In a world of increasing mechanization, automation and synthesis, Korean handicraft makers face ever-increasing challenges to their arts and their way of life. However, often with help from the government, artisans are not only keeping their crafts alive but even training a new, younger generation to carry them on in the decades to come. This is fortunate indeed, as the Korean craft tradition, with its deep reverence for nature, retains a distinct identity and style.

Also in this issue, we travel to lovely Daebudo Island on Korea’s west coast, talk with craft maker Gang Geumseong, learn about Korea’s blossoming coffee scene, and more.

_ Editorial staff, KOREA

Publisher Kim Kabsoo, Korean Culture and Information Service Executive Producer Park Byunggyu Editorial Advisers Cho Won-hyung, Lee Suwan, Park Inn-seok Email webmaster@korea.net Magazine Production Seoul Selection Editor-in-Chief Robert Koehler Production Supervisor Lee Jin-hyuk Producers Kim Eugene, Im Ian Copy Editors Gregory C. Eaves, Eileen Cahill Creative Director Lee Seung Ho Designers Lee Bok-hyun, Jung Hyun-young Photographers aostudio Kang jinju, RAUM Studio Printing Pyung Hwa Dang Printing Co., Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission from KOREA and the Korean Culture and Information Service. If you want to receive a free copy of KOREA or wish to cancel a subscription, please email us. A downloadable PDF of KOREA and a map and glossary with common Korean words appearing in our magazine are available by clicking on the thumbnail of KOREA at the website www.korea.net. Publication Registration No: 11-1110073-000016-06

Cover photo © Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation

Special Issue

People drink coffee at a café near Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Coffee Nation

Korea’s café scene reflects a people that takes its brew seriously

_ Written by Colin Marshall

What impresses people most when they first come to Seoul? The streets bustling with activity? The forests of high-rises, with more always under construction? The world-class transit system that can take them anywhere they want to go? They’ll notice all that and more, but not before they’ve marveled at all the coffee. On any block of any commercial area, and even many noncommercial areas, Seoul offers international coffee chains, national coffee chains and independent coffee shops, some of them specifically geared toward certain coffee-drinking habits or interests, and if any storefront stands vacant, some kind of coffee business will probably soon fill it.

One would expect such a coffee-oriented urban scene in Rome, Melbourne, Vienna, or any of the other well-known coffee cities of the West, but in Northeast Asia, where visitors expect to see locals drinking green tea, Seoul’s sheer concentration of coffee, with more than 15,000 shops on average only 50 meters apart, comes as a surprise. Even more surprisingly, most of the coffee shops now on its streets appeared within the past 15 years, a making for a quick transition to Korea’s current status as the country with the sixth-highest coffee consumption in the world, exceeding 400 cups per person each and every year. To observers of global coffee trends, Korea appears to have risen suddenly and out of nowhere.

From royal beverage to drink of the masses

First grown in Ethiopia, coffee came late to Korea, centuries after its arrival in Europe. Though millions of 21st-century Koreans can now proudly describe themselves with the Korean-English slang term “coffee-holic,” they all have but one ultimate predecessor: Gojong, from 1863 to 1907 the 26th king of Joseon. History records him as taking his first sip of coffee in 1896, during his time hiding at the Russian embassy after the Japanese assassination of his wife, Queen Min. There Antoinette Sontag, the Alsatian sister-in-law of the Russian consul general, offered him a cup.

The Sontag Hotel was home to Seoul’s first coffeehouse.

King Gojong was one of Korea’s first coffee aficionados.

In 1902, Gojong bestowed upon the woman who introduced him to coffee Seoul’s first European-style lodging, naming it the Sontag Hotel. Its guests would include Winston Churchill and Mark Twain, and inside it Sontag opened Korea’s very first coffee shop. It was the prototype of what Koreans would come to know as the dabang, the first modern example of which opened for business in Myeongdong in 1927. They continued to proliferate throughout the time of the Japanese occupation, which imported Japan’s established style of coffeehouses. Coffee, and even more so the kinds of Westernized establishments selling it, became immensely popular among politicians, businessmen, aristocrats, artists, intellectuals, and others from internationally minded strata of Korean society.

Seoul’s Hakrim Coffee Shop is a historic coffeehouse founded in 1956.

With its atmosphere of quiet privacy, early dabang soon became the venue of choice for political discussion, argument and rumor-spreading, and thus places on which those in power felt it necessary to keep an eye. As the decades passed, new types of dabang arose to cater to new clientele, such as the students and young couples who flocked to musical dabang to hear their favorite songs spun by the DJ at the turntable. Dabang had greatly diversified by the late 1980s, not just in theme and decor, but in menu. Some started serving espresso. Others took to not just brewing, but roasting beans on-site. Korean consumers took advantage of their fast-growing incomes to sample it all.

No matter how sophisticated the selection becomes, the “dabang coffee,” a cup of instant coffee sweetened with sugar and lightened with powdered creamer, has remained popular enough that it appears on many a coffee shop’s menu to this day. Syngman Rhee, the U.S.-educated first president of South Korea, once joked that while Westerners added sugar to coffee, his countrymen added coffee to sugar. U.S. troops introduced instant coffee to Korea during the Korean War, but its scarcity kept it a luxury item until the 1960s, when the Dongsuh Foods Company started producing it locally under license from Maxwell House. In 1976, the company developed the world’s first “mix coffee,” sold in those still-ubiquitous packets of instant coffee, cream and sugar whose drinkers need only tear open and stir into hot water.

Dongsuh’s Maxwell House Coffee Mix, introduced in 1976, played a major role in popularizing coffee in Korea.

Cafés everywhere

Starbucks changed everything when it arrived in Korea, as it had done when it first spread across America in the early 1990s. Its first Korean branch opened in 1999 in front of the Ewha Womans University campus, a savvy choice of location, given the eagerness modern young Korean women have shown to try out new trends in eating and drinking, especially those of foreign origin. Roughly 80 new locations per year have followed, making Seoul the most Starbucks-saturated city in the world, solidly beating out even Seattle, the company’s hometown. Yet Starbucks coffee shops only account for a fraction of Korea’s total.

Korean coffee drinkers can also enjoy their beverage of choice at book cafés, study cafés, comic book cafés, cat and dog cafés, music cafés, cafés modelled after other countries and cultures, and even cafés built in renovated private homes. Some cafés have drawn on the short history of coffee in Korea and revived the atmosphere of the dabang, a novelty to younger people. Korean publishers have had great success with guides, not just to the coffee shops of Seoul and other cities in Korea, but to those all over the world. Look in other sections of a Korean bookstore – or on the shelves of your favorite Korean café – and you’ll find books and magazines dedicated to the history of coffee, the workings of the coffee industry, and the art and science of coffee growing, roasting and brewing.

More than a few coffee shops offer education as well, from short classes for coffee drinkers looking to know more to complete barista-training programs. Young Koreans have increasingly sought careers in the coffee industry, and many dream of opening their own cafés – or of winning the World Barista Championship, which will take place in Seoul next year. This popularity owes much to “Coffee Prince,” the 2007 MBC TV soap opera about a layabout scion of a conglomerate family who buys a down-at-the-heels coffee shop and falls for one of his employees. The show quickly became an international sensation, and Seoulites and tourists alike can now patronize the very same coffee shop in which it was filmed.

Coffee Hanyakbang in Seoul (1, 3) and Busan’s Brown Hands Café (2) pull together good coffee and vintage surroundings.

‘Third places’

After all, coffee in Korea, as in most countries, is only as good as the place that serves it, the setting that provides a sanctuary from the pressures of school or the office. To a far greater extent than in the West, coffee shops have also become the gathering place of choice for friends and colleagues, the kind of social spaces that sociologist Ray Oldenburg terms “third places,” those that “host the regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.” As steadily as the diversity and quality of coffee here has increased over the past few decades, coffee shops themselves have displayed even more innovation, whether toward comfort, convenience or amusement.

A participant takes part in a barista contest hosted by Korean coffee chain Angel-in-us.

Overseas coffee experts filter “Korea Specialty Coffee” at the 13th Seoul Café Show.

Over the past century, Koreans have shown a serious enthusiasm for experimenting with all kinds of things Western and making them their own, and nowhere has this process played out more strikingly than in the country’s coffee shops. As with television dramas, movies and pop music, Korea has also begun to export its own versions of the coffee experience back to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world has embraced it. Visitors from other Asian countries fill their luggage with bulk-bought packets of Korean mix coffee, and branches of Korean coffee franchises have successfully made it as far as the United States.

One might well ask, in a county where not a day seems to go by without the opening of a new coffee shop or the invention of a new coffee drink, whether Korea could possibly accommodate another drop. Yet somehow, just like its postwar economy, its coffee-producing and coffee-consuming ecosystem has grown far beyond anyone’s expectations, all living, caffeinated proof of what every “coffee-holic,” Korean or otherwise, knows: you can never have too much of the stuff.

The Gangneung Coffee Festival celebrates the east coast city’s lauded coffee scene.

Pieces of history

In Seoul’s Daehangno district – the present-day theater district that was, until 1975, the site of Seoul National University - you can find a small piece of Korean coffee history. Located on the second floor of a nondescript building overlooking the main road is Hakrim Coffee Shop, one of Seoul’s oldest surviving dabang. The coffee shop has served as a worldly refuge for poets, lovers and revolutionaries since its founding in 1956. The space has managed to preserve a decidedly vintage feel, from its old wooden tables to the yellowing portraits of musicians, composers and conductors on the wall.

Cold brew coffee and other coffee paraphernalia are on display at Coffee D.N.A, a local coffee roastery.

Designated a “future heritage” site by the city of Seoul, the café is especially well known for its collection of classical music. On the front wall, near the register and under a delightfully vintage speaker, you can find a shelf full of old classical music records. In the old days, when dabang often doubled as cultural spaces, cafés would often specialize in a particular genre of music. Hakrim Coffee Shop is a throwback to that time.

In the years after the Korean War, Seoul’s Myeong-dong district was full of dabang that were popular with the nation’s artists and writers.

Mocha Dabang is a popup store in Seogwipo, Jeju, run by instant coffee brand Maxim.

In today’s Myeong-dong, one of the city’s busiest shopping districts, most of the dabang have closed in favor of Western-style coffee houses, such as Starbucks. The Wangsil Dabang, near the Chinese embassy, remains to give visitors a taste of the old Myeong-dong.

Behind the vintage entrance awaits a spartan space favored by the neighborhood’s elderly. Sit down for a cup of dabang coffee served with cream and sugar.

While not a coffee house per se, Deoksugung’s Jeonggwanheon Pavilion, build by a Russian architect at the turn of the 20th century as a coffee house for King Gojong, pays tribute to its past with regular coffee-related events, sponsored by Starbucks.

Monthly Coffee (left) is a magazine about coffee, while “All Things Coffee” (right) is a book covering all things coffee-related.

Cover Story

Keeping Tradition Alive

Old masters and young artisans bring Korea’s handicraft traditions to a new generation

_ Written by Elizabeth Black

__The country’s version of Confucianism emphasizes monastic levels of simplicity, and the materials used to create many of the country’s crafts lend them an earthy, naturalistic feel. Traditional aesthetics rely on an appreciation of an undiluted version of nature.

In November, some of the country’s finest artisans displayed their work at a three-day exhibition of traditional handicrafts made by practitioners of Korea’s Important Intangible Cultural Properties. The show was co-organized by the National Intangible Heritage Center and the Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation and took place at the KINTEX convention center in Ilsan-gu, Goyang, Gyeonggi-do. Visitors could also enjoy hands-on demonstrations to learn more about Korean traditional crafts.

Handicrafts all over the world have their roots in daily life, but in Korea, special efforts to preserve these crafts in the face of rapid industrialization have elevated them to the level of fine art. In the past, a Korean handicrafts practitioner would spend an entire lifetime mastering a diverse skill set to produce a single kind of item: baskets, decorative knots, bamboo screens, embroidery, pieces of metalwork. Furniture, quilts, hairpins, fans and pottery were made of natural materials and were used for a lifetime, or even handed down from generation to generation within families.

With the development of machinery and cheap synthetic materials, there was no longer any need to devote intensive labor to produce such household items. The traditional craft pieces became obsolete, supplanted by mass-produced items that could be tossed away after a few years.

While modernization had its upside – families with daughters no longer had to scrimp and save for years to provide furnishings for their daughters’ new homes upon marriage – the artisans who had worked their entire lives to master their arts were at a disadvantage. Korea’s craft traditions began to die off, as members of the younger generation sought more practical means of making a living.

The National Intangible Heritage Center and the Korea Cultural Heritage Foundation have worked to preserve these art forms, with practitioners handing down their crafts to assistants who study beneath them, just as masters would teach their crafts to apprentices in generations past. Now the items that would have once filled ordinary homes across the country are showcased in exhibitions and galleries, providing a unique window into Korea’s past, as well as the history and culture that still shape and influence its present.

The government has recognized traditional woodcutter Seo Byung-jin as an intangible cultural property.

Lee Jong-seong continues the Joseon-period craft of white porcelain.

Mother-of-pearl artisan Lee Hyung-man adds inlays to furniture.

Traces of nature

While Chinese handicrafts are defined by bold use of color and elaborate designs, and Japanese handicrafts tend toward a delicate and understated fineness, Korean traditional crafts draw from nature. The country’s tradition of Confucianism emphasizes monastic levels of simplicity, and the materials used to create many of the country’s crafts lend them an earthy, naturalistic feel. Traditional Korean aesthetics rely on an appreciation of an undiluted version of nature.

Baskets woven of sedge smell of autumn grasses, while quivers carved in bamboo retain the plant’s elegant silhouette. Cotton and hemp are woven by hand and dyed with the pulp of persimmon fruits. Hanji, traditional Korean paper, is made from the pulp of mulberry branches boiled in a natural lye made from plants like buckwheat or sesame and bonded by an adhesive made from aibika root. Kim Jong-dae, the last in a long line of traditional compass makers, uses a meteorite to magnetize his compass needles. The meteorite was handed down to him by his grandfather.

Beyond the materials used in the production of Korean handicrafts, traces of the country’s philosophy, religious traditions and culture can also be found in the patterns and designs that adorn them. Animals and plants are the most common motifs, representing various virtues and aspirations for wealth or a happy life. The lotus flower appears to signify the Buddhist ideal of rising above the muck of the world to bloom into beauty and perfection. Chrysanthemums represent elegance, and willows repel evil. Tigers signify dignity and courage, while ducks represent fidelity and a happy married life. Supernatural creatures like dragons and phoenixes evoke protection and nobility.

The 10 symbols of longevity – the sun, mountains, water, clouds, stones, pine trees, mushrooms of immortality, turtles, white cranes and deer – are another common theme depicted on handicrafts, including a silk screen made by Han Sang-soo, practitioner of embroidery. This theme reveals traces of Korea’s Taoist past, with the 10 symbols representing a Taoist utopia where eternal life is lived in harmony with others and with nature.

In addition to the understated, calming hues created by an abundance of natural dyes, the same symbolic colors that are found in traditional Korean architecture and clothing can also be found in the country’s handicrafts. Obangsaek, or the five cardinal colors – red, blue, yellow, white and black, which represent the four cardinal directions plus the center and the five elements (fire, wood, earth, metal and water) – are found on everything from embroidered silk to furniture inlaid with ox horn.

The skills of a master

Hanoks, traditional Korean houses, are noteworthy for the philosophy behind their design and construction, which holds that rather than redirecting the landscape to meet the needs of the home, the home should be built into the landscape, embracing nature rather than viewing it as an obstacle. In a similar sense, the household items that traditionally filled a Hanok were meant to retain some of the nature of the materials from which they were made. As a result, Korean handicrafts often appear roughly hewn and simplistic in comparison with craftwork from the rest of East Asia. The rustic aesthetic of Korean crafts is no small part of their charm, but their production is far from haphazard.

Yi Jae-man, a master of ox-horn inlaying, has had to acquire a number of skills to perfect his craft. He had to learn to select the perfect ox horn – a task said to be best done by nose – and thinly slice the horn, rolling it out over fire to make ox-horn paper. He has mastered the skills of a grade-A painter to create the intricate designs that are displayed on wooden furniture he builds himself. His metalworking skills are put to use on the knobs, locks and ornaments that adorn his furniture, which he also lacquers himself.

Hwang Su-ro, a master of silk flower making who recreated an enormous silk flower display that was used at a celebration for King Sunjo’s 30th year on the throne, started on her current path as a child, watching her mother fold flowers out of silk scraps. Her art involves fermenting natural dyes to the perfect state to achieve the flowers’ abundance of colors, as well as coating the finished flowers with beeswax to preserve their shape and give them a floral fragrance. She binds her silk with thread for months to produce the perfect petal-like texture for certain flowers.

Artisan Lee Jae-man (top) demonstrates the art of ox-horn inlaying (bottom).

From the home to the gallery

While handicrafts in Korea have always involved an element of aesthetic philosophy and fine craftsmanship, as the crafts shifted from household goods to exhibition items, the masters of the traditional crafts also began to consider the more artistic elements of their work. Competitions sprung up around the country, and the masters found themselves walking the fine line of maintaining and protecting tradition while finding their own artistic voices. The shift also opened the door for younger generations of craftspeople to push the boundaries of the expected, and art galleries have sprung up to showcase this kind of work.

Gallery Dandy, in the Insa-dong area of Seoul, showcases modernized versions of traditional crafts including gold dishes and vases, carpentry, glassware and ceramics. The updated designs of traditional items like teapots and serving trays transform them into household wares that would not look out of place in the pages of a trendy home living magazine or at an international design fair, while the traditional techniques lend them an air of elegance and refinement. The items in this gallery are meant to be taken home and used in daily life, just as the traditional handicrafts once were in homes across the country.

Located nearby is the Korean Craft & Design Foundation Gallery. A shop on the ground floor sells handicrafts created by Korea’s master craftspeople, stamped with UNESCO’s Seal of Excellence for Handicrafts, while the galleries upstairs showcase a variety of work, including that of Korean university students just starting out in their fields as well as artists who are reinterpreting the traditional crafts.

Hwang Sam-yong’s sculptures are inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

__ As the crafts shifted from household goods to exhibition items, masters of traditional crafts also began to consider the more artistic elements of their work.

Lee Bong-ju’s brass bowls are on display at La Triennale di Milano 2014.

Back to the beginning

While industrialization and sincere preservation efforts ultimately moved Korea’s traditional crafts out of the home and into galleries, attempts are now being made to bring the crafts and their techniques back into everyday modern life. One space where the crafts never fell out of use is in traditional Korean Hanoks, where the finely crafted furniture and house wares of the past are more fitting to the ambiance than modern, mass-produced items.

Lately it seems Koreans are growing weary of the rush into the future and are becoming more nostalgic for the Korea of the past. While an apartment in the city represented the ultimate foothold out of poverty for older generations of Koreans, who lived through a recent history fraught with economic hardship, younger people are more inclined to recognize the pitfalls of modern life. They yearn for a simpler time, for relief from the pressures of the thriving pulse of a booming modern capital.

Once viewed as artifacts of a past that was best left behind, the attitude toward Hanoks has shifted, too, with the revival of traditional handicrafts following close behind. With more and more Koreans returning to Hanoks to live, the country’s traditional crafts are moving out of the galleries and back to their birthplace, the intimate home.

Seoul’s Asian Mood is a shop that sells Korean traditional crafts and accessories.

From tradition to trend

Another place the traditional crafts are finding their own space in the modern age is in cafés. In the traditional tea shops that line the streets of Insadong and the more traditional neighborhoods north of the river in Seoul, they never fell out of use, but now, as more and more young people turn away from fast-paced industrialization and toward a more slow-living philosophy, the crafts are re-emerging in other places across the capital as well, including the more trendy neighborhoods south of the river.

At Sui 57 Atelier, a café in Bangbaebon-dong, visitors are treated to swanky coffee drinks like espresso with cream, and artistically plated Western desserts like macaroons and tiramisu, all served up on dishes made by hand using a traditional handicraft method. The number 57 is a play on words, as 57 in Korean sounds like otchil, the name of a traditional lacquering technique. Park Sui, the café’s owner, maintains a workshop in the back where the dishes are made. A selection of the handicrafts is also on display in the café, as they are available for purchase.

Gallery Dandy showcases modernized versions of traditional crafts.

At Sui 57 Atelier, customers can see traditional lacquer crafts.

Moving into the future

The efforts to bring Korea’s traditional handicrafts into the modern age don’t stop at everyday use. A new generation of young, modern design artists is bringing these techniques to the international stage. Yeol, a foundation dedicated to preserving Korean heritage, runs an annual Young Designers’ Market to introduce the work of young craftspeople to the public. The organization also founded a young craftsperson prize to encourage younger people to learn the traditional arts and find new ways to apply them. Lee Kwang-ho, a recipient of the prize, uses traditional handicraft techniques to create modern handicrafts that have been captivating audiences both in Korea and abroad.

Another young artist making a splash on the international design scene is Yoon Sang-hee, who also works with otchil to create stunning wearable art with a feminist edge. Yoon started out studying metalwork but says she was bored by the limited color palette and decided to expand her work to include traditional lacquering because it can be used to coat a variety of materials. Her designs are often reminiscent of horns, with sharp spikes that jut out from the pieces creating a manufactured area of personal space. With names like “An Attack by Green Horns” and “Blooming Green Thorn,” the pieces evoke a sense of high fashion while calling the traditional ideal of womenswear into question. The otchil lacquer adds a sleek and polished touch.

Paris’ KOGAN Gallery displays Korean crafts during Maison & Objet 2016.

__Korean traditional handicrafts have undergone and continue to undergo tremendous transformation.

Korean crafts are on display at La Triennale di Milano 2016.

Korean crafts meet the world

An exhibition held at the Triennale di Milano 2013 represented a turning point for Korean handicrafts in the international art market. The exhibition Constancy and Change in Korean Traditional Craft featured the work of 16 handicraft artists and opened the doors for further exhibitions in cities all over the world, including shows in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and the U.K.

Korean handicrafts also have a stronghold in Paris, thanks to a collaboration between Ateliers d’Art de France and the Korea Craft and Design Foundation. Since 2011, Korean handicraft artists have shown their work at the International Heritage Show and the Maison & Objet trade fair in Paris. Korean designs made a particularly strong showing at the first 2016 Maison & Objet show, with ceramics and woodworking making an especially big impression.

Korea returned to the Triennale di Milano in April this year with an impressive exhibition encompassing 154 works by 28 artists that emphasized fusion between the new and the old, with work made in collaboration between traditional artisans and designers. While tradition is important, artists working in Korean handicrafts have realized the importance of creating something new in order to survive and thrive. This exhibition showed ways artists working in the field can embrace the history and culture of their country while also keeping it fresh and relevant to a worldwide audience.

The Korea Craft and Design Foundation has also made strides to bring handicrafts to the public in Korea with the annual Craft Trend Fair. Billed as the biggest showcase of craftwork in Korea, it was founded in 2006 and has even opened its doors to handicrafts from other countries like France and the U.K. The foundation strives to keep crafts relevant through the event, which includes seminars on current craft trends and the market for handicrafts both at home and abroad.

Korean traditional handicrafts have undergone and continue to undergo tremendous transformation. While the more interpretive versions may face criticism from conservative camps, evolution is the key to survival, and through various efforts, Korea has managed to maintain and celebrate its crafts in their original form while also achieving the metamorphosis necessary to thrive in a changing world. Through respect for the past and vision for the future, Korean handicrafts, which once faced the threat of extinction, are now not only alive but flourishing.

Interview

Listening to Nature

French artist and author Mathieu Deprez praises Korean furniture for its understated beauty

_Written by Robert Koehler

Mathieu Deprez, a French artist, author and translator based in Seoul, first developed a passion for Korean traditional furniture during a visit to the sprawling antique market in the capital’s Dapsimni district.

“What was meant to be a short visit turned into a long exploration of the long hallways stacked full of all kinds of antiques from floor to ceiling,” he recalls. “You could say I fell in love right then.”

In 2013, Deprez published an English-language book on Korean furniture titled “Korean Antique Furniture & Accessories.” The work helped to remedy what he perceived to be a scarcity of English-language information on traditional furniture.

He says, “I wanted to show and promote the beauty of Korean furniture, which is still somewhat unknown outside of Korea.”

Simple, understated elegance

Deprez says Korean furniture is largely defined by its simplicity and understated elegance.

“It achieves its beauty through perfect proportions and naturalism,” he says. “The natural beauty of the wood, its patterns, swirls and grain are displayed and allowed to take center stage.”

Simplicity and naturalism are reflected even in the methods by which the furniture is assembled, with craftspeople favoring woodworking joints over “artificial” means like glue or nails.

Korean craftspeople of old took great pains to understand and respect the materials they worked with, going as far as to select, fell, cut, dry and store the trees they wanted.

“They knew the wood intimately,” he explains. “A relationship of sorts was formed. They worked with what nature gave them to build pieces that were in harmony with the local taste and environment.”

This philosophy also stands in stark contrast to Western furniture, which is more elaborate and decorated.

“Wood takes a second seat. It is something to be adorned, sculpted, manipulated,” he says. “Western furniture is a celebration of the skills of the carpenter, his domination over nature. The Korean carpenter works with nature, celebrates it, but ultimately stays in its shadows.”

Growing international recognition

Despite its beauty, Korean furniture does not, as of yet, enjoy the same kind of international profile as the furniture of some other nations. To a certain extent, this can be explained by history.

“Korea was known in the West as the Hermit Kingdom due to its isolationist policies during the Joseon Dynasty,” says Deprez. “I think this is probably why Korea to this day is lesser known abroad – not just its furniture, but in general.”

Things are changing, however, and quickly.

“The Korean Wave and Korea’s technological know-how are putting Korea on the map,” he says, referring to the growing global appeal of Korean pop culture. “I hope my book contributes to popularizing Korean traditional furniture abroad, which deserves to be recognized.”

Travel

Red Sunsets, Black Mud

Daebudo delights with island charm

_Written and photographed by Robert Koehler

The sky turns red as the sun sets at Tandohang Harbor.

People scour the rocks and mud for crabs and other delicacies at a beach in Gubongdo.

The sky blazes crimson as the golden orb of the sun begins its final descent on the horizon. At Tandohang Port, a line of wind turbines, starkly silhouetted against the fiery backdrop, stands tall like a rank of giants marching out to sea. The waves, too, glow claret, save for a brilliant streak of gold where the sun casts its closing reflection. A small crowd gathers at the seashore; the wise among them carry hot cups of coffee or huddle beneath blankets to ward off the chill of the cold sea breeze. The sun reaches the sea, first merging with its reflection like two drops of water merging and then sinking completely beneath the horizon. Another day closes.

Little more than an hour’s bus ride from Ansan Station, Seoul Subway Line 4, Daebudo Island is a piece of island splendor that’s just a stone’s throw from the city. Linked to the mainland by one of the world’s longest seawalls, the island’s beautiful seaside walks, fresh seafood, quirky museums and, above all, its romantic sunsets make it a popular destination for day-tripping Seoulites. With the end of the year fast approaching, it’s the perfect place to bid adieu to 2016 with a sunset you won’t soon forget.

A lighthouse near Gubongdo.

A fisherman pulls riches from Daebudo’s expansive mudflats.

Asia’s Zuiderzee

Separated by a narrow strait from the town of Hwaseong in Gyeonggi-do, Daebudo Island is one of the Korean west coast’s larger islands, with an area of 40.34 square meters and 61 kilometers of coastline. The island grows considerably larger at low tide, when the receding water unveils extensive mudflats. Unsurprisingly, many local residents make their living from the sea, either on the blue water or in the endless mudflats, which are rich in shellfish, crabs, octopuses, spoon worms and other tasty delights.

While it’s possible to visit Daebudo Island by ferry from Incheon, most day-trippers access the island by the Sihwa Seawall, one of modern Korea’s most impressive feats of civil engineering. Some 12.6 kilometers long, the barrage is Asia’s longest and the world’s second longest after the Netherlands’ massive Zuiderzee Works. Begun in 1987 and completed in 1994, the wall turned the bay between Daebudo Island, Hwaseong and the city of Siheung into a giant artificial lake named Sihwaho Lake. Initially conceived as a freshwater reservoir, it was soon ruined by pollution from nearby industrial and agricultural regions. Water quality was so bad that in 2001, the government opened the wall’s sluice gates, turning Sihwaho into a saltwater lake. This – and the planting of reedbeds to create large-scale artificial marshes – had a positive impact on the local ecology. The water quality has improved considerably, and the lake is now a refuge for migratory birds, aquatic plants and other life.

In addition to functioning as a dam, Sihwa Seawall also houses Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station, the world’s largest tidal power installation. Completed in 2011, the plant uses the West Sea’s dramatic tides to generate 552 gigawatt hours of electricity a year.

You can enjoy spectacular views of the lake, seawall and surrounding areas from the 79-meter-high Dal Observatory, located on the barrage itself. The observatory is surrounded by a park and a well-equipped rest stop.

Visitors stroll along Haesol-gil No. 1.

This bridge on Haesol-gil No. 1 leads to the Gubongdo Sunset Observatory.

Daebudo’s Sea Pine Trails

Daebudo Island’s shore is dotted with dramatic cliffs, forests of gnarled pines, endless mudflats, scenic coves, and plenty of spots to watch the sunset. The so-called Daebudo Haesol-gil – literally, the “Sea Pine Road” – is a 74-kilometer network of trails that line the island’s entire coastline. For walkers, there’s no better way to explore the island’s beauty.

The network is divided into seven trails. Red signs mark the more sunset-oriented trails, while brown signs indicate the mudflat-centric ones. The most popular of the trails, and the closest to the island’s “downtown” area of Bangeomeori, is course No. 1, which lines Gubongdo, a narrow, rocky finger of land – an island at high tide, actually – that juts out from the northwestern end of the island. The trail runs along massive mudflats and rocky beaches and through thick coastal pine forests before reaching the Gubongdo Sunset Observatory, a jetty offering dramatic views of the setting sun. It’s a popular destination for end-of-year well-wishers, who arrive by the busload to take in the final sunset of the year.

Gubongdo is also a good place to experience the natural bounty that is Daebudo Island’s mudflats. The tides of Korea’s western coast are some of the world’s most dramatic, with the water level fluctuating as much as 9 meters. At low tide, the sea disappears, replaced by kilometers of black mud that seemingly stretch until the horizon. The rich mud is home to all sorts of life, such as clams and crabs, and locals have long found sustenance in it. For a small fee, visitors, too, can don a pair of mud boots, grab a pail and shovel, and head out onto the mudflats in search of dinner. Small children love it, but make sure they – and you – don’t get stuck in the mud.

Goodbye 2016

Daebudo Island’s coast has many spots where you can enjoy a good sunset. One of the most popular is Tandohang Port on the island’s southeastern tip. Although it was a relatively obscure fishing port just a few years ago, landscape photographers have turned the place into a local hot spot. The sun, sea, offshore wind turbines and Nueseom Island, a small islet just off the coast, combine to produce a remarkable vista at sunset, when the deep-orange solar light throws the entire landscape into sharp relief. It’s an inspiring sight, to be sure, accompanied as it is by the lull of the waves, the sound of the ocean wind, the cry of the seagulls and the “click, click” of hundreds of camera and smartphone shutters.

At Tandohang Port, too, the tides play an integral role in the landscape. At low tide, the sea parts to reveal what locals call “Moses’ Way,” a narrow land bridge connecting the port to Nueseom Island. It’s about 1,000 meters from the port to the island, where there’s a lighthouse observatory. At really low tide, the sea disappears completely, revealing mudflats. Locals will rent you clamming gear if you’d like to have a go at it.

While you’re at Tandohang Port, check out the Fishing Village Folk Museum, where you can learn about the history, culture and way of life of the west coast’s fishing villages.

Art on display at Glass Island

Exterior of Glass Island

Glass and paper

You might not expect to find interesting museums in a decidedly rural place like Daebudo Island. Its growing popularity as a weekend getaway for Seoulites, however, is helping turn the island into a hidden arts center.

Glass Island, which bills itself “Korea’s Murano” after the Venetian island famous for glassmaking, is a museum/park/workshop dedicated to glass art. The sprawling complex is home to two museums, an outdoor sculpture park, and even its own reed marsh. The museums host permanent exhibits of glass art, sculpture and painting as well as regular special exhibits. The museum also hosts several artists-in-residence, and there are three glass-blowing shows a day.

Glass Island offers hands-on programs too. You can try your hand at glassblowing, glass painting or several other glassmaking-related skills. If you’d like something a bit more intensive, the museum’s studios offer classes on lampworking and kiln working.

If glass isn’t your thing, perhaps paper is. The Paper Art Museum hosts regular special exhibits of work by both local and overseas paper artists. Like Glass Island, it also offers hands-on programs, including classes on making paper flowers and even articulated paper dogs and birds. The museum also has a Korean traditional home, or Hanok, that serves as a guesthouse for visitors.

Seafood noodle soup

Café Hagenna in Bangeomeori

WHERE TO STAY

Most people visit Daebudo Island as a day trip from Seoul, but if you’d prefer to spend the night, the island’s coast is dotted with bed-and-breakfasts.

WHAT TO EAT

As you’d expect from a place surrounded on all sides by water, Daebudo Island’s specialty is seafood. It’s especially well-known for its Manila clams, or bajirak. In Bangeomeori, you’ll find plenty of restaurants serving hand-cut noodles with Manila clams, or bajirak kalguksu. On a cold winter’s day, a bowl of this soup really fortifies the soul.

Other local specialties include baked shellfish and, depending on the season, king prawns.

After your meal, you can enjoy a coffee at one of Bangeomeori’s cafés, which offer fine views of the sea.

GETTING THERE

Take Seoul Subway Line 4 to Ansan Station. From the station, take bus 123 to the island.

People 1

On Living With Class and Elegance

Quilt artist Gang Geumseong brings a traditional grace to the modern home

_ Written by Kim Jinwoo
Photographed by RAUM Studio

The work of Gang Geumseong, who designs traditional bedding sets, is more recognized overseas than in Korea. Her shop was even visited by a foreign royal family, complete with guards and entourage, who purchased a set during their visit to Korea, and Gang consistently receives offers to collaborate with some of the world’s leading designers. Of course, her products also line the shelves of major department stores in Korea, where they sell out at astonishing speed. Her multicolored patchwork quilts, pillows laced with cocoon silk, and modified bojagi wrapping cloths are all contemporary twists on traditional daily items that have captured the interests of consumers worldwide.

Many of Gang’s products are traditionally inspired, including the bojagi, Korea’s quintessential wrapping cloth. “Practicing traditional handicrafts doesn’t stop at simply restoring old practices. It involves adding a modern feel that’s suitable for modern consumption,” she says, insisting that modernization is actually the key to keeping tradition alive. Handicrafts need to be in popular demand to survive, and it is through such goods that Korea’s indigenous traditions live on.

Natural quilting

Gang’s work has long been inspired by the aesthetics unique to Korea’s ancient designs. Traditional bojagi patterns remind her of the paintings of Piet Mondrian, and she often wonders what Joseon artisans would create if they were alive today. Her mission is to revive traditional beauty while making it applicable to contemporary life. Her bedding sets are designed with pinwheel patterns, stripes of primary colors, and delicate shades of subtle hues that are unique to Korea and rarely seen in other Eastern traditions.

Gang was born in Andong, home of the original yangban gentry, in a traditionally built house where she spent her childhood and where four generations of her family lived together. Her clothes were hand-stitched by her great grandmother, two grandmothers and mother, which taught her about the elegance and practical wisdom behind Korea’s native arts, giving her an eye and sense for beauty at a young age. There were no chemical additives or machines, just the sharp mind and skilled hands she developed and which drive the handicrafts she makes today. Her products follow traditional guidelines, using quality natural materials and expert stitching, but her modern sensibilities are what make them desirable to today’s shoppers.

Gang’s husband, a public servant, used to take frequent business trips, leaving her alone with plenty of time to master sewing and needlework through experimenting with Western-style quilts. Interlinking several individual patches into criss-cross patterns was similar to the process for Korean bojagi cloths that she’d witnessed as a child, in a Hanbok workshop operated by her maternal grandmother. Rather than the floral patterns and polka dots of the West, she preferred the lush stripes and vintage designs of her ancestors. Drawn by the beauty of traditional materials such as silk, cotton fabric and ramie cloth, she shifted her focus from quilts to Korean handicrafts. What started as a hobby turned into a few custom orders for handicraft shops run by her acquaintances, and the orders kept coming. Eventually, she found herself fully dedicated to her craft, and opened a small workshop. Although some of her methods were modern, many of her techniques required traditional discipline, making everything by hand. The grueling labor made her consider quitting, but she persevered, garnering strength from the satisfaction she felt upon completing each project.

Word spread about Gang’s unique designs and traditional production methods, attracting not only financial executives but celebrities as well. She established a base of loyal customers, opened more stores to accommodate her expanding product line, and even created her own brand of handmade products, the “Bin Collection,” named after the title given to the wife of the crown prince during the Joseon period. In 2004 she opened a store on Ssamzie-gil Road in Insa-dong, a prime spot for tourists, thus bringing her more international customers. Japanese tourists constituted a significant portion of this base, and soon her products were being sold in Tokyo. Her work even convinced Japanese designer Issey Miyake, known for his signature “creased clothing,” and his crew to take a look. Her products are now more than desirable. They’ve become collector’s items. She has since opened the Bin Collection Gallery in Seoul’s Seochon area, which is renowned for being a place where the colors of elegant and dignified beauty in Korean handicrafts get transmitted into the present day. Her workshop next door is filled with silk, ramie fabric, rayon fibers, wool, cashmere and a plethora of colors that get crafted into peony, pinwheel and striped patterns that adopt all shapes and sizes.

Gang practices her craft in her workroom.

Bin Collection’s showroom near Gyeongbokgung Palace

Tradition begins at home

With a primary focus on traditional bedding material, Gang has come to understand that the traditions of a country’s individual homes are what transform into the true arts of a nation. She says that a society’s environmental conditions, lifestyle patterns, and social values are directly reflected in its domestic conventions. For instance, Hanok, Korea’s original style of housing, are traditionally equipped with heated floors, known as ondol, which not only reflect the Korean way of life but constitute a priceless cultural heritage items. Because floors were heated, people naturally slept on floors, and their bedding and quilts came to reflect this lifestyle. Also, unlike Western homes, rooms in Hanok residences usually served multiple purposes. When blankets and quilts were laid out, a room became a bedroom. When they were tucked and folded away and replaced with a table, it became the dining room. When the entire family gathered, it was the living room. When guests were present, it was the guest room. Because Korean bedding needed to be constantly folded and stored, it was minimal in design and size.

When women got married in the past, they would bring a bedding set to their new home, accompanied by a warmhearted message from their mothers: “Please cover up our daughter’s shortcomings.” Adorned with pinwheel patterns and crafted with silk patches dyed in Korea’s five primary colors, the bedding was meant to dispel negative energy and attract good fortune. The blood, sweat and tears that went into every stitch reflected the family’s earnest desire for domestic peace and harmony.

“Extensive consideration needs to go into design as well as the production process in order for an item’s original beauty to stand out,” says Gang. For instance, the Bin Collection’s pinwheel patterns follow one direction from the seam, making it perfectly consistent whether you look at it from the side or the rear. When done properly, her methods ensure a fabric that’s multi-layered but still light, allowing for blankets with appealing patterns that don’t become dull. Gang wanted to go further with her creativity, however. For instance, she crafted a scarf that’s attached to a luxurious hat, and introduced an apron equipped with a tea towel for wiping one’s hands.

Meticulous technique

Every product in the Bin Collection was painstakingly stitched by hand. Her patterns commonly employ the peony, a flower whose fragrance intensifies after enduring colder winters, a symbol of wealth and fairness. In the older days, ladies of the royal family and aristocracy were hypnotized by the beauty of its luxurious, greedy petals, and often decorated their clothes with peony patterns. The time and effort required to stitch everything by hand make mass production difficult, but Gang insists on adhering to quality.

Traditional patchwork and quilts involve stitching together several pieces of fabric, and every seam is made in the hope of bringing fortune and long life. Blankets and seat cushions made this way are presented as gifts to special people, and contain the artisanal techniques of her forebears.

What makes Gang’s pinwheel patterns even more special is her meticulous sewing technique. These patterns are more beautiful when viewed from the rear. To refine the spot where eight separate sheets of silk meet, she has to undo every strand and then sew it back into place, and the resulting seams are exquisite. Looking at a collection of her pillows is akin to viewing a masterpiece of contemporary art. That’s why Gang is the only traditional craftsperson who is consistently contacted for exhibitions in modern art museums, both in Korea and overseas. In 2008, Gang astonished attendees of the Mainson and Objet fair in Paris with striped patterns that incorporated Korea’s five primary colors: yellow, blue, white, red and black. The occasion convinced Gang that Korean aesthetics can appeal to a Western palate.

Gang’s work does use silk, but a closer look reveals a variety of materials effectively blended together in different ways for each season. For summer items, she uses a lot of ramie fabric and linen, for winter works, she blends silk and cashmere. Gang is also known for her use of strong, bold colors, effecting color combinations that are rarely attempted by other traditional bedding designers. Her use of color and materials is skillful yet free-flowing. She stubbornly adheres to personal convictions while creating products that have mass appeal.

Alessandro Mendini, a renowned Italian architect and designer, praised Gang’s eclectic use of fabrics at a Korean handicraft exhibition in Milan, and even made proposals for collaboration. As opposed to the usual patterns reminiscent of the Neo-Impressionists, she utilized a variegated patchwork of silk, mixing classicism with modernity, class with value: a true demonstration of contemporary design that debuted at the Biennale International Design Saint-Etienne festival in France. The evolution of traditional Korean designs and patchwork was made possible by Gang’s meticulous stitching and sewing and countless triangular fabrics that blend mellifluously into a twirling pinwheel pattern. The project has since been exhibited in galleries across the world, boasting of Korea’s indigenous aesthetic and craftworks.

Gang wants to build a large customer base through quality products that stay true to Korean tradition. She insists on materials that are strictly differentiated from cheaper, imported fabrics, such as quality beads and jade, silk, quilts from Chungmu and ramie fabric from Hansan. Cheap ramie wears out after two or three years, but Hansan ramie gets more crisp and tougher with time, so it lasts a lifetime. By using the best of each region’s materials, Gang creates products that boast of Korea’s native fabrics to customers around the world. Because she has to personally craft everything by hand, getting rich will probably be somewhat difficult, but her dedication to sewing and Korean handicrafts continues to fuel aspirations for future projects. Perhaps it’s her work that will truly lead to the globalization of Korea.

Proust Chair, a collaborative work by Gang and Italian designer Alessandro Mendini

People 2

A Graffiti Artist Goes West

Chris Chanyang Shim’s work in the U.S. raises profile of Korean graffiti art

_ Written by Robert Koehler
Photos courtesy of Chris Chanyang Shim

“First, I think the Korean graffiti scene needs two things, broadly speaking. It needs good, big walls that anyone can draw on and cheap, high-quality spray paint. It also needs a base on which individuals who are beginning to take an interest in graffiti can start, and an environment in which individuals who are already practicing graffiti can continue to do so. I think if these conditions are met, Korea, too, could become a good stage for graffiti, with many more people taking it up and the number of participating businesses and corporations naturally increasing.”

Graffiti “writer” Chris Chanyang Shim, who also goes by the nickname “Royal Dog,” became a media sensation in Korea and among overseas Koreaphiles for his beautiful murals in the United States of African-American women wearing Korea’s traditional clothing, Hanbok.

“Chanyang Shim, the Graffiti Writer Who Depicted the ‘Beauty of Korea’ in the United States, the Homeland of Hip-Hop,” went a headline in an article for Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

A post at the popular Korean pop culture website Koreaboo blared, “Black women in traditional Korean Hanbok graffiti art works are absolutely beautiful.” Speaking about one of his works in San Francisco, Tyra Fennell, the head of San Francisco community art organization Imprint.City, told local newspaper Hoodline, “(Shim) really captured the spirit of bringing together communities from all walks of life through art and culture.”

Shim recently spent 90 days in the United States, 89 of which he spent producing work in four cities: New York, Modesto, Los Angeles and San Francisco. While his paintings may have introduced U.S. viewers to the beauty of Korean traditional clothes, his art – and the positive reaction it has engendered – may also help promote graffiti art in his native Korea, where graffiti is only just beginning to receive recognition as an artistic genre.

Mural of an African-American wearing a Hanbok in San Francisco, drawn by Shim Chanyang.

Writer or artist?

Shim is what most would call a graffiti artist. He prefers to call himself a graffiti writer, however.

“I think the expressions ‘art’ and ‘artist’ are best reserved for others’ praise rather than used to refer to oneself,” he explains. “I sometimes think it strange to call oneself an artist, or what you yourself have made art.”

He also notes that graffiti began with the written word, and the term “writer” stuck even after the genre expanded to include depictions of people and other visual elements.

Drawing and painting has been Shim’s “unchanging dream.” Shim began drawing comics in elementary school, when he was only in the second grade. In the fourth grade, he got his first contact with b-boy dancing and the hip-hop scene from the comic book “Hip Hop.” He went to an art high school, where he studied comic book art and animation. In his third year, however, he learned about graffiti, which seemed to him like a “mission from god,” he recalls.

“A lot of people around me said I was crazy and I should get a grip, but my heart was already racing quickly toward the genre out of the belief that I was undertaking a part of the hip-hop scene,” he says. “The light at the end of the tunnel was so beautiful, I couldn’t see the warning written on the tunnel’s wall.”

Korea is a notoriously tough place to make a living as a graffiti writer. There are few walls big enough to handle a mural, and few owners allow graffiti writers to paint their properties. Korea may also have the world’s highest spray paint prices. Spray cans here sell for three times the price of those in Europe.

Partly out of frustration, Shim headed to New York to try his luck. He initially planned to remain in New York for the duration of this trip, but his work drew national attention in the United States. Soon he was getting calls from other U.S. cities.

Gift of Korea

While in New York, Shim painted murals of his favorite hip-hop stars: Jay-Z, T.I. and Big Pun. In Los Angeles, however, he came up with the idea of painting African-American women dressed in Hanbok. He painted his first such work at Los Angeles’ Container Yard, an old container yard-turned-hip-art-space.

Shim says he wasn’t thinking of anything in particular when he came up with the motif. In the background, however, was a realization that as a Korean, he was contributing to the international graffiti art scene.

“The graffiti scene began with African-American culture. At first, I thought if I wasn’t black, the most I could do is mimic black artists,” he said. “When I met with other graffiti writers in the United States, however, they thought it was a very special thing that Koreans took graffiti, added our own color to it, and brought it back to the United States.”

He began to take greater pride in his work. He also wanted to present a gift to his African-American friends.

“I thought that as a Korean, the really Korean ‘things’ I could give were Hanbok and Hangeul,” he says. “So as a gift, I began painting African-American women dressed in Hanbok.”

Korea & I

Winter Wonderland

The Snow Flower Train takes you through some of Korea’s most beautiful scenery

_ Written by Gregory Curley
Illustrated by Kim Yoon-myung

Ask any intrepid traveler and they’ll likely attest that it’s always the journey that provides the greatest enjoyment, never the destination itself. Sure, grabbing a plane will get you where you need to go much faster, but opting for the train will reward those with a far richer experience and greater sense of their surroundings. In this particular case, that’s just what Korea’s Snow Flower Train had in store for this writer as I was very much eager to explore what the country offered beyond the parameters of urban life.

With winter rearing its frosty head, the Snow Flower Train gave me the chance to reflect and reminisce while gazing at distant snow-covered mountains and nursing a steaming cup of hot chocolate or coffee. Yes, skiing is an option for those brave enough to get out and hit the slopes amid subzero temperatures, but soaking in the seasonal spirit in the comfort of a cozy cabin was far more appealing.

The journey meanders through Korea’s remote, rustic outskirts, through Taebaeksan, Sobaeksan and Deogyusan mountains, and makes a stop at Chujeon Station, which sits 855 meters above sea level, the highest altitude of any train station in Korea. There, I was treated to absolutely breathtaking panoramic views of the surrounding mountains and the vast snowy landscape that stretched for miles below. Temperatures at the station, located in the Gangwon-do city of Taebaek, are well below those in other parts of the country, and the train grants access to remote mountainous areas one can’t reach by car. You can even grab the 30-minute gondola ride to the summit of Mt. Taebaeksan rather than set out on foot. Warm clothing is advised, whatever package you opt for, because you will be embarking and disembarking at different stops along the way.

With the recent boom in train tourism in Korea it’s little wonder that rail travel has become the focus of considerable investment. The name Snow Flower Train refers to the snow-encrusted trees along the railway route. Korea’s east coast mountain range receives the heaviest snowfall in the country, blanketing everything in winter – enough to create an almost dreamlike setting replete with glistening peaks and enchanting powdery landscapes. Nothing says romance more than a winter wonderland – and that’s just what Korail, the national railway company, had in mind when the train route was conceived.

You can catch the Snow Flower Train at Seoul’s Cheongnyangni Station. Alternatively, several Snow Flower Trains depart every day from Seoul Station and Yeongdeungpo Station, part of one- and two-day package tours available through Korail. Some packages include special stops or bus connections to scenic spots. This may prove advantageous for those wishing to take in more attractions and make the most of the journey.

Naturally, prices vary. The Mt. Taebaeksan Snow Flower Tour will run you KRW 49,000 if you decide to travel on a weekday, and KRW 52,000 if you opt for a weekend excursion. A good option is the two-day weekend getaway to the East Sea scenic spot of Jeongdongjin, which costs KRW 199,000. Trips to winter destinations like Muju and Mt. Daedunsan are available too.

Tours generally operate from the end of December until February. Book well in advance, as the 72 seats are usually filled throughout the winter months. Regardless of which package you choose, they will all provide a welcome respite from the commotion of city life.

Korea in Brief

Korea Monthly Update

Hong Kong Hosts Mnet Asian Music Awards

One of the biggest K-pop music events of the year is set to take place Dec. 2 in Hong Kong at the AsiaWorld-Expo. Hosted by CJ E&M’s music channel Mnet, the Mnet Asian Music Awards recognize outstanding musical achievements throughout Asia and beyond. Marking its eighth year, the ceremony has been held overseas since 2010 and in Hong Kong since 2012.

Nominees for this year’s awards were announced on Oct. 28, except for Album of the Year, for which online voting will continue through Dec. 1. Fans can cast their votes at 2016mama.com. The ceremony will feature performances by top artists and plenty of razzle dazzle. It will also connect artists, fans and creatives with new conferences and forums.

Korean Cosmetics Continue Boom

Korean cosmetics and skin-care products continue to surge in popularity in overseas markets. When KOTRA surveyed overseas buyers in 55 nations, cosmetics proved to be the most popular item on Korea’s top-100 export list for the second year running. Buyers in 22 countries, including the United States, Germany, China and Mexico, identified cosmetics as the item for which demand had climbed the most, nearly doubling last year’s total of 12 countries. Demand for Korean cosmetics is skyrocketing as Korean soap operas, films and pop music grow ever more popular overseas.

Other popular export items on the survey included construction equipment, fruit juice, LED lighting and auto batteries.

Landmark Tower Nears Completion

Korea’s newest architectural landmark is nearing completion. Standing 555 meters tall and housing 123 stores, Seoul’s Lotte World Tower is the tallest building in Korea and the fifth-tallest in the world. Work on the exterior was completed Oct. 2, six years after it commenced. Designed by renowned Chicago-based architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, Lotte World Tower features 21,000 curtain walls and 42,000 glass panels. A large diagrid structure illuminated by LED lighting crowns the gracefully curved structure, which incorporates aspects of Korean traditional crafts and architecture into its design. The tower is set to open to the public on Dec. 22.

Korean Cultural Center Opens in Italy

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has opened a Korean Cultural Center in the Italian capital of Rome. Some 200 political, cultural and media figures attended the opening ceremony Oct. 26, including Italian Vice Culture Minister Ilaria Borletti Buitoni and Korean Culture and Information Service Director Kim Kabsoo. Organizers marked the occasion with celebratory concerts, speeches and a reception.

The Rome center is the 31st Korean cultural center worldwide and the 10th in Europe. To celebrate, the center will host a series of events through the end of the year, including classical music performances and a special Korea Week (Nov. 21–26). Located on one of Rome’s main roads, the center includes a reception hall, a “K-culture” experience hall, language classrooms, and space for art displays and cooking classes, as well as other activities.

Korean Department Opens at Egyptian University

Egypt’s Aswan University has opened a Korean language department, the second one in Egypt and the third in the Arab-speaking world. Some 150 students, parents and university officials attended the opening ceremony on Oct. 26 and took part in a variety of events related to arts and culture. These included a photo exhibit and a chance to try on Korean traditional clothing.

Interest in Korea has been on the rise in Egypt since 2004, when the Korean soap operas “Autumn in My Heart” and “Winter Sonata” first aired on local TV.

Eco-Art Festival to Kick Off in Suncheon

The Suncheon Bay National Garden will play host to the Suncheon Bay International Eco-Environmental Art Festival, to be held Nov. 18 to Dec. 18. Under the theme “Voyage Into Paradise,” the show will demonstrate that paradise isn’t far away. The festival is both a statement about the importance of protecting nature and an exploration of how to interpret nature through art. It will feature work by 57 teams of artists from 24 countries, to be displayed in both an indoor exhibit hall and outdoors in the garden itself. Visitors can take part in hands-on programs, too.

Created in 2013 to protect Suncheon Bay, the Suncheon Bay National Garden is the nation’s first national garden. The 1.12-square-kilometer space is home to 56 themed gardens, 505 species of trees and 113 species of flowers.

Arts & Entertainment 1

Sharing Korea With the World

Winners of the Talk Talk Korea contest experience Korea and see the beauty of the nation

_ Written by Kyehyun Lee

The photographs of Carlos Alberto-Defin Macias capture a young woman practicing taekwondo.

“This trip and experience were very good. My friends say Korea is nice to visit, but a difficult place in which to work or study. I want to challenge myself in Korea, however. I think I can enjoy Korea from a different perspective, and I’d like to come back and get a master’s degree in film production.”

Carlos Alberto Delfin Macias, a photographer and filmmaker from Mexico, was one of four international social media users invited to Korea in October to experience Korea and to share their adventures with the world. The four, winners of the Korean Culture and Information Service’s annual Talk Talk Korea contest, spent four days in Korea visiting major tourist sites and experiencing the breadth and depth of the country, from traditional food and clothing to pop music.

Pham Thi Min Thu, an illustrator from Vietnam and one of the participants, said, “Prior to the contest, all I knew was K-pop and K-dramas, but through the contest, I learned about other fun things in Korea, like the food and Hangeul, the Korean alphabet.”

‘Korea in Your Eyes’

Aimed at non-Koreans residing overseas or in Korea, KOCIS’ Talk Talk Korea contest is an annual event in which participants produce Korea-related visual content based on a particular theme. This year’s theme was “Korea in Your Eyes.” Over 56 days beginning June 1, participants submitted 24,029 entries from 151 countries in six categories, including calligraphy, Hanbok, photography, postcards, videos and webcomics.

Grand prizes for the six categories were announced on Aug. 31.

In the calligraphy category, Laura Duran from the Dominican Republic won with a depiction of the Korean words for “traditional crafts” using actual crafts such as traditional hairpins, a bamboo flute and a wooden mask as visual elements. In the Hanbok category, Mariana Maksimova from Russia took first place with a photo of herself in a beautiful tricolored Hanbok with floral motifs. She even styled her hair in the traditional fashion, to beautiful effect.

In the photography category, Carlos Alberto Delfin Macias won with a photo series of the martial art taekwondo. In the postcard category, Melissa Salazar Navarro of Peru submitted a beautifully designed card with a depiction of the samgomu three drum dance. Anastasia Tikhonova of Moldova took first place in the video category with a clip on how Korea has enriched her life and that of her family. In the webtoon category, Pham Thi Min Thu won with a touching story of a U.S. exchange student and a Korean student who discover Korea – and fall in love with one another – against a background of changing seasons.

While the winners came from around the world, they were united in their passionate interest in Korea. They wished to share with the world what they loved about the country. Pham, for instance, wanted show people Korea’s beautiful four seasons.

“In Vietnam, we don’t have four seasons, so I thought it was great that Korea had them, because there are many things to do and see as the seasons change,” she said. “So I wanted to show other people all the things you could do across Korea’s four seasons.”

Tikhonova, meanwhile, wanted to show not only her personal interest in Korea, but also her family’s. It wasn’t always easy, though.

“It was tough filming me dancing with my father,” she recalls. “Practicing with him after work and editing the footage was difficult.”

Laura Duran’s calligraphy makes fascinating use of the Hangeul alphabet.

Melissa Salazar-Navarro’s postcard depicts the Korean three drum dance, the samgomu.

Talk Talk Korea contest winners tour Korea.

Feeling at home

KOCIS invited four of the winners to spend five days and four nights in Korea, from Oct. 18 to 22. The group visited popular tourist sites such as Myeong-dong, Gyeongbokgung Palace, Mt. Namsan and the Korean Folk Village. They stopped by the flagship store of high-end cosmetics brand Sulwhasoo to learn about skin-care techniques, and they tried their hand at making Korean grilled beef, or bulgogi, under the direction of President Lee Jongim of the Korea Food & Culture Research Center at the state-of-the-art K-style Hub, a tourism information center in downtown Seoul equipped with virtual reality rigs and other high-tech equipment for providing information on all things Korean.

The four also took a night cruise on the Hangang River to take in Seoul’s incredible night views and learned about K-pop at a rehearsal of the TV show KBS Music Bank. Broadcaster KBS’s global station, World Channel, ran a documentary on the group’s experience in November.

The participants were moved by the warmth and generosity they experienced during their visit.

“I really love Korea, and Koreans are very friendly and helpful,” said Salazar. “I felt like I was home. I want to come to Korea again, and live here if I get the chance.”

Arts & Entertainment 2

Korean Cable TV Blossoms

Stations like tvN, Mnet and JTBC set the pace for cable entertainment

_ Written by Chang Iou-chung

Cable station tvN’s show “Reply 1988” was a No. 1 hit.

It was the “golden age of television” 10 or so years ago when well-crafted TV series like “The Wire” and “The Sopranos,” and TV movies like “Angels in America,” overflowed out of the United States and inundated small screens worldwide, where audiences happily devoured them whole. One of the main contributors to this golden age was, of course, HBO.

Without a single monarch like HBO, the current Korean TV scene recalls a bygone era of East Asian history: It is the Warring States Period of Korean TV, particularly among cable TV broadcasters. Many warring channels are striving to be like HBO and seize the throne for themselves.

Giving audiences what they want

Ten years ago, the newly founded cable station tvN made the mistake of believing that more adult-oriented content would automatically attract more viewers. The channel produced shows that were described as “a version of ‘Sex and the City’ for the Korean male.” These failed to win over audiences and critics, however. Entertainment journalists focused less on the writing and production value of the new shows and more on the titillating aspects of the programming. Soon, however, tvN learned what viewers really wanted by conducting thorough market research. This approach – we make what our audience wants to watch – helped them not only to create successful programs in terms of ratings, but also to build a loyal audience.

Even if ratings were low, they made shows that people would download and watch on other platforms. They came up with the successful series “Rude Ms. Yeong-ae” and the “Reply” series, including the wildly popular “Reply 1988.” The channel also sent out scouts to recruit new talent. Managers at tvN headhunted experienced producers and directors from major broadcasters. In turn, those creative types responded positively to tvN’s more flexible and creative work environment. That’s how shows like “Signal,” “Misaeng,” “Grandpas Over Flowers” and “Three Meals a Day” came to be produced and aired.

tvN continues to think big. The channel has drawn international attention recently with its just-launched remake of the hit HBO series “Entourage.”

The soap opera “Misaeng,” based on the webtoon by Yoon Taeho, is a realistic depiction of Korean office life.

“Signal” tells the story of a detective from 1989 and a cold case profiler from 2015 who use walkie talkies to communicate with one another across time.

Other stations get in the act

Making programs for target audiences based on research seems to be a principle for Mnet, too, tvN’s affiliate that’s part of the mega CJ E&M media conglomerate. Mnet directly targets the more rabid, or passionate, fans of Korean pop. Sometimes, the channel uses the safe format of an audition show, as it did with “Super Star K” and “The Voice.” Sometimes, it comes up with a kitsch comedy show like “The God of Music.” Or it produces its own K-pop group, as seen in “Produce 101” and “Boy 24.” Mnet doesn’t really compete for the throne of the small-screen kingdom, but it certainly protects its territory as the “Korean MTV.”

JTBC, another cable channel, will celebrate its fifth anniversary this December. It’s a rising contender for the throne, too. The successor of the old Tongyang Broadcast Company, which shut down in 1980, JTBC has produced shows like “Non-Summit,” “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator” and “I’m Going to School.”

The channel has truly shone, showing that it knows how to make great TV shows. With “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator,” the producers at JTBC saw the growing number of single-person households: homes that depend on ready-made meals from convenience stores; homes with ingredients in the fridge bought weeks ago; homes with only a single can of beer and mom-made kimchi buried in the back. With “I’m Going to School,” set in real high schools, the channel was able to provide a bridge between older and younger viewers, embracing them both. Indeed, JTBC has shone just as one might expect of a true successor to the great and successful TBC of the 1970s.

Interestingly enough, JTBC has taken a different approach from tvN and Mnet. JTBC wants to embrace the whole of society, and to include every possible audience segment in its viewership. Bigger, wider audience numbers are important to the bean counters at JTBC, and solely grabbing the youth audience isn’t the most important factor for that channel’s show runners.

The broadcaster has brought together experienced TV crews, people who used to make all the successful, family-oriented weekend prime-time telenovelas in the 1990s and early 2000s. The results are shows like “Yoo-na’s Street,” “Happy Ending” and “Childless Comfort,” all of which have earned rave reviews among domestic and overseas audiences. Even critics love them.

tvN, Mnet and JTBC are all top contenders for the throne of the Korean TV kingdom. Each has many successful shows on its roster, and all three have been able to sell shows or show formats to channels worldwide. “Better Late Than Never,” based on tvN’s “Grandpas Over Flowers,” was picked up by NBC in the United States. Similarly, JTBC’s “I’m Going to School” has been remade in the mainland Chinese market by the online video platform Qiyi and by Shanghai Dragon Television.

No one can be sure to whom the royal scepter will be passed. One thing is clear, though. The era of K-TV for screaming K-kids, and of saccharine K-pop idols shoehorned into the camera frame alongside real actors and actresses, is long gone. A much more varied and entertaining world awaits viewers of K-TV as the average Korean household will be presented with ever-improving, ever more innovative and ever more creative TV shows.

Grab your bowl of popcorn. Some great shows await.

In “Please Take Care of My Refrigerator,” chefs compete to turn food taken from celebrities’ refrigerators into cuisine.

Mnet’s “Superstar K” is a music audition program.

Policy Review

Smart Immigration

Korea’s Smart Entry System reduces lines – and hassles – at the airport

_ Written by Lee Kijun

A Chinese tourist undergoes automatic screening with Jeju International Airport’s Smart Entry Service.

On Oct. 14, the day after Thai King Bhumibol’s sudden death, Jeong Jong-mun was in a rush at Incheon International Airport. As a reporter for a major Korean newspaper, he was heading to Bangkok to cover the event, but he had only a few hours to get a ticket. He’d missed sleep to catch his flight, and had arrived three hours before its scheduled departure.

Three hours was not nearly enough time at Incheon International Airport, one of the largest airports in Asia. There were long queues at the check-in counter, the security checkpoint and the immigration office. Half an hour before departure, Jeong was still standing in the immigration queue.

As it turns out, Jeong made his flight, but only thanks to a flight attendant who let him jump the line.

Readers who have passed through Incheon International Airport probably have similar stories to tell. If they, and Jeong, had known about the airport’s automated immigration screening system, also known as the “smart entry system,” they could have saved significant amounts of time.

The smart entry system is an electronic passport and fingerprint reader that allows registered travelers to move more quickly and efficiently through airport immigration. Instead of waiting for a face-to-face inspection, they can enter or leave Korea in less than 12 seconds by using Smart Entry Service auto-gates. To clear immigration, all they need to do is scan their passports and fingerprints at automated kiosks.

Smoother, more efficient immigration procedures

Previously, every passenger traveling abroad was required to present a passport to the immigration officer on duty at the inspection desk. With the introduction of the new system, expedited clearance is possible, for a time savings of at least 20 percent.

The ever-growing Incheon International Airport has handled 49.3 million passengers since it opened 15 years ago. As Northeast Asia’s fifth-busiest travel center, Incheon aims to more than double its traffic by the end of 2030 and serve 100 million passengers.

Before that, by 2020, Incheon wants to be one of the world’s five largest airports. As of 2015 it stood at No. 21 in the world, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

The smart entry system was introduced in 2008, and since that time the number of air travelers at Incheon has skyrocketed. Whereas 4 million people passed through the airport in 2011, the number recorded 12.5 million in 2015.

Despite the increasing number of travelers at Incheon, the smart entry system has allowed the number of immigration officers to remain the same. The system is open to registered Korean citizens aged 7 and above and to registered non-Korean citizens aged 17 and above. Non-Korean citizens using the system need to present valid alien registration cards. Before using the system, users have to register their information either at Seoul Station or at a registration center at an international airport. The Ministry of Justice is planning to extend the system to all Korean citizens starting in 2017, without any need for advance registration.

Holders of electronic U.S. or Hong Kong passports can also use the system. In 2012, Korea and the United States agreed to grant each other’s citizens access to their respective automated immigration systems. Korea made a similar agreement with Hong Kong in 2013. Macau residents will also be able to use the system as of November 2016.

Going global

The system has drawn praise throughout the world, and Incheon International Airport won a U.N. Public Service Award in 2007 in recognition of its simple and efficient immigration procedures. This past May, representatives of the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO) visited Sysone, the Korean company that manufactures the scanners.

Travelers register themselves at a Smart Entry Service registration center at Incheon International Airport.

Representatives from Korea and Hong Kong sign a reciprocal Smart Entry Service use agreement.

“Many ASOCIO member countries are considering the introduction of smart entry systems,” said ASOCIO Chairman Bunrak Saragananda.

In July, a government delegation from Cameroon also visited the company to learn about the new scanners.

A smart entry system has been in place at Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar since 2014. Korea established it at the request of the Mongolian government, which sought to modernize its immigration processing system. The Korean government has been working with the Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Chile and Peru to establish smart entry systems in those countries too.

Creative Economy

Math-Learning App Turns Heads

Knowre analyzes student weaknesses and turns them into games

_ Written by Hahna Yoon
Photos courtesy of Knowre

Students at Castle Dome Middle School in Yuma, Arizona, learn using Knowre.

Say you’re a teacher and you’re watching your student struggle with a math equation. Then you realize what is holding them back: they’re adding before multiplying because they’ve forgotten the order of operations. If you’re working with them one-on-one, sure, you could sit down with them and explain the rules of computational precedence, but what do you do when you’re teaching in front of a class of 12? Each individual student has a different set of struggles. How do you keep each student motivated while catering to each individual’s way of learning?

Created by former private academy teachers in Seoul, Knowre is a learning app born in 2012 that offers a solution. With a self-proclaimed “mission to deliver an engaging and personalized learning experience to students around the globe,” the subjects that Knowre covers are often a teenager’s least favorite like algebra and pre-algebra.

Originally designed as an iPad app, Knowre has now been formatted for the desktop and the laptop. The interface of the app is animated, colorful and could be likened to a video game. While each mathematical equation is presented as if it were a game, the app’s algorithms are analyzing the way the student solves the problem – targeting the student’s weaknesses and helping the student with that specific need before they move on.

Named one of the four Korean startups to watch in 2012 by media company Gigaom, Knowre is hitting some high notes. After a start in Korea, the company partnered up with well-known business accelerator Sparklabs and subsequently raised USD 1.4 million in seed funding from SoftBank Ventures at the beginning of 2013, only to raise an additional USD 6.8 million in 2015. Also in 2013, Knowre won the title of Best Instructional App at the annual competition for education-focused software developers called the Gap App held by the New York City Department of Education. Knowre garnered even more attention in 2014 when American business magazine Fast Company ranked it one of the top 10 most innovative companies in education.

Blended education

One reason that Knowre has dazzled so many in the education-technology industry is that it dares to think further than the standard model: children sitting in rows in front of a chalkboard as the teacher tirelessly explains the material. In the business world, it’s considered an exciting venture into the untapped digitalization of the U.S. private education industry. In a deal earlier this year, Knowre shook hands with Sylvan Learning, one of the largest private learning institutions in the United States with over 800 tutoring centers across the country.

Knowre co-founder David Joo called the deal an important step and “a great global expansion opportunity in our private education business model and strategy.” This past summer, the Association of American Publishers recognized Knowre as the Best Classroom Supplemental Resource for Mathematics.

As more and more public schools are rethinking their education paths, blended education, which mixes traditional learning methods with independent student learning on digital media, is on the rise. Knowre is already being used in over 80 American public classrooms with success stories the company is happy to share.

One review left by user Franciso on the education technology discussion platform EdSurge says of Knowre, “They really have taken incentives ... to really invite interest from the student. Another thing that is fantastic is their step-by-step assistance when the student reaches the application problems. Instead of a simple drop box that tells the student how to do the problem with broad strokes, Knowre delves into more specific aspects and shows the student how to go about fixing the problem, keeping their weaknesses in mind.”

Some sources even speculate that Knowre might eventually go on to compete with American publishing giants such as McGraw-Hill.

On the IT hub and digital website Seoul Space, Knowre Vice President Kim Seo-joon shared that Knowre was venturing into China and Korea while also continuing to expand in the United States.

“From preschool to university, America to Southeast Asia,” Kim says, “education is a wide field and also curriculums vary from country to country. Developers are trying their best to digitalize every math problem in order to enter the global education market.”

It’s an interesting time, with many asking if it’s possible to have a world where every student learns algebra with video game interfaces. Math might soon become everyone’s favorite subject.

Knowre uses game elements to determine which mathematical concepts students can’t understand and to help them overcome difficulties.

Knowre encourages students to take an active role in learning.

Global Korea

Korean Cultural Center Activities

K-Rock Rocks London

The Korean Cultural Center in London hosted the third K-music Festival from Sept. 15 to Oct. 25. Featuring eight performances, the festival began with Jeong Ga Ak Hoe’s modern interpretations of Korean traditional music at the British Museum. British fans got a rare taste of Korean rock music with performances by Idiotape, Patients, Jambinai and Asian Chairshot.

Beauty of Hanbok Goes to Kazakhstan

The Korean Cultural Center in Kazakhstan and the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan jointly hosted an exhibit of Korean traditional clothing, or Hanbok, from Oct. 12 to 26. The exhibit displayed about 50 sets of clothing, including both traditional court attire and modern reinterpretations of traditional dress, as well as about 20 accessory items. The opening ceremony of the exhibit, the first spotlighting Korean traditional clothing in Kazakhstan, featured Korean traditional music and dance.

High-Tech Performance Art Captivates Buenos Aires

The Korean eclectic arts troupe Muto performed its show “Amplified Ground” at the General San Martín Cultural Center in Buenos Aires on Oct. 7 and 9. The shows marked the start of Korean Art Month, a series of events jointly hosted by the Korean Cultural Center in Argentina and the National University of General San Martín. Muto’s performance brought together traditional music, electronic music and media art and captivated audiences with its fusion of East and West.

Japanese K-Fans Visit Busan

A group of Japanese university students spent four days in the Korean port city of Busan in September to mark Visit Korea Year 2016-2018, an activity organized by the Korean Cultural Center in Osaka. The 20 students, who attend schools in Japan’s Kansai region, visited popular Busan destinations such as Gamcheon Culture Village and Jagalchi Market, historic sites, and places related to film and local cuisine. The participants shared photos of the trip in real time on social media, giving friends and relatives back home a vivid picture of today’s Busan.

Korean Art Shines in Washington

Art All Night, an overnight art festival held Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C., featured a special exhibit of Korean contemporary art. The Korean Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., hosted a variety of overnight events for the festival, including K-pop music and videos, a digital gallery, a sarangbang traditional space, the contemporary art exhibition “The Prismatic,” and a collaborative show by dancer and videographer Kim Jungwoong and Korean instrumentalist Gamin.

Pianist Cho Seong-jin Plays at Lincoln Center

Pianist Cho Seong-jin, winner of last year’s International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, toured 14 U.S. cities in October and November. The highlight of the tour was an Oct. 24 performance at New York’s legendary Lincoln Center, where he delighted audiences with a performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Warsaw Philharmonic. The concert, which met with a standing ovation, was jointly sponsored by New York’s Korean Cultural Center and its Polish Cultural Center.

Historic Moments

A Seoul Icon Arises

Exterior of landmark N Seoul Tower finished Dec. 3, 1971

_ Written by Robert Neff

Arguably the most popular landmark in Seoul is N Seoul Tower, also known in the past as Namsan Tower and Seoul Tower. Located at the top of Mt. Namsan, the tower rises from there to 498 meters above sea level. It can be seen from almost any part of Seoul on a clear day.

Mt. Namsan has always played a key role in Korea’s communication system. During the Joseon period, fire beacons, or bongsudae, were installed on the summit and provided up-to-date information to the king as to the welfare and security of his country. These were discontinued in the mid-1890s.

In the late 1960s, it was determined that a large tower should be built on the mountain’s summit to serve as Korea’s first general radio wave tower, providing radio and television communication throughout Seoul and the surrounding area. It was also decided to make the tower a tourist attraction. The nearby cable car system, established in 1962, was the first commercial cable car service in Korea, and the popularity of the mountain’s forested parks guaranteed its success.

Construction of the tower began in December 1969 and the exterior was completed two years later, on Dec. 3, 1971. Completion of the interior and its tourist facilities – such as the observation deck, museum and open hall – was not official until Aug. 15, 1975. The total cost was KRW 200 million, or about USD 2.5 million.

Surprisingly, some of the first visitors to the tower were North Koreans. During the Red Cross talks held in Seoul in September 1972, the North Korean representatives were taken to the tower where they were “startled to see the change and development of the city.”

Although the tourist facilities were completed in 1975, the tower wasn’t open to the public until Oct. 15, 1980, due to security concerns and radio wave interference. Even after it opened, security was a constant concern. Visitors in the 1980s and early 1990s were not allowed to take photographs from the observation deck, but this restriction was lifted in 1999.

As a tourist attraction, N Seoul Tower has been immensely successful. In May 1990 it celebrated its 10 millionth visitor and then, in April 2001, its 20 millionth visitor. With its museum and exhibits, observation decks, restaurants and fantastic views of the city, it’s easy to understand why the tower was voted in 2012 as the most popular tourist attraction in Seoul.

The tower is truly a symbol of Seoul.

Flavor

Hobakjjim

Korea’s one-gourd wonder is as healthy as it is tasty

_ Written by Cynthia Yoo
Photographed by ao studio Kang Jinju
Stylized by 101recipe

Steamed winter squash, or hobakjjim, is a popular meal at the Korean table, both as a main dish and as a side dish. It’s different from the summer squash in that it’s harvested and eaten when the rind has hardened and its seeds have fully matured. Unlike summer squash, these winter gourds can be stored for months at a time and they must be cooked before being eaten. Hobakjjim is a mainstay at the Korean dinner table both for its nutty, sweet flavor and its long list of nutritional benefits.

The beneficial components of winter squash include key antioxidants, especially carotenoids. For many, winter squash is the primary food source of alpha and beta carotene. It also provides a good amount of vitamin C, dietary fiber and manganese. Coupled with the fact that winter squash is low in calories, it’s no wonder that many Koreans also base their weight-loss diets around this superfood. Hobakjjim is recommended for new mothers as the steamed gourd dish often uses nutritious nuts and seeds. Women also report that the dish ameliorates the swollen feeling they experience after giving birth. Pumpkin is also a mainstay in Buddhist temple cuisine, and is often called “monk vegetable” because it’s so popular with Buddhist monks and nuns.

Furthermore, hobakjjim can be combined with other healthy ingredients for a nutrition-packed meal. The variations are endless, but people like to add meats like chicken, beef or pork into the dish, seasoned with soy sauce or a bit of salt.

While the seeds and fibers in the hollow of the winter squash are removed in hobakjjim, all parts of the winter squash can be cooked and eaten in one form or another. The seeds can be dried, baked or roasted to make tasty snacks. People also use the leaves as a side dish or in soy paste stew or as a wrapper to wrap up rice with aged soy bean paste. Pureed squash is boiled with glutinous rice flour and adzuki beans to make a porridge that’s often served at the start of a meal.

Now that winter flu season has arrived, don’t forget the humble winter squash. It’s wonderfully versatile, delicious, and full of flu-fighting nutrients.

__ How to make hobakjjim: Firstly, you should prepare the yakbap, or “medicinal rice,” which will serve as the filling. To do this, steam glutinous rice and mix it with honey, brown sugar and soy sauce. Add other ingredients such as chestnuts, pine nuts, sesame oil and sliced jujubes without their seeds. Allow the mixture to cool. Once the filling is prepared, take a winter gourd, cut a six-sided hole in the top, place the lid aside and remove the innards with a spoon. Fill the now empty gourd with the yakbap. Place the lid back on the gourd, put the gourd in a steamer and steam it for about 20 minutes. You’ll know the gourd is fully cooked when you can pierce it easily with a chopstick.

Korean Keyword

Jeong

_ Written by Lim Jeong-yeo
Illustrated by Kim Yoon-myung

Growing attached is hard to do.

Breaking that attachment is even harder.

An age-old proverb puts the concept of jeong into words. It is the act of splitting a single bean and sharing it with another person, if that is the only nourishment there is. The essence of jeong is caring for others and sharing what one has.

Jeong is also a multilayered concept, a complicated bundle of feelings that can be love, friendship, camaraderie, attachment and affection. It often involves things about which we feel nostalgic if they go away.

Yoon Jo-hee, who has three grown children with her husband of 28 years, defined jeong as, “the subconscious trust and sureness between people that is built up by spending a long time together, by staying together through thick and thin.”

Yoon mentioned that a growing number of couples around her age were choosing to part ways once their children were old enough to fend for themselves. This trend suggests that many relationships lack jeong, she observed.

Perhaps it’s not without reason that the verb jeong deulda, meaning “to grow jeong” or to become emotionally attached to someone or something, is similar in form to the verb mul deulda, which is used in the context of dyeing fabric and means “to take color.”

Just as color needs time to seep into fabric, jeong takes hold slowly, nestling quietly in people’s hearts.

It is possible to use the expression jeongdeureo not only when talking about people, but also when talking about places and things to which one has grown accustomed. It is also possible to use jeongdeureo in reference to things and people that one dislikes or even hates.

A well-known saying goes, “Hate-jeong (miun jeong) runs deeper than love-jeong (goun jeong).”

This is because hate-jeong often goes unnoticed, leading to a bigger heartbreak when the person or object to which one has grown attached suddenly disappears.

Korean Art Through Coloring

Traditional thimbles Golmu