus on acupuncture points and the flow of gi (qi in Chinese), or vital energy, in the human body.

Unlike most Korean Buddhist temples, which are nestled in the mountains, Silleuk Temple faces the river flowing alongside its grounds. The temple’s oldest remaining architectural structure is a brick pagoda that sits on a rock overlooking the Han.

1. The standing Buddha image, 223cm high and 46cm wide, carved into the cliffside along the Namhan River, is an early Goryeo (935-1392) work that continues the style of the Unified Silla (676-935), as evidenced by the detailed drapery and the refined lotus pedestal and halo.

2. The brick pagoda at Silleuk Temple stands on the rocky edge of the temple grounds, overlooking the Namhan River. The 9.4-metertall pagoda, designated Treasure No. 226, was likely influenced by brick construction introduced to Korea from China around the 10th century.

3. Presumably founded during the reign of King Jinpyeong (r. 579-632) of Silla, Silleuk Temple is prized for its cozy, warm atmosphere. Found within its grounds are statedesignated treasures, including a stone lantern, a brick pagoda and the Treasure Hall of Paradise.

1

66 KOREANA Spring 2020

2

© Yonhap News Agency

3

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 67

Francisco Gonzalez-Crussi, a Mexican doctor and writer, attempted to explain these two different views of the human body and the world. Essentially, he summarized that while Westerners tried to reveal the complex system of the human body through the muscles, a voluntary tool expressing will, Asians sought to understand the non-voluntary and invisible pulse of the blood vessels and the heart as the source of the body’s movement.

In this sense, perhaps Yu wanted to show the “invisible energy” of Korea’s natural environment and cultural heritage rather than their “muscles.”

Koreans interpret land in terms of pungsu jiri (geomancy, or the Korean equivalent of feng shui). These words translate literally to “wind and water” and “understanding the land,” respectively. To understand pungsu, one needs to understand gi. Its common translation of “vital energy” has no real equivalent in Western culture.

Gi is defined as the source or basis of all matter that has shape or form. A time-honored idea in Asian philosophy is that gi inside the land breathes life into all things. The study of this invisible energy of the land is pungsu.

Yeoju is like Seoul in many ways. Running through both cities, surrounded by lovely stretches of mountains, is the Han River, which divides the central part of the Korean peninsula as it flows east to west. A Yeoju-to-Seoul boat ride on the Han is a day’s journey. Thus, in the past, Yeoju’s famous rice, as well as salt, salt-fermented fish (jeotgal) and fresh seafood from the west coast could reach the capital the day they were shipped.

Vibrant River Town

During the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), grain was used to pay taxes and shipped on the Han River.

Yeoju served as a sort of midway point for merchant ships and boats carrying tributary goods, and intellectuals and government officials with a discerning eye for places to live began to converge here.

When the capital was moved to Hanyang (today’s Seoul) at the start of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-

1

68 KOREANA Spring 2020

1910), Yeoju became home to those in positions of power and influence. This significantly enhanced the town’s political and cultural stature. Consequently, more than one fifth of all Joseon Dynasty queens hailed from Yeoju and the region is home to more pagodas and other historical structures of National Treasure or Treasure level than any other part of the country.

Despite its speed and convenience, transporting cargo by water was risky. An accident often resulted in loss of both property and lives, and it was a common custom among the boatmen to pray to the Buddha for their safety. Among Korea’s ancient rockcarved Buddhas, only two are situated along a river. Both overlook the Han. One is located beside the old Geumcheon river port in Changdong-ri, Chungju. The other is at Bucheoul (literally “Buddha Rapids”) in Gyesin-ri, just above the old Ipo river port in Yeoju.

The rocks on which the two Buddhas were carved differ in scale, form and material composition. But both were made during the Goryeo Dynasty, carrying on the style of the Unified Silla (676935). River passengers and crews would look up at the Buddhas and pray for a safe journey.

negative energy of the terrain and purify its “blood” by making it clean and gentle. These days, the purpose of the pagoda is overlooked. It is even hidden from view by Gangwolheon, or the Pavilion of River and Moon.

Brick pagodas were a rarity in Korea, which lacked a brick-making tradition. That changed when Silla sent Buddhist monks to China to learn the latest trends in Buddhism. Their sojourns led to the adoption in Korea of many systems and cultural aspects of China’s Tang Dynasty, including brick pagodas.

Not far from Silleuk Temple is the site of a Chinese-style brick kiln. It dates back to the latter half of the 10th century, during the Goryeo Dynasty, around the same time the brick pagoda at Silleuk Temple was constructed. One can imagine Chinese potters coming to Korea, crossing the West Sea and supervising the construction of the pagoda, a project which Goryeo potters helped to complete. The evidence of this is found in the floral scroll design

Brick Pagodas and Jade-Green Celadon

Unlike most Korean Buddhist temples, which are nestled in the mountains, Silleuk Temple faces the river flowing alongside its grounds. The temple’s oldest remaining architectural structure is a brick pagoda that sits on a rock overlooking the Han. Though the layout of Buddhist temples is now based on the main hall as the center, there was a time when the pagoda was the central point around which all the buildings were arranged.

The Han River has the largest water volume of any river in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. Its narrow width combined with heavy rainfall led to frequent summer flooding in the past.

The brick pagoda of Silleuk Temple stands on a high cliff at a particularly rough section of the river that has capsized many vessels. Placing the pagoda on the cliff was a way to alert passing boats of impending danger. This is an example of bibo, the geomantic principle of offsetting the deficiencies of a site. If the rocks and mountains are the muscles of the land, the rivers are its blood vessels. Placing the pagoda on the cliff was meant to suppress the

2

1. The site of Godal Temple, some 60,000 square meters in total area, indicates the size and scope of the vanished temple. Built in the latter half of the eighth century, the temple flourished for several hundred years. Two exquisite stupas and other cultural treasures made of stone remain on the grounds.

2. This stone stupa, designated National Treasure No. 4, stands 4.3 meters high on a low hill at the back of the Godal Temple site. Dating to the Goryeo period, the stupa is recognized for its refined form and sculptural technique displayed in the dragon and tortoise carvings on the shaft.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 69

called dangcho – literally “Tang grass” – that adorns the bricks.

The introduction of the brick kiln also led to the birth of the Goryeo jade-green celadon so highly praised by Xu Jing, a Song Dynasty envoy, in his 1123 book “Illustrated Account of Goryeo” (K. Goryeo dogyeong, Ch. Gaoli tujing). Chinese-style brick kilns were primarily operated in Gyeonggi Province, adjacent to the capital. Gradually, Goryeo potters changed these brick kilns to Korean-style earthen kilns and departed from the Chinese method of firing once at a very high temperature. The technique of two-step firing – bisque firing followed by glaze firing – spread throughout Korea. It enabled the production of ceramics in any place where clay could be easily obtained and, in turn, stimulated the development of high-quality Goryeo celadon wares. This tradition of pottery making has continued over the centuries. Today, some 400 pottery workshops operate in the Yeoju area.

Land that Lives and Breathes

There were two main overland routes from Seoul to Yeoju: one went to the north of the Han River, the other to the south. On foot, either of these journeys took two days.

The northern route evolved during the Three Kingdoms peri-

70 KOREANA Spring 2020

The tomb of Queen Inseon, located just below the tomb of King Hyojong (r. 1649-1659) of Joseon, is surrounded by stone figures.

The Yeongnyeong Royal Tombs include the joint tomb of King Sejong (r. 1418-1450) and Queen Sohyeon in the western compound, and the double tombs of King Hyojong and Queen Inseon in the eastern compound. These tombs exude the dignity and solemnity that marks the royal tombs of the Joseon Dynasty.

od (57 B.C.-A.D. 668). It linked the Namhan River with villages and temples and connected them to water transportation. From Pasa Fortress in Yeoju, the view over the river is spectacular. The wide open vista to the south shows Ipo Bridge slung over the long watercourse flowing to the west. To the north, the peaks of the Taebaek Mountain Range can be seen in the distance. If you stand there, questions as to why the fortress was built on this spot and why the Three Kingdoms – Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla – fought so long and hard over this land naturally disappear. This is also the bitter road traveled by two Goryeo kings: King Mokjong

(r. 997-1009) when he was overthrown and exiled to Chungju, and King Gongmin (r. 1351-1374) when he took refuge in Andong upon the invasion of the Red Turbans.

The route also reveals the vast, empty site where Godal Temple once stood. Nestled against Mt. Hyemok, an aura of history still shrouds the vacant expanse. During the Goryeo period, the temple grounds stretched over 30 li (approx. 12km) in all four directions and were home to hundreds of monks, an indication of how the Goryeo royal court showered the temple with privileges and financial support. When Goryeo gave way to the Confucian state of Joseon, the favors and support of the state ended and Buddhism was unable to survive on its own.

Remaining on the site are some excellent works of Buddhist art, including stone stupas and pagodas such as the Stupa of Godal Temple (National Treasure No. 4), which features intricate carvings. Though worth seeing for their sculptural beauty alone, the pagodas are also fascinating as examples of symbolic temple structures erected to protect and proclaim the authority of the throne by borrowing from the energy of the land.

Standing on the temple site today, no matter how much you look around, mountain scenery unfolding to your left and right, it is hard to detect traces of the grandeur of the temple that once stood there. But when strolling along the hills behind the ruins, listening to the sound of the wind blowing cold, somehow you feel warm

Sites to Visit in Yeoju

Pasa Fortress 1 Ipo Bridge

Namhan River

Yeongnyeong Royal Tombs

Seoul 77km

Yeoju

Old Ferry Crossing 3

and comfortable, your mind neither empty nor scattered. It is probably a feeling that comes from a land that is alive and breathing.

Eyes of Wisdom

The southern route to Yeoju from Seoul forms part of the road network that led from the capital to Dongnae in Busan during the Joseon period. It was the road traveled by King Sejong (r. 1418-1450) when he visited Yeoju, home of his maternal relatives, during his hunting trips, and by the kings who came after him when they traveled to Yeoju to pay respects at his tomb or, in much later years, the tomb of King Hyojong (r. 1649-1659). The tomb of King Sejong, originally located in Gwangju, was moved to Yeoju in the belief that its present site was the most auspicious land in the country.

A little to the southeast of King Sejong’s tomb is Yeongwollu, or the Pavilion of Welcoming the Moon, which is known to offer the finest elevated view of the Han River. From here you can see the whole downtown area of Yeoju to the west, and if you lift your head to the north you will see, across the river, the mountains spread out like a landscape painting, some close by and others in the distance. Among them is Mt. Hyemok, towering over the site of Godal Temple. Hyemok is a Buddhist term for the “wisdom eye.” The “Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment” speaks of sentient beings who “have clarified their optical illusions and purified their wisdom eye.” No matter how high I rise, my mind and body are unaware of it.

Does this mean that for me, the purified wisdom eye is still far off?

Godal Temple Site New Godal Temple 1

2

3

4

2 Yeoju Ceramic World

Silleuk Temple

Birthplace of Empress 4 Myeongseong

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 71

AN ORDINARY DAY

A Fine Cut Above Kim Jong-gu is a master tailor with four decades of experience. Working tirelessly near Dongdaemun Fashion Town, a veritable hub of K-fashion in Seoul, he cuts and sews prototypes of the latest designs.

Kim Heung-sook Poet Ha Ji-kwon Photographer

Clothes maker Kim Jong-gu cuts fabric at his shared workspace in Sindang-dong, Seoul. He began to learn tailoring as a teenager more than 40 years ago. In 2018, the Korean government named him a “first-grade sewing specialist.�

72 KOREANA Spring 2020

C

ountless people dream of becoming fashion designers. They envision turning cloth into head-spinning name brand pieces. But to turn a design and cloth into a garment, it takes a third element: stitching. The backroom process, oftentimes overlooked, requires a high degree of focus, skill and efficiency.

Producing a perfectly tailored piece of clothing is difficult; it takes a long time to master, says Kim Jong-gu. He picked up a needle and scissors as a teen and has worked non-stop in the 40 years since. In 2018, he received national recognition as a “first-grade sewing specialist.” And while most of his peers are already retired, Kim keeps busy with freelance assignments, sharing a workshop, “Inseong Planning,” in Sindang-dong, Seoul. The neighborhood, located near Dongdaemun Fashion Town, is where the crucial finishing touches to K-fashion are carried out.

Kim’s workday isn’t much different from when he worked for a company. He wakes up early and after exercising at the gym in his apartment complex, has breakfast and is out the door by 8 a.m. He won’t return until after 8 p.m.

Five people share the workshop, producing samples and patterns independently within their own workspace and with their own equipment. Kim makes samples of clothing for internet shopping mall operators, Dongdaemun store owners, entrepreneurs wooing foreign buyers, and suppliers for home shopping channels.

Sometimes designers and clothing makers clash over the feasibility of a design. “It’s usually young, less experienced designers who make those demands, but you just have to explain it to them,” says Kim. “When they really don’t get it

despite an explanation, then you make it according to their instructions and show them the result. Then they say, ‘Ah, I see now,’ and finally understand.

“For a garment to be a good item of clothing, technical experts need to put their all into making it, and both the designer and customer have to be satisfied. It’s no good if the person who made it is the only one who likes it. I guess that’s true for other lines of work, too. But I think you can only do this kind of work well if it fits with your temperament. You need to be direct and to the point, have good concentration, and be a meticulous person. And your objective has to be clear, too. In order to really perfect your skills, you should be someone who thinks, ‘This is my line of work, this is all I want to do.’”

Kim has a basic per-sample price for each kind of garment he produces, such as a jacket or dress, and he adds a fee for labor according to the difficulty of the specific design.

“You have to have quick judgment when you cut the fabric.

Hesitation just wastes time. Clothes-making is a fight against the clock; you have to be done within the time you quoted to your client.”

Restored Respect

Kim also conducts one-time classes for the next generation of expert seamsters. He enjoys being around young people – and he has a lot to share.

Seamsters and tailors have a painful history in Korea. Jeon Tae-il, the most well-known martyr in the history of the Korean labor movement, was a tailor in Dongdaemun’s Pyeonghwa Market. He became enraged at how workers were forced to work long hours in unsafe sweatshops with no days off. On November 13, 1970, aged 22, Jeon set himself on fire outside his workplace, beseeching bosses to “comply with the Labor Standards Act!” His death kicked off a campaign for worker rights and led to the formation of labor unions in Korea.

Today, the majority of Korean seamsters and tailors are in their 50s. In Seoul, they mainly occupy the neighborhoods that surround Dongdaemun Fashion Town. Many spaces are run by couples or two or three relatives tackling subcontracted or sub-subcontracted work. The working environment has improved since the days of Jeon Tae-il, but they still work long hours for low pay.

“It’s no wonder there are so few people entering this profession. And while designers get plenty of recognition, that isn’t really

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 73

the case for clothing makers,” Kim says.

“When I was learning as a boy, I’d get a smack every time I made a mistake, and when I was a young man I often thought of quitting because the pay was so little compared to the effort I had to put in, but these days I’m treated with respect.” The reason: hallyu (the Korean Wave).

Following K-pop and K-beauty, Kfashion is riding the Korean Wave. Recognizing this newest cultural export, the government is adopting policies to encourage a workforce of skilled clothing makers. Enrollment is climbing at the Korean Advanced Sewing Skills Academy (KASSA), where Kim gives special oneday appearances for which the sign-up lists far exceed the 20-seat limit. Since he wasn’t even able to attend middle school properly, Kim feels both embarrassed and elated when addressed as “teacher.”

“When my son was a boy, he said he wanted to become a clothing maker, too, but I was totally against it. Even then, the wages were still low and there was no social recognition. If we were having the same conversation today, I’d encourage him, but back then it didn’t look like there was any future in it. My son works at an IT company now and he grumbles about it from time to time. If he ever mentioned getting into clothes making again, I’d do my best to teach him.”

Kim was born in 1962 in Goheung,

South Jeolla Province, the sixth child in a rural family of four sons and four daughters. The family relocated to Seoul and when Kim reached middle school age, his father secured an apprenticeship for him at a tailor shop. He received room and board at the shop but no wages.

Those were the years of industrialization at breakneck speed, which often forced Kim to work until midnight or even overnight before staggering to school in the morning. Remembering his father’s advice that a skill would be the only way for him to live well, he stayed on, resisting constant urges to quit.

Career Transitions

Kim didn’t attend an ordinary government-approved school. To be recognized as a middle school graduate, he had to pass a national exam, but he failed twice, victimized by work demands that had consumed most of his study time. Fortunately, finding a job was much easier. He embarked on a series of stints at tailor shops, honing his skills. But in the 1980s, the garment industry, which had helped propel Korea’s rapid economic growth, changed course.

“As off-the-rack clothes became more common, made-to-order suits lost popularity. I’d worked so hard to build up my tailoring skills, but there was no work. I had no choice but to get a job at a women’s ready-to-wear manufacturer.”

In the course of over a decade working for that company, he fell in love with and married one of his co-workers. His wife still works at the company where they met all those years ago.

Kim later ran his own womenswear factory, partnering with a former boss. But they went bankrupt amidst the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Next, they launched a brand together and opened nearly 50 stores nationwide. Eventually, rising labor costs forced them to move their business to China, where Kim steered manufacturing operations. After seven years in Weihai, Shandong Province, labor costs again became a thorny problem.

“We had around 180 employees and naturally, they expected

“ In order to really perfect your skills, you should be someone who thinks, ‘This is my line of work, this is all I want to do.’”

74 KOREANA Spring 2020

their wages to go up as they became more experienced. The workers would go on strike, demanding higher pay, but our boss in Korea wouldn’t give them a raise and I just couldn’t take it. In the end, I left the company.”

Kim had been studying Chinese after work for three years at Shandong University, so he was able to move to Dandong after leaving his company. There he worked with an ethnic Chinese from North Korea, supplying clothing made in Pyongyang to South Korea. But even that work abruptly ended as inter-Korean political tensions sidelined economic relations. Kim had no choice then but to return to South Korea and work in another womenswear business, where he stayed for five years.

Now, as a freelancer, Kim enjoys the freedom of accepting or declining requests – and he knows there is work. “In this line of work there’s no retirement age, so I can

keep going for as long as I want. I know other clothing makers in their 70s and 80s who are still going strong.”

Happy Freelancer

In his free time, Kim reads books. He has read the teachings of Confucius and Lao Tzu and books on history and economics, but his favorites are Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” by Luo Guanzhong, which he has read more than 10 times. There’s an old adage that you shouldn’t befriend anyone who has never read “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” you shouldn’t argue with anyone who has read it more than three times, and you shouldn’t even go near someone who has read it more than 10 times. But Kim says that the relationships between the various types of people and the strategies and tactics for winning a battle depicted in the book never stop being interesting.

When he was learning tailoring as a teenager, Kim didn’t have any dreams for his future, but he does now.

“I’d like to cut down on work, go on holidays with my family and read books and learn new things. When I lived in China, I traveled all over, visiting places like Mount Tai and Mount Paektu, but there are still so many places I’d love to see.”

These days, Kim mainly works on commission for fashion designers who need prototypes of their latest creations.

The nimble and precise movements of his hands bring designers’ ideas to life.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 75

BOOKS

& MORE Charles La Shure

Professor, Department of Korean Language and Literature, Seoul National University

76 KOREANA Spring 2020

A Story for a Little Spare Time ‘Milena, Milena, Ecstatic’

By Bae Suah, Translated by Deborah Smith, 36 pages, £6.99, Norwich: Strangers Press [2019]

“Milena, Milena, Ecstatic” is a short story by Bae Suah, an author who has had significant exposure in the English-speaking world in recent years thanks to the efforts of translator Deborah Smith. This latest work is published in chapbook form as part of the Yeoyu Series from Strangers Press. Yeoyu is a somewhat difficult-to-translate Korean word that can mean “leisure” or “ease,” or can refer to anything of which one might have plenty to spare. The moniker seems appropriate as the story can be read in a bit of spare time, though a thoughtful reader may also wish to ponder and even revisit it.

We are introduced to the protagonist, Hom Yun, as he is in the process of making his typical breakfast, and one characteristic stands out immediately: Hom is a creature of habit. As with all aspects of personality, there are two sides to this. On the one hand, this is a character trait of one who finds comfort in the familiar and the routine, who perhaps shuns new and strange experiences. Taken to the extreme, such an individual might even be called boring. On the other hand, though, such a person may be steadfast, strong-willed and disciplined. Rarely, of course, is one exclusive of the other, and so it is with Hom. We learn more about Hom as the story goes on, such as the fact that he likes to read. But he is a particular type of reader, dipping into the various books he keeps in different locations around his house, leaping lightly from one to another at various times – the trait of one not hidebound to routine, but open to a variety of experiences. And yet there is still order here, as he prefers to read certain types of books in certain locations, such as books of plays when he visits a café for his usual drink, an espresso.

Into this eclectic yet well-ordered life, Bae injects the occasional element of randomness, such as the silver horse without a rider that Hom encounters during his morning jog, or the mysterious book he finds as he reaches for something to read while relaxing in a lukewarm bath, a book of which he has no knowledge or recollection – and from which part the story’s title is drawn: “Letters to Milena.” It is when Hom begins to interact with others, though, that the story deepens. For the first quarter of the story, we see only the world through Hom’s eyes, but when we begin to see Hom through the world’s eyes, it is almost as if we are seeing a different person. In the latter half of the work, we find Hom at the edge of a great journey, and after a seemingly chance encounter he is faced with a choice. Which door will he step through? If you are looking for something to read in those spare moments when you have a little bit of “yeoyu,” this is a story that might be just right for filling that space.

Verse of Healing from an Abandoned Princess ‘Bari’s Love Song’

By Kang Eun-Gyo, Translated by Chung Eun-Gwi, 74 pages, $14.00, South Carolina: Parlor Press [2019]

This collection of poetry by Kang Eungyo references in its title a famous figure from Korean folklore and shamanism, Bari Gongju, the abandoned princess. Bari follows what at first appears to be a typical hero’s journey: she is abandoned by her parents, goes on a mystical adventure, and returns in heroic fashion. Yet Bari is abandoned not because she poses a threat but because she fails to be born as a male heir, and her heroic journey to the spirit world is undertaken to bring healing and life to the very parents who abandoned her. For this reason, she is cherished by shamans and her tale is sung as an important part of their rituals.

The connection between Kang’s poetry and shamanism, however, goes beyond the title of the book. Although this is not noted in the translation, a number of lines scattered throughout the poems have been pulled from or inspired by shamanic ritual songs. Unwrapping the

significance of this would take far more words than this review can spare, but suffice it to say that Korean shamanism, while naturally dealing with the meeting of the human, natural and spirit worlds, is first and foremost concerned with the practical human matters of healing pain, suffering and sorrow.

In the same way, Kang’s poetry is a verse of healing, tearing down distinctions and challenging expectations. Inanimate objects are personified and given new life; intangible things are endowed with physical, tangible forms. What might seem mundane and ordinary is made visceral and extraordinary. The poetry may seem inscrutable at times (and is unfortunately marred by the occasional awkward translation and a lack of thorough proofreading), but this should only encourage closer examination – both of the poetry and of ourselves. “Bari’s Love Song” is a tune that will linger for quite some time.

Wanna Know More Than Just K-Pop? ‘Indieful ROK’ indiefulrok.com

“Indieful ROK” (indiefulrok. com), now in its second incarnation, was originally founded in 2008 by Swedish music fan Anna (helikoppter) and orienkorean (who left the website later that year). Although Anna had been a fan of groups like H.O.T. and Turbo in the late 90s, in the 2000s she discovered that Korean music was much more than the seemingly ubiquitous K-pop, and that there was in fact a healthy Korean indie scene. In 2012 she took a two-year break to write for the website “koreanindie.com,” following which she launched “Indieful ROK.” Although the new version of the site is not as frequent-

ly updated as the original was, Anna and others still post about the goings on in the indie scene.

If you are looking to expand your knowledge of Korean pop music, this website is a good place to start. All of the old posts are still available in the archives, including interviews with musicians and other figures in the industry, commentaries on various television programs that feature indie music, and updates on music awards and competitions (including the latest posts on the 2020 Korean Music Awards). If your knowledge of Korean music is limited to K-pop, who knows – you just might learn about your next favorite artist or band here.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 77

ENTERTAINMENT

1 © Mineumsa

2 © Lotte Entertainment

Crossing the Gender Divide Given the explosion of the #MeToo movement in Korea, it was no big surprise that the novel “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” and its film adaptation were well received by certain audiences. But they also provoked unwelcome sentiments that permeate Korean society, the film industry included.

Lee Hyo-won Freelance Writer

T

he novel “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” gave a voice to Korea’s home-grown #MeToo movement in the autumn of 2016. Its dissection of how gender discrimination frustrates Korean women from birth to motherhood resonated across many demographics. At the same time, however, it also unleashed knee-jerk misogyny and criticism. Fast forward three years and the raw dichotomy of reactions remains no less rampant after screenings of the movie adaptation.

Despite anti-feminist backlash, the movie version of “Kim Ji-young” debuted as No. 1 at the Korean box office

78 KOREANA Spring 2020

in October 2019. This was unsurprising given the reception to the book, which had sold a million copies by late 2018.

That itself was a rare feat: Koreans are not known for being avid readers. And when the book wasn’t bought, it was borrowed; “Kim Ji-young” topped library want lists in 2018 and 2019, according to the National Library of Korea.

A Bestseller-Turned-Movie

It took television scriptwriter Cho Nam-joo just two months to write her bestseller. Her storyline chronicled sexism and gender issues – both implicit and explicit – that lurk

at home, school, work and in public areas. The book also became a bestseller in China, Japan and Taiwan, and publishing rights were sold to the United States and several European countries.

The lead character Ji-young (a popular female Korean name) does not lay waste to injustices like some Hollywood female protagonists did. She is a 30-something woman who quits her job to stay at home and raise her daughter. But growing increasingly tired of being glued to home, Ji-young recalls that she grew up with many dreams and was recently climbing the career ladder.

Ji-young’s recollections aren’t entirely rosy, though. As a child, her younger brother and male classmates received meals first because they were boys. She was blamed for “attracting” a stalker in her teens and was later victimized by a hidden camera installed in the restroom of her workplace by a sexual predator. One day, a passer-by nonchalantly derides her as she sips coffee on a park bench with her baby – for how she is “comfortably spending her husband’s money.”

Ji-young’s experiences reverberate strongly because she represents the average Korean daughter, mother, sister, wife and neighbor. She suffers indignation silently; to Ji-young and many other Ji-youngs throughout Korea, these abuses are simply part of life. The fact that her fate is common makes it so compelling. “Ji-young’s life isn’t much different than the one I’ve lived,” says Cho Nam-joo.

Common Frustrations

In the movie, Ji-young’s caring husband (Gong Yoo, who also starred as the protective father in the zombie movie “Train to Busan”) notices her increasingly depressive and irascible moods. He tries his best to support his wife as she finally realizes that she is emotionally unwell.

Korea largely remains governed by patriarchal social norms. The World Economic Forum ranked the country 108th out of 153 countries in its 2020 global gender gap index (with first place being the most gender equitable).

The 2013 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says

1. The cover page of the novel “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-joo, published in 2016 by Mineumsa. Part of a series of excellent works by young writers, the novel became a bestseller, sparking heated debates about feminism. Translated into many languages, the novel also attracted international attention.

2. Scenes from the namesake movie released in October 2019, the first feature film by female director Kim Do-young. Announcement of the cinematic adaptation reignited fervent discussion about gender issues.

Korea has one of the highest ratios of female vs. male homicide victims at 52.5 percent.

But even before the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements erupted in the United States amid sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, Korea began to see unprecedented feminist protests of its own. Months before the release of the book version of “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982,” a young woman was murdered by a stranger at a karaoke salon near Gangnam subway station.

During his trial, the defendant indicated that his motivation stemmed from being ignored by women. Citizens decorated the subway station with tens of thousands of yellow post-it notes in response to the misogynistic crime.

Overdue Exposure

A film tackling gender issues has long been overdue in mainstream Korean cinema. If this was because movie executives were fearful of negativity, their worries were not misplaced; Jung Yu-mi, upon being cast in the role of Ji-young, received a slew of hate comments via social media. A petition circulated to stop the film and web portals were bombed with bad ratings for the movie even before it was released.

Critics of the book and the film claim the narrative offers a distorted, over-generalized and sexist view of men, and that it serves to stoke gender conflict. Some even assert that the film is a female fantasy and the protagonist an egocentric, self-pitying person.

Still, the movie’s effects can already be felt, due in no small part to the fact that Korea is one of the countries with the biggest movie-going populations in the world. The media have been quoting “Kim Ji-young” in stories about the gender gap in employment rates and how it spikes from 2 percent to 28 percent after marriage. In December 2019, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced plans to support women who re-enter the workforce after taking time off for childbirth and childrearing. Many journalists attributed the steps to “the Kim Ji-young effect.”

It is also noteworthy that the movie version of “Kim Ji-young” itself was helmed by actress-filmmaker Kim Do-young. Like Hollywood, the Korean film industry is far from achieving gender equality behind the camera. Kim is among the few women who have been given the chance to direct a major studio movie in the country. In fact, the participation rate of women in the Korean film industry only surpassed 10 percent for the first time in 2018, according to the Korean Film Council. It is hoped that “the Kim Ji-young effect” will also help change this deep-seated tendency.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 79

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

Namul

Versatile Greens Loved by Koreans Varied greens called namul are the most traditional food consumed

by Koreans on a daily basis. Recently, namul has attracted international attention thanks to the active introduction of Korean temple food, which is largely based on edible greens. In keeping with the growing vegan trend, high-class restaurants are creating dishes prominently featuring these greens.

Jeong Jae-hoon Pharmacist and Food Writer

1 Š gettyimages

80 KOREANA Spring 2020

L

i ke G e r m a ny ’s s a u e r k r a u t a n d England’s fish and chips, each country has its own iconic foods. But these foods can be subjective; say, for example, someone can only think of tacos in association with Mexico. Of course, that doesn’t mean tacos are the only quintessentially Mexican food. Instead, it means that person doesn’t know much about what Mexicans actually eat.

Choosing a couple of dishes that represent a country’s culinary tradition spanning centuries is difficult. But if someone names namul as Korea’s representative dish, that person probably knows quite a lot about Korean cuisine.

2 © Yonhap News Agency

The Essence of Korean Cuisine

The word “namul” itself is complex in meaning and usage. The Standard Korean Language Dictionary published by the National Institute of the Korean Language lists two meanings.

First, namul comprises “all edible plants and leaves,” with fernbrake (gosari), bellflower root (doraji), fatsia shoots (dureup) and shepherd’s purse (naeng-i) given as examples. Second, namul is “a dish of edible plants or leaves which are boiled, stir-fried or raw, and seasoned.”

The first definition identifies namul as an ingredient and the second as a prepared dish.

As an ingredient, however, namul encompasses more than the plants and leaves mentioned in the dictionary, going as far as to include any vegetable that is prepared in the way of a namul dish. Potatoes or eggplants are considered namul if cut into strips and stir-fried or boiled, and then seasoned with salt or soy sauce, among other condiments. Zucchini and

1. Fatsia shoots, shepherd’s purse and wild chives (from upper left), Koreans’ favorite spring greens, sprout early in the mountains and fields. With their savory taste and aroma, the wild greens help to restore the appetite after the long winter.

2. Merchants sell various greens in baskets, a common scene at traditional markets in spring. More than 300 kinds of edible wild greens can be found in Korea. Most spring greens are rich in Vitamin C and minerals.

radish can also be eaten as namul if prepared in a similar fashion.

On the other hand, both definitions apply to bean sprouts (kongnamul) and mung bean sprouts (sukjunamul). As ingredients, they are sprouts grown in a pot with drainage holes on the bottom (often in a rice cake steamer), and they are also dishes if boiled and seasoned.

Seasonal Food

As seen above, namul is a food with complex linguistic implications.

Additional knowledge is required, though, to fully understand its lexical definition as “edible plants and leaves.”

First, we need to distinguish between the edible and the inedible.

We often hear news of people fighting for their lives after eating poisonous shoots. As namul is a seasonal food, the time at which it is gathered is important. It is largely a spring food precisely because many of these plants can only be eaten as shoots. As they grow, they become tough and hard and are no longer edible. Of course, not all young shoots can be eaten, and in many cases, poison has to be removed first. Wild chives (dallae), stringy stonecrop (dolnamul), short-fruit pimpinella (chamnamul) and wild aster (chwinamul) have no toxins and can be eaten raw; but fernbrake and daylily (wonchuri) have to be boiled before consumption.

A popular ornamental plant, daylilies give off young shoots in early spring that have a sweet and savory taste. However, these shoots contain colchicine, which is used as medicine due to its anti-inflammatory properties. It relieves symptoms of acute gout and recent research suggests it is also effective in lowering the danger of cardiovascular disorders after a heart attack. But to make daylily shoots suitable for a namul dish, the colchicine has to be removed, or it can lead to vomiting, stomachaches and diarrhea. As colchicine is water soluble, the shoots should be parboiled and left in cold water long enough for the toxin to drain

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 81

out. As the plant grows, its colchicine content increases, so only young spring shoots can be eaten.

Edible plants that grow wild in the mountains and fields are called san namul (literally “mountain greens”) and more than 300 kinds can be found in Korea. Among them, wild aster alone has some 60 varieties, 24 of which are edible. Therefore, to safely enjoy the range of greens available, a fair amount of knowledge is needed on when to gather and how to prepare them.

Some wild greens can only be tasted in certain regions. Like Kamchatka goat’s beard (samnamul) and Amur wallflower (bujiggaeng-i) which grow on Ulleung Island, some forest plants have been designated under a geographical indication system.

Cooked in Various Ways

There are many ways of preparing namul dishes: parboiling and then soaking in cold water to get rid of the bitterness, stir-frying, leaving for long periods to ripen, seasoning with soy sauce or with soybean paste, adding perilla oil or sesame oil, sprinkling ground and salted sesame seeds or perilla seed powder, or adding a pinch of red chili powder. Depending on the method chosen, the taste and aroma can be as varied as the flowers and plants in the fields.

Wild aster has the scent of unripe apples when eaten raw, but a bitter yet savory taste when parboiled and seasoned. Beach silvertop (bangpung), despite its underlying bitterness similar to wild aster, also has a distinctive flavor, like a mixture of tangerine peel and mint.

As for wild chives and shepherd’s purse, the best-known spring greens in Korea, their subtle taste and aroma are hard to describe.

Rachel Herz, a cognitive neuroscientist known for her work on the psychology of smell, points out in her book “The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell” that there are far fewer words used solely for describing olfactory experiences than for any other sensory perception. To be sure, after eating wild chives and shepherd’s purse, you’ll find yourself floundering for words that

82 KOREANA Spring 2020

1 © gettyimages

A spoonful of soup made with shepherd’s purse and soybean paste tricks me into thinking that I’m standing in a field, smelling the wet soil of an early morning on a day between winter and spring.

1. Shepherd’s purse is eaten in soybean paste soup or as a side dish prepared by parboiling and seasoning with soybean paste, red pepper paste, chopped garlic and green onion, sesame seeds, and sesame oil.

2. Young fatsia shoots gathered in spring are usually parboiled and eaten with a sauce made of red pepper paste, vinegar and sugar.

3. With bibimbap, various kinds of greens can be enjoyed all at once. Rice and assorted greens, topped with a fried egg and beef garnish, are all mixed together with red pepper paste and sesame oil before eating.

exactly describe their scent.

Like garlic, wild chives have a pungent taste due to their allicin content, but unlike garlic, they have a refreshing sweetness. Shepherd’s purse, as a member of the mustard family, also has the strong aroma unique to sulfur compounds. But none of this is truly enough for a proper description. A spoonful of soup made with shepherd’s purse and soybean paste tricks me into thinking that I’m standing in a field, smelling the wet soil of an early morning on a day between winter and spring. And of course, tasting wild chives and shepherd’s purse for yourself is a hundred times better than talking about it.

2

Aroma of Early Spring

As enjoyable as it is to savor different kinds of namul separately and compare their aromas, another wonderful way to eat them is to mix them with rice, a little red pepper paste (gochujang) and sesame oil, topped with a fried egg.

The resulting dish is bibimbap, easily made at home by mixing rice with any namul side dishes already in the fridge. Along with gukbap, the generic name for a variety of dishes consisting of rice in hot soup, bibimbap is one of the oldest dishes served at Korean restaurants. The sweet and spicy flavor of red pepper paste nicely orchestrates the different beats and textures of various greens to bring out new variations in taste.

Some might not like the way bibimbap mixes so many flavors together, but anyone

3

who is knowledgeable about namul will find that this is not a hard concept to accept. And with its mixture of various greens, bibimbap is the essence of Korean food and its philosophy of embracing diversity.

In recent years, namul has tended to be seen in new ways, with corporate-level research being carried out on the flavors of the most popular spring greens enjoyed by Koreans and their methods of preparation.

And as more high-class restaurants try to develop new dishes incorporating fresh wild greens, namul is obviously moving on from being the most traditional to the most innovative Korean food.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 83

LIFESTYLE

1

From Back Alleys, Toys for Us Sex shops are leaving dark back alleys for the main byways of shopping areas.

Nicely designed and user friendly, they are driven by the younger generations who are at ease discussing sex openly.

Baek Young-ok Novelist Heo Dong-wuk Photographer

84 KOREANA Spring 2020

I

t was neither Paris nor London but Amsterdam that left the strongest impression on me during my backpacking tour of Europe in 1995. In school, I had learned that the Netherlands was a country of tulips and windmills, and that’s what I had expected. But huge dildos hanging from the ceiling and porn magazines caught my eye near Amsterdam Central Station.

I’d never imagined that I would see sex toys displayed so blatantly. And that was only the beginning. Walking along Amsterdam’s canals, I encountered blondes wearing heavy makeup, long eyelashes and stiletto heels. Coming closer, I saw they were brawny men. At the time, I was so shocked that I considered the city an inferno out of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and decided never to visit it again.

Today, if I change my mind about this paraphernalia, I don’t need to go all the way to Europe. There’s a sex shop on the second floor of a building near my studio.

Seen from the outside, it could be mistaken for a cosmetics boutique or even a grocery store. And it isn’t unique at all. There are sex shops near Hongik University subway station, which has the most pedestrian traffic in Seoul, as well as in upscale areas near Gangnam subway station and in the Garosugil neighborhood south of the Han River.

My curiosity piqued, I surveyed some young people in their 20s who work for a broadcasting program that I host. One said young adults’ attitude toward sexual matters is “very liberal” and described how both men and women alike use social media to display pictures of their body and of themselves hugging and kissing their part-

ners. Posting images of one’s butt is the latest craze to attract attention, the staffer said.

Hands-On Experiences

Abundant videos featuring the interior of sex shops can be found online, a substitute for on-site visits. But I wanted to see all of this in person.

I found that IDs are checked when entering and surveillance cameras are set up to prevent sex-related offenses. Otherwise, there’s a conscious effort to remove any unease and to create a shopping experience comparable to that of any other retail store.

Most sex shops have themed showrooms for hands-on experiences, like Do-It-Yourself stores. Some also have a photo zone for customers who want to take selfies and post pictures of themselves with comments about their purchases.

I went to a four-story sex shop that looked like it could be a furniture outlet’s twin. There I glimpsed a delightful side of the younger generation who are looking forward to an imaginative sex life. This means that in our society, quite a new space has been created in which a vivacious attitude has replaced the notion that sex is lewd.

It’s certainly healthy for young couples to explore this space, discussing their sexual preferences with their partners and checking out sex toys for themselves.

Holding a dildo like a microphone, a curator joined sales clerks in explaining products.

Curator: “This fragrant candle melts at a low temperature, at about 40 degrees Celsius, so it’s not too hot. You

2

1. The can’t-miss exterior of a sex shop beckons shoppers at the entrance of Yeonnam-dong, Seoul.

Its location and appearance sharply differ from older sex shops hidden down alleyways with their curtains drawn.

2. This shop resembles a cosmetics shop as goods of a wide variety are on neat display under bright ambient lighting.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 85

1

can rub your partner’s body with drops of wax.”

Customer: “Oh my goodness! Won’t the wax harden on your body, though?”

Curator: “Many customers enjoy it inwardly. It’s a popular product.”

The curator also explained condoms: Asia produces many super-thin condom brands. Polyurethane condoms, invented to remedy the shortcomings of latex versions, are safe and can help increase your sexual pleasure. Never have sex without a condom.

Among the other products, I was surprised to see that customers could test out all kinds of gels and then wash up with a cleanser. I also hadn’t anticipated finding organic condoms free of any preservatives like parabens, or organic gels made from natural ingredients.

Whips, handcuffs and skimpy outfits hanging in the corner in dim lights looked interesting, far less bizarre than I had expected. One tool for playful hitting was designed to leave a love mark. Many couples giggled and shouted, “It’s a real heart shape!” after tapping their partner’s arm or leg.

On social media, there’s a large volume of customer comments about these sex shops and their products. The sites also sell a variety of adult board games which are

86 KOREANA Spring 2020

played using cards and pairs of dice. Curiously enough, these bawdy game kits glow in the dark. Just turn off the lights and play.

Overestimates, Or Lies

In their 2007 book, “Schattenliebe: Nie mehr Zweite(r) sein” (“Love of Shadows: Never Be Second Again,” or simply, “The Psychology of Adultery”), Austrian psychologists Gerti Senger and Walter Hoffmann point out that though many people don’t want to admit it, browsing online sex sites is like roaming about one’s subconscious.

While people might be otherwise unaware, the internet exposes what motivates their life.

It’s true, isn’t it? While sex shops have come out of the shadows, sex sites have largely stayed below the surface. What one shows off publicly with vivacity or hides and covers up as lewd is deeply related to the subconscious, which means that all that is seen is not necessarily true.

For instance, married couples seem to exaggerate their physical relationship, including the frequency with which they have sex. Trends in Google data suggest that the most common complaint about married life is a lack of sex. “Sexless marriage” is searched for 3.5 times more

Who knows whether pheromone perfumes or serotonin pills will become essential items to be carried in a makeup pouch?

1. Young customers view goods in a franchise sex shop in Sinchon, Seoul. Unlike in the past when most customers arrived alone and bought goods sheepishly, these days young couples and friends visit sex shops for fun and buy goods without hesitation after trying samples.

2. Designed like fancy goods, many sex products are created in collaboration with typography artists or character designers to attract customers as collectibles.

frequently than “unhappy marriage” and eight times more frequently than “loveless marriage.”

In his book “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” (2018), Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a world-famous American data scientist, says that we tend to overstate how often we have sex. This notwithstanding, younger generations prefer to get out of the bed to enter the world of social media, where they can post sexy images and video clips. This is perhaps because they have a different attitude towards privacy than older generations.

Into the Future

A few years ago, I was having dinner with several young people when the topic turned to Brazilian waxes. They told me that this trend was sparked by the younger generation’s sexual propensity. One participant, who had lived overseas for a long time, said that not a few Americans and Europeans believe that it’s polite for both men and women to remove body hair. It seems that we’re living in a new world with a new perception of cleanliness. If you feel as if you’re naked when you go out without a pedicure in the summer, you’ve experienced a similar legacy of civilization.

2

There’s widespread speculation that should virtual reality become popularized, money will be funneled into the porn industry. This could also happen in Korea, where an uproar erupted last June in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow sex dolls to be imported.

It isn’t easy to predict what the future of sex will look like. Who knows whether pheromone perfumes or serotonin pills will become essential items to be carried in a makeup pouch? The day will probably come when middle-aged couples can go to the drugstore and easily buy prescribed kisspeptin brain hormone, much of which is normally produced during puberty when the human desire for sex peaks.

Since the period of Greek and Roman myth, wine has been regarded as an elixir of love. In 1998, Viagra replaced wine as the elixir for many impotent men, liberating them from sexual frustration and anxiety. Deductively speaking, what comes next could be the development of “mental” or “cerebral” Viagra. Of course, in today’s world where predictions can hardly keep pace with the times, this might not come to pass. But then again, it could. After all, I’d been firmly resolved not to visit Amsterdam again. But I’ve been there several times since, and have fallen in love each time.

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 87

JOURNEYS IN KOREAN LITERATURE

CRITIQUE

Between ‘This Side’ and ‘That Side’ of the World In his short story “Who Killed the Cat,” from his 2019 collection of the same title (and his first publication after a five-year hiatus), Youn Dae-nyeong has embedded something of a social message largely missing from his earlier works. This seems to be a sign that he is moving one step beyond the existential preoccupations and poetic prose that have characterized his work since his literary debut.

Choi Jae-bong Reporter, The Hankyoreh

Y

oun Dae-nyeong made his literary debut in 1990 when he received the Best New Writer award from the monthly “Literature and Thought” (Munhak Sasang) for his short story “My Mother’s Forest.” The ensuing publication of his collection “Sweetfish Fishing Reports” in 1994 established him as one of the country’s most important writers of the decade.

Recognized as the author who best captured the sensibility of the 1990s, Youn writes short fiction that often takes the form of a travel or love story. Yet, the traveling and dating in these stories do not stay confined to the realm of simply moving between spaces or through emotions. Most of his early works – which tend to be narrated in the first person by male protagonists in their early to mid-thirties – can be seen as fairly conventional explorations of self in the form of philosophical and existential adventures.

According to one character from “Sweetfish Fishing Reports,” the world can be divided into “this side” and “that side.” And indeed, the protagonists of these stories are located squarely on “this side” until they encounter situations that have them crossing over to “that side,” which we have forgotten, or lost, engrossed as we are in the repetitive tedium of our daily lives. The passage below, from Youn’s novella “The Very Far Place of Our Memory” (1996), describes these early

88 KOREANA Spring 2020

© Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.

themes with a sense of beauty and mystery: “It’s true, sometimes, when you look into a dusty mirror, you end up seeing a familiar face floating quietly, like the moon in daylight. On the other side of a memory, where you can’t go anymore; or maybe the other side of some recollection. It’s true, every one of us comes from that old landscape, that memory. And every now and then we hear the faint sound, the call coming from within it.”

Meanwhile, these early works are also notable for their naming – that is, their use of specific and real song titles, consumer products, streets and buildings in the city. This must be understood as scaffolding, of a sort, to support these stories’ overall tendency toward philosophizing and abstraction. Youn’s protagonists long for a deep and mythic bygone age, even as they are captivated by the urban consumerist civilization in which they find themselves.

As writers age, their fictional worlds change

naturally, and perhaps, in certain cases, unavoidably. Youn Dae-nyeong has proved to be no exception to this rule, for as he progressed from the relative youth of his thirties into his forties, the tendencies of the works he produced grew markedly different. This difference was most apparent in “Raising the Swallow,” published in 2007. The eight short and mid-length pieces in this collection explored the ways time can move over different spans, ranging from just a few years, on the shorter end, to multiple decades, on the longer, and how one’s fate can change as a consequence.

In the title story, “Raising the Swallow,” the narrator’s mother leaves home every winter to “follow the swallows to the warm, southern land.” In earlier works, such maternal abandonment would no doubt have become an opportunity for adventure, in the form of a search for existential meaning. Yet this mother declares: “A woman is like a bird of passage, coming and going across an eternal land.” So, rather than a permanent return to some point of existential origin, never to be seen again, what we have here is a “coming and going” between this side and that. The essential and insurmountable rupture between this side and that side of the world, which was so emphasized in the author’s early works, no longer exists.

What is more, this story does not concentrate so much on the character of the mother, but pays attention to the father and the narrator, both of whom suffer because of the mother. While loneliness and longing continue to underlie Youn’s works, there has been a clear shift in focus from the protagonist to a narrative that builds in the relationship between characters. Where the writer’s earlier works tended to take single men as their protagonists, the main characters of these stories appear in the capacity of parents, children,

couples, or lovers.

If we were to say that in his earlier works Youn Dae-nyeong displayed competence for capturing everyday moments of the transcendent and arcane, the weight of these later works falls on the continuation and accumulation of that same mundanity. It may be that the scope of the writer’s vision has grown that much wider – or, to put it another way, that there has been a shift here from a poetic to a more prosaic approach.

On the surface, Youn’s most recent collection, “Who Killed the Cat” from Moonji Publishing, may appear to be similar to many of his previous travel stories, but its actual subject is fundamentally different.

In the Author’s Note, Youn confesses: “On April 16, 2014, I experienced the ‘death of my writer self,’ and for a long time after that I was gripped by the foreboding that I would never again be able to write.”

Here, we see the dark shadow cast by the tragic incident of spring 2014, namely the calamitous sinking of the Sewol ferry, when the lives of hundreds of high school students on a school trip were lost in a manner that can only be described as preposterous. This collection of stories can be seen as the fruit of a long and solitary struggle on the part of the author to resurrect himself once more as a writer, “written one line at a time, night after night, like casting single threads of a spider web.”

The protagonist of “Between Seoul and North America,” a psychiatrist in his fifties, lost his only daughter to an accident four years earlier; in bearing witness to the Sewol ferry disaster, he ultimately reaches the conclusion that these events are the responsibility of his own generation. In the story “Gun,” the author gives us a son who aims a gun at his own father, a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist who had, time and again, physically abused his family members.

The title story of this collection, “Who Killed the Cat,” engages directly with questions of feminism, which we could arguably call one of the most intense issues to take hold of Korean society in the late 2010s. The story centers around two women, Hui-sook, a real estate agent, and her client, Seong-hui, both of whom are suffering at the hands of the men in their lives, be it a father or a husband, and barely getting by.

As Seong-hui nurses Hui-sook back to health for several days after she is beaten by her husband, they form a sisterly bond, as two women suffering from violence and exploitation. Where, exactly, is the world that these women might look toward together? This is the closing question the author poses to the reader.

Youn Dae-nyeong : “ On April 16, 2014, I experienced the ‘death of my writer self,’ and for a long time after that I was gripped by the foreboding that I would never again be able to write.”

KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 89

Subscription/Purchase Information

How to Subscribe Subscription Rates

Fill in the subscription form on the website (www.koreana.or.kr > Subscribe) and click “Send� button.

You will receive an invoice with payment information via e-mail.

Postal Address

Annual Subscription(airmail delivery included)

Back Issues*(per copy)

Korea

1 year

25,000 won

6,000 won

2 years

50,000 won

3 years

75,000 won

1 year

US$45

2 years

US$81

3 years

US$108

1 year

US$50

2 years

US$90

3 years

US$120

1 year

US$55

2 years

US$99

3 years

US$132

1 year

US$60

2 years

US$108

3 years

US$144

East Asia 1

Southeast Asia

2

Europe and N. America

Africa and S. America

4

3

US$9

* For back issues, additional charge for airmail delivery 1 East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, and Taiwan) 2 Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) and Mongolia 3 Europe (including Russia and CIS), Middle East, North America, Oceania, and South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) 4 Africa, South/Central America (including West Indies), and South Pacific Islands

Join Our Mailing List

Be the first to know when the new issue comes out; sign up for the Koreana web magazine notification e-mails by sending us your name and e-mail address at koreana@kf.or.kr. * In addition to the web magazine, the contents of Koreana are available via e-book service for mobile devices (Apple i-books, Google Books, and Amazon).

Reader Feedback

We need your feedback to improve the quality of Koreana . E-mail us any comments or suggestions at koreana@kf.or.kr.

A JournAl of the eAst AsiA foundAtion

We Help Asia Speak to the World and the World Speak to Asia.

In our latest issue:

Out of Breath: Tackling Asia’s Air Crisis

Learn more and subscribe to our print or online editions at

www.globalasia.org

cleaning up asia’s dirty air: essays By

Matthew Shapiro; Nick Middleton; Jiang Kejun; Tae Yong Jung; Aseem Prakash & Kuki Soejachmoen the deBate: us influence in southeast asia

Is Washington losing its way in the region?

Mark Valenciea squares off against Satu Limaye in focus: indonesian president joko widodo

Ben Bland and Kevin O’Rourke examine the implication of his recent re-election for Indonesia’s reform efforts

plus

rory Metcalf Mapping a multipolar future: The contest for the Indo-Pacific will involve rivalries of all sizes Van jackson How America is losing both Koreas Mohammad reza dehshiri & hossein shahmoradi The EU’s important role in Korean Peninsula stability rajaram panda Why India has opted out of RCEP peter hayes Building on Baekdudaegan: Peacemaking in Northeast Asia through ecological restoration Book reviews A look at 16 new titles relevant to Asia

us$15.00 w15,000 a journal of the east asia foundation | www.gloBalasia.org | VoluMe 14, nuMBer 4, deceMBer 2019

Out of Breath Tackling Asia’s Air Crisis

News, archives and analysis at www.globalasia.org

Have you tried our Magster digital edition?

Read on any device. Issues just $5.99 each or $19.99 per year. Download Magzter’s free app or go to www.magzter.com

“If you want to know a country, read its writers.”

Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love (2011)

READ KLN, READ KOREA Reading a country’s literature is one of the best ways to gain insight into its culture, values and perceptions. Korean Literature Now is the world’s only English-language quarterly that brings you the best of Korean fiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, essays, and more. Become better acquainted with Korea and its literature through KLN.

@KoreanLitNow Inquiries: koreanlitnow@klti.or.kr

www.KoreanLiteratureNow.com