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In Love with Korea

Social Media Anthropologist

In Love with Korea 2024 SPRING

Social Media Anthropologist A towering Dutchman with a passion for stories and storytelling, Bart van Genugten first visited Korea in 2014. Since then, he has gotten married and established a popular YouTube channel, “iGoBart,” where he profiles Korean War veterans from the Netherlands and introduces places in Korea that are often overlooked. For his YouTube segments, Bart van Genugten uses a lightweight, handheld camera while cycling around neighborhoods. Bart Van Genugten’s first foray into Korea had more than a few missteps. In 2014, he was dating a Korean student while studying Spanish in Malaga, which spurred him to enroll at Sungkyunkwan University’s Korean Language Center in Seoul. But instead of living in the capital, he stayed to the west in Bupyeong, a district of Incheon, where public signage did not necessarily have foreign visitors in mind. Growing up in Grave, a town in the Netherlands with a population of 8,500, did not impart navigational skills. “The huge subway stations with a million exits were hard to get used to. If you couldn’t read Korean, you were always losing your mind,” Van Genugten recalls. “You’re struggling to deal with being a young man in a big city.” Nevertheless, Korea made a lasting, positive impression on him. RETURN TO ASIA Three months later, Van Genugten returned to the Netherlands and went to work. That lasted a year. Realizing that he wasn’t ready to attach himself completely to the routine of an office life, he quit and returned to Asia. He spent a few weeks in Korea, and then embarked on six months of backpacking through China, Taiwan, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Thailand, and the Philippines. But his wanderlust lingered. “My trip through Asia was quite boring overall. Just being on your own all the time. I asked myself, ‘Is this life?’ I still wanted to go somewhere else, and Korea was the most familiar. It had this weird mixture of being new and completely strange to me, and at the same time feeling really homey. There is a real balance between the West and Asia. You can feel comfortable even without knowing everything.” MARRIAGE AND CULTURE Van Genugten tells the story of his return to Korea in early 2017 with an air of levity. But it was clearly a turning point in his life. To begin with, he met Hwia Kim, the woman he would later marry. “We met on Tinder. She was living in Sangsu-dong, I was living in Hapjeong-dong, so we were pretty much neighbors. We just clicked really well, and that was right before I had to go back to the Netherlands. I thought maybe I should stay for a bit longer. We liked everything about each other and there was no reason not to get married, so we just did it.” After getting married in 2019, Van Genugten and Kim settled in Seoul’s Mapo District. It lies along the Han River and features walking and cycling trails, several universities, boutiques, and late-night venues popular with young people. From the beginning, Korea’s rapid changes were a constant source of fascination to Van Genugten. “It’s so interesting how a country went from colonial oppression and the Korean War to economic success and democratization, before being hit by the Asian financial crisis. And then, in less than 10 years, it became one of the best-known places in the world. That fascinated me a lot. Because I studied human geography [the relationship between people and their surroundings], I could feel that Korea was about to become bigger in one way or another.” An unhurried approach puts locals at ease and gets them in the mood to share anecdotes about their neighborhoods. VENTURING INTO YOUTUBE In 2018, with Kim’s help, Van Genugten started the YouTube channel “Sexy Green.” Focusing on environmental issues, his initial aim was to start a company that sold environmentally friendly products which he could promote through his content. But very quickly his passion for travel and different cultures piqued his interest in discovering stories about people and places and led to a change in the channel’s name and direction. Thus, “iGoBart” was born. “iGo” expresses Van Genugten’s desire to visit somewhere new and is also a play on words. The Korean word “aigo” is an exclamation that expresses surprise, empathy, or even sorrow. His more than 300 videos have garnered some 32 million views. Among the most popular are those interviewing and telling stories of Dutch veterans of the Korean War. The series began with videos he created after visiting North Korea in 2018. For him, it was an exploration of one of the deepest connections between the Netherlands and Korea. “A few thousand men came and fought here and over 100 of them died. I wanted to shine a light on that before it’s too late because most of the surviving veterans are 80 or older.” Some of the individuals featured on his channel have since passed away. With now fewer than 100 Dutch veterans of the war still alive, he feels a sense of urgency. But rather than eliciting war memories, the series is more about letting the veterans know that there are people who appreciate their sacrifices. Van Genugten is a storyteller at heart. Some people call him an influencer, but he says he feels more like “a documentarian, a video maker, and a YouTuber too.” He believes everyone has a story. “I love listening to stories. They really inspire me. My father is the youngest of ten siblings; he’s already 70. His parents were 97 when they died 15 years ago. His grandparents knew people who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. That’s a history that is now unreachable.” For his current project, Van Genugten aims to explore all of Seoul’s 467 neighborhoods. His handdrawn map gets a splash of color after each of his visits. 2,000 KILOMETERS OF DISCOVERY By 2021, burnout was encroaching. Van Genugten felt overwhelmed by the pressure to upload content every week and was less satisfied with the results. His videos reflected what viewers wanted to see rather than what he wanted to create. His wife suggested a cycling trip with the inspiring imperative, “See what life gives you!” Between July and October 2021, he cycled around the entirety of Korea’s mainland, covering the approximately 2,000 km of coastline. He enjoyed remote landscapes and coastal vistas and visited places where time seemed to have stopped. The rural areas in the South Gyeongsang and South Jeolla Provinces had the vibe of Korea from the 1960s and 1970s. The trip also was an eye-opener about his life and his adoptive home. “I definitely learned my wife is the best.” Van Genugten also experienced a deeper realization about his love of Korean culture. In his refreshingly uncompromising perspective, the beauty of Korean culture is not in the “perfect image that’s being sold to the outside world.” “There was racism, discrimination,” he explains frankly. “There were super-friendly people who welcomed me into their homes. Other people said, ‘What are you doing in my town!’ There was a bit of everything, the good and the bad, but it’s that imperfection that is so attractive to me.” CULTURAL DIFFERENCES A self-described “country boy,” Van Genugten’s rural upbringing prompts him to greet strangers, a custom that most Koreans do not share. “I like connecting with people. I find it difficult with younger folks sometimes, but elderly people often make time to have a chat with you,” he says. Dutch people are, according to him, “super direct.” This allows immediate friendships and connections to be made even when meeting people for the first time. Discussion on one’s religion, political affiliation, and even sex life is by no means off-limits. The difference between Dutch and Korean culture is, at least in this area, particularly stark. “When I have dinner with someone, at some point I want to talk about politics, ask about the president, or who they are going to vote for. In the Netherlands, you can talk about these things, maybe even have a tough discussion, but in the end, you are still good friends. You build relationships on controversies. In Korea that can be complicated.” On the other hand, Korean etiquette has rubbed off on Van Genugten to the point where he approaches conversations more gingerly when he is back in the Netherlands. “I feel like I’ve become more Korean. I care more about a person’s feelings. Living in Korea has made me more self-aware. I feel like I’ve adopted the best from the two countries.” Still, Van Genugten says he is simply “a Dutch guy, living here, learning about the country.” The idea of truly becoming Korean is a mission that he finds impossible. “I am a happy stranger in this country. But people accept me for who I am and that’s enough for me.” WELCOME TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD Last year, Van Genugten found himself at an old traditional market in Gajwa-dong, a neighborhood in Seoul’s Seodaemun District. It wasn’t particularly attractive or hygienic but it intrigued him. “I thought, ‘I didn’t know such a place existed!’ I felt there were so many lesser-known places that deserved attention and so many opportunities to learn about Korea through them.” His most ambitious YouTube project ensued: a series of videos about each of Seoul’s 467 neighborhoods, or dong. He has already covered almost 40 of them. He says, “They all have their own stories and histories. It’s fascinating to learn about Korea through all these little tidbits that make each neighborhood so intriguing.” Pressed to pick his favorite spot from those documented so far, Van Genugten expresses appreciation for his area in Mapo District. “It’s like my hometown in Korea. Where I was raised. I know the streets like the back of my hand. It feels so like home and I don’t want to lose that feeling.” Eventually, he hopes to complement his series with a book, sharing his experiences alongside anecdotes from experts and residents. Many Korean viewers have commented that Van Genugten, a foreigner, seems to know more about Korea than they do. He dismisses that notion. “Probably not. I’m learning along the way. I’m not a professor teaching you. I’m more like a social media anthropologist.” Van Genugten wishes to share his passion and learning journey. “My goal used to be [to amass] subscribers but that’s very superficial, because what do you want to achieve after that? That’s very empty. We don’t ask why people make documentaries. We just watch and enjoy. That’s what I hope people do on my channel.”

Embracing and Sharing Challenges

In Love with Korea 2023 WINTER

Embracing and Sharing Challenges American Megan Moon introduces Korea on her YouTube channel “Megan Moon” to hundreds of thousands of followers and inspires many of them to not wait to chase their dreams. Arriving in Korea in 2012, Megan Bowen intended to stay for only a short time, but instead she got married and became Megan Moon, a successful YouTuber and mother of twins. Megan Moon sits on a vast royal blue sofa in her living room, which overlooks a spacious lawn sparkling with late morning dew. There is a tran­quil ease to her home in Paju, a 35-minute drive north from Seoul and much closer to the Kore­an Demilitarized Zone. The air is breezy, and the neighborhood is almost rural and very quiet. She had the same backdrop growing up in the American South, where deer would stop by her yard. Now, after living in Seoul for ten years, she is resettling with her husband, a pattern mak­er who designs outfits for, among others, Korean celebrities, and her twin children, who were born last year. They are not alone. Hundreds of thou­sands of subscribers to Moon’s popular YouTube channel “Megan Moon” get glimpses of her home life and, most of all, aspects of Korean culture and society. Throughout her years in Korea, Moon has committed herself to adopting what she perceives to be the positives of Korean culture, without ne­glecting those of her American background. Cul­turally, she now sees herself as “somewhere in the middle.” YOUTUBE SUCCESS Beguiled by the sound of spoken Korean, Moon Megan plunged into learning the language and now speaks Korean effortlessly. She feels her profi­ciency helps her understand the culture, which in turn broadens the dimensions of her YouTube videos. “I think through language you can kind of understand how people think in their cultures because the way grammar is set up really deter­mines, I guess, how you think about stuff.” It is a full-time job juggling the production, administrative, and creative demands of her You­Tube channel, but having an audience of 900,000 subscribers is enough to attract paid ads. Using a camera-facing vlog format, Moon takes subscrib­ers with her, talking to Koreans about their every­day activities and favorite local places. One area that is difficult to convey to those who are entirely unfamiliar with Korea is food. The experience of Korean food is deeply connect­ed to the country’s culture. In Moon’s case, she initially found it challenging to eat boiling hot stews and soups and waited up to ten minutes to let them cool down. Now, she does not hesitate. “I just dig in. So, I think I’ve adjusted to wanting piping hot food. The last time we visited Ameri­ca, all the food at the restaurants was just so cold. ‘Where’s the steam?!’” Moon also marvels at how Korean cuisine us­es all parts of a given ingredient, resulting in less waste compared to the United States, where some parts would likely be thrown away. Sweet pota­to stems are one example. “They are awesome,” Moon declares. “And then the garlic stems. Some­times it’s just natural weeds that grow outside. When I went to America and I was driving, you could see mugwort on the side of the road. We would not even think to eat it. Here, people eat those things.” Below her videos—particularly the more re­cent ones, which involve challenges, personal goals, and family life—are comments by throngs of inspired subscribers. Moon is aware of the wide impact of her content. Foreigners approach her on the street and say they came to Korea after watching her videos. “They say, ‘It was my dream, but I was scared,’” Moon says. Hence, the message she seeks to deliver on her channel is to encourage people to try to achieve goals in life. “I have had things that did not work out, like trying to sell clothing online. But I can just say, ‘Well, that’s not for me. Move on to the next thing!’ Life’s too short. And if you don’t try, then you don’t know if it’s going to work well or not,” she says.   IMPRESSIONS Moon balances her family responsibilities and YouTube vlogging with personal challenges such as meeting fitness goals. Food pops up again when Moon describes how her journey to Korea began. “I went to Korean restau­rants. The food was good and the side dishes were free, so I kept going while I was in college,” she recalls. “And I heard the Korean language and thought it was beautiful. I wanted to learn it and the staff told me about Korea.” After graduation, Moon set out for Korea in 2012 for a two-year stint teaching English. For many foreigners who call Korea “home,” their first impressions are a whirlwind of new beginnings. Moon was struck by being in an ethnically homogenous place for the first time. Though not surprising, it was an eye-opening experience being surrounded only by Koreans. “It was kind of strange coming from Ameri­ca, which is more of a melting pot,” she recalls. “It wasn’t a bad thing, but I remember finding it in­teresting to see just one type of person.” Another adjustment was a lack of even casual relationships. The relaxed pace of her communi­ty in the United States was conducive to becoming acquainted and staying connected. But in Seoul, the intense lifestyle and strong work ethic cuts in­to time for socializing. Still, the changes in atmosphere were not enough to prevent the sojourn from becoming an open-ended move. “I decided to stay because I felt at home in Korea,” she explains. “I think the culture and country match me well and I figured that I could start a new life and get married here. I really like Korean people. They are very nice and helpful.”   MOTHERHOOD Moon’s life changed, of course, with the birth of her twins, a boy and a girl: Rubin and Luna. “Two human beings need me all day, and not just for food and cleaning. They need help regulat­ing their emotions. They need attention and stim­ulation. You have to teach them how to be peo­ple. Like every little thing you do, you have got to show them, right? That’s the most difficult part, I guess. I am sort of a perfectionist. I like to do ev­erything well. So, I’m not just going to sit here and show them cartoons or something.” Her main goal is simply giving her children the confidence to live freely and do what makes them happy. “I would just say I want my children to be growth-minded, to find joy in overcoming challenges. Then I think they will be fine, even if they just want to work at a convenience store.” Amid her YouTube and parental responsibil­ities, Moon carves out time just for herself—a workout to recharge emotionally and maintain fitness. In 2021, she challenged herself to get in­to shape for a bikini model competition. Her quest was captured on her channel and was also the sub­ject of a KBS documentary. And she won the con­test. MIXED HERITAGE AND IDENTITY Moon strives to raise her children to be happy and true to themselves, whether in a Korean or American cultural context. A video uploaded in July 2013, titled “Q&A How do Koreans react when they discover I’m Black?” has over 1.3 million views. In it, Megan says she is “Black, but really, really light-skinned,” and in­troduces her parents through photographs. Her mother is of mixed heritage, with White, Black, and Native American ancestors. Her father is Black. Growing up, Moon was labeled and sin­gled out for her paler complexion. But she anchors her identity elsewhere, namely in her personali­ty and actions. Mindful of being made to feel like an outlier as a child, she wants to avoid putting an exact label on her children. “I think we are just going to kind of let it flow more naturally: You are Korean. You are American. You speak two languages. Whatev­er. We celebrate Christmas and Chuseok.” As Moon grew up, she became the kind of per­son who could thrive in different environments. “I’m a very driven, goal-oriented person. I like to take on challenges,” she says, crediting her father for her attitude. When she was six years old, she signed up to be a cheerleader. The training required several laps around a football field, some 2.5 kilometers per lap. She hated the routine and wanted to quit. But her father refused to support surrender­ing. “He was like, ‘No, you can’t quit because you might learn something through it.’” From that point onward, Megan’s father completed the runs with her. “That was a big thing for me. It really shaped the way I started viewing things. Maybe if my dad had said, ‘You want to quit? Okay, quit,’ I might not even be here in Korea today. I think I would have had a different mentality and viewpoint on life in general.” What is her next challenge? The list is long, she assures. One of them is especially unique and un­expected. “Actually, I want to get my bus driver’s license. Can you imagine: a young, foreign woman is your bus driver in Korea?” Daniel Bright Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

A Taste of Happiness

In Love with Korea 2023 AUTUMN

A Taste of Happiness For Dominique Herqué, Korea is a country where dreams come true. He tills his land in the central region to produce wine in an all-natural way that reminds him of his childhood in France. Born in Alsace, France, Dominique Herqué ended a long career as an engineer to pursue his dream of making wine. After studying enology and working at an Alsace winery, he and his wife founded a winery named Little Alsace in Korea’s landlocked North Chungcheong Province. The little Alsace winery, where Dominique Herqué lives and works, is peaceful but not entirely tranquil. In the courtyard, swaying wind chimes tinkle nonstop, while birds, chickens, and geese form a constant background chorus. However, the sounds of nature, which some may consider noise, are music to his ears. The winery is nestled in Suanbo, a township in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province. Herqué and his wife, novelist Shin Ihyeon, say they fell in love with the place at first sight. A mountain looms in the rear and the front is unobstructed. The setting resembles Dominique’s hometown in Alsace, France’s easternmost wine region, where fertile soil and abundant sunshine provide perfect conditions for the numerous vineyards scattered throughout the rolling hills. Little Alsace mirrors those qualities, which comforts Herqué now that he is halfway around the world from where he grew up. “Arriving in Korea in 2017, I spent one whole year moving around the country to try and find the right place for farming and winemaking,” Herqué explains. Then a friend recommended a plot of land in central Korea, and he immediately knew that he had found the right place for him. LIKE A FOREST Little Alsace’s vineyard covers around 4,000 square meters. Herqué and Shin call it a “forest-like vineyard.” The first years were devoted to getting the soil ready. Herqué poured mounds of fallen leaves, sesame stalks, and five tons of rice bran into the soil. About three years later, the soil’s fertility reached a level he deemed “incredible.” The focus now is on maintaining the health of the land to ensure that their wine tastes right. Good wine comes from well-tended land, and good fruit comes from fertile soil. The winery has over ten varieties of grapevines and around 30 varieties of apple trees. They help create a diversity of flavors in the wine. The grapevines and apple trees are joined by over 100 other plant species, including peach, jujube, persimmon, fig, mulberry, kiwi, and lavender, among others. Parts of the trees are eventually used to make compost, enabling the couple to eschew herbicides or pesticides. The trees, along with chickens, geese, bees, earthworms, and diverse microorganisms thrive symbiotically, benefiting one another. All of this constitutes the terroir of Little Alsace. Winemakers use this French term, derived from terre, or land, and roughly translated as “sense of place,” in a way others may speak about an ecosystem. Believing that plants respond to the movement of planets, Herqué follows French farming methods that align with the planetary calendar instead of the 365-day solar calendar. “There are specific days which are good for fruit, roots, leaves, and flowers, respectively. We simply follow the wisdom of life accumulated through the centuries.” Herqué also considers the weather forecast when weighing the possible tasks of a particular day. For example, trimming the grass could expose fresh shoots to frost a few days later. On the other hand, if the grass stays untrimmed and heavy rain were to fall, insects would swarm in it. These are precious lessons learned from past failures. The overall work routine is the same, but no two years are identical in timing.   THE INVENTORY Natural red wine ages in an oak barrel at Little Alsace. The winery’s brand name is LESDOM, a portmanteau of the French plural article “les” and a diminutive form of Dominique, the winegrower’s given name. Delicious fruits play a crucial role in shaping the taste of the wine. They are grown by using sustainable farming methods without any harmful chemicals. The couple also raise geese and chickens, and take care of earthworms and tiny organisms in the soil. Little Alsace offers cidre, or cider in English, as well as rosé and red wine. While the cidre is made from fermented apples, the rosé is made only with grapes, and the red wine with a blend of grapes and sanmeoru (Vitis amurensis). The natural cidre made from apples is the flagship product of Little Alsace. The winery has 30 types of apple trees. The entire process, including fermentation, takes over a year. Herqué and Shin never use additives, not even yeast. The winery’s terroir and the couple’s dedication and hard work are encapsulated in a bottle of Little Alsace’s truly natural wine. The brand name, LESDOM, is a portmanteau of “les,” the plural form of the French article “le,” and the diminutive of Herqué’s given name, Dominique. It stands for the “Dominique Family.”   LIFE CHANGES Herqué checks the clarity of his red wine. He focuses on encapsulating the particular character and flavors of the land where the fruits are grown and preserves them in each bottle, rather than seeking a standardized taste. Shin Ihyeon joined the Korean literary community in 1994 with her novel A Room Good for Hiding. She and Herqué met in Paris in 1998. Back then, Herqué was a computer programmer in Paris, and Shin was fulfilling her dream of living in France for about a year. The first encounter was at a housewarming party by a Vietnamese couple they both knew. Shin and Herqué were immediately attracted to each other, and their romance began. Shin soon dropped her one-year plan, and five years later they got married. Afterward, Herqué was first relocated to Cambodia, where the couple stayed for six years, and then to Korea. Herqué recalls that the early days of working in Korea were not particularly happy ones. He was swamped with responsibilities. “I was so caught up in my work that I could not attend to the other aspects of my life. However, looking back, I also feel grateful. It was during this period that the dream of becoming a farmer took root in my heart.” His maternal grandfather, who dedicated his entire life to cultivating vineyards in Alsace, left equal parts of the land to his children. The vineyards were Herqué’s childhood playground, and during the harvest season, they became his workspace. He began to yearn for those days. To turn his dream into reality, Herqué returned to France and studied for two years at the CNEAC (Centre National d’Enseignement Agricole par Correspondance) agricultural school before spending a year training at a wine-making facility. At first, he set his mind on cultivating grapes in France but no location satisfied him. Shin was also hesitating; in France, she had never lived outside of Paris, and so she expressed, for the first time, worries about living in a foreign country. “She suggested going to Korea, since there was no place that produced cidre in the traditional European way, allowing us to venture into new territory. I was happy just to be able to make wine,” Dominique recalls. And so the pair came back to Korea and Little Alsace was born, quenching Herqué’s yearning for the past. “That longing turned into a dream, and it was in Korea that this dream eventually came true.” Farming helped him better understand Korea, a country he had little knowledge of before he met his wife. Indeed, he is truly grateful to his adopted home for giving him the opportunity to fulfill his dreams. NEW WORKS Little Alsace produces some 10,000 bottles annually. They are sold through the winery’s website and wine-tasting events. Visitors to the vineyard are welcome to sample the offerings, which often leads to sales. The prices for a bottle range from 32,000 to 48,000 won. Last year, a new building for the company’s operations was completed. There is more space than needed, so the couple plans to use part of it to share information on ecological farming methods and natural wine-making techniques, as well as to hold exhibitions related to alcoholic beverages and agriculture. Herqué thinks that his wife is best suited to take the lead in those activities. “Just the thought of this space being used in these ways makes me happy.” As soon as the sun rises, Herqué steps onto his land to greet its many living things. He stays inside while the sunshine is too strong but goes out again once the heat subsides to till the land until the last sliver of sun disappears. Recently, he began to use ropes to ensure the grapevine branches grow upwards instead of drooping. This job is physically demanding because the vines are young and can be compared to temperamental teenagers. But he often finds himself smiling as he faces new challenges. A smile reflecting the happiness he has found in Korea. Park Mi-kyeong Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Racking Up a New Life

In Love with Korea 2023 SUMMER

Racking Up a New Life Sruong Pheavy is the most admired billiard player in South Korea today. Her journey from complete novice to world champion serves as a vivid example of how hard work can lead to outstanding achievements. Cambodian Sruong Pheavy started playing billiards at the urging of her Korean husband. In 12 years, she has transformed from a complete novice to one of the top professionals in three-cushion billiards. In 2011, shortly after moving to Korea, Cambodia-born Sruong Pheavy picked up a billiard cue stick for the first time in her life. Fast-forward to this March, when she won the SK Rent-a-Car PBA–LPBA World Championship. The victory was all the sweeter considering that her opponent was Kim Ga-young, widely known in the sport as an “insurmountable wall.” With a final score of 4 sets to 3, billiard fans canonized the nail-biting match as an epic encounter that will be remembered for years to come. “The thrill of victory lingered on even after the match ended, and I cried alone a lot,” Pheavy says. “All the hard moments I had been through flashed through my mind, and I could see myself as the champion at the end of that panorama. At the same time, I felt grateful to the many people who had helped me on my path to this point, in the realization that no one knows what life has in store for you.” NOT JUST FOR HERSELF Pheavy is motivated by more than titles and trophies. After her husband, Kim Man-sik, taught her how to use a computer, she browsed the internet and learned about the reality of Cambodia. “I shed tears when I realized how poor my country is,” she recalls. Kim pointed out that if she became a successful billiard player and earned money, she could help Cambodian children. “Until that time, I had only thought about helping my own family, but realizing that I could help more Cambodians with the money I would make gave me courage. So I decided at that moment to work even harder,” Pheavy explains. At her home in Cheongju, in North Chungcheong Province, hangs a picture of Cambodian children. Written underneath it is this pledge: “I will live for them.” Now, she uses her tournament prize money to buy supplies for the children. Her dream is to build a school in her hometown and a sports center, which would bolster Cambodia’s sports infrastructure and help develop children’s minds and bodies in a more comfortable environment. FIRST ENCOUNTER Coming from Cambodia, Pheavy knew she could have a higher income in Korea, but she did not envision it would be through a sport that she knew nothing about. Her introduction to billiards came about when she accompanied her husband to one of the more than 40,000 billiard halls in Korea. She does not have any special memory of that first encounter, other than being a little bored waiting for her husband to finish playing. But Kim had unwittingly uncovered a diamond in the rough. “He told me I should try playing, perhaps feeling sorry for leaving me bored. I just hit the ball in accordance with his instructions, but I think my husband saw something in me that I myself didn’t. When we got home that day, he asked me, ‘Do you want to be a billiard player?’” She said no, thinking that paying for lessons and fees would only be a waste of money. But Kim persisted and Pheavy finally relented. Equipped with a 30,000-won ($24) cue stick that her husband had bought her, she began spending her days at a billiard hall. The first years were a struggle. Learning the geometry, physics, and body control involved in a multitude of possible billiard shots is difficult enough. Learning it with a very limited Korean language ability doubled the challenge. Pheavy and her instructor initially had to communicate by drawing pictures, but as she picked up more and more Korean, their communication and her skills climbed sharply. “Once I saw my potential, I felt a desire to make a bonfire out of this tiny ember. It was this desire that served as the driving force behind my 10 hours-a-day practice routine,” she says. Her enormous amount of daily practice eventually caused so much pain in her arms that some days she was unable to even pick up a spoon. Kim sympathized but he subscribed to the “no pain, no gain” philosophy followed by many athletes and coaches. He never expressed sympathy, believing that only extraordinary effort could bring success. Kim also critiqued his wife’s matches, which sometimes caused friction. “At times, I would get angry and shoot back, ‘If you’re so good, why don’t you do it yourself?’ But deep down, I knew that I should do what he told me. He is someone I am truly grateful for,” says Pheavy.   PATH TO CHAMPIONSHIPS Sruong Pheavy with her first-place trophy after winning the SK Rent-a- Car PBA–LPBA World Championship 2023, held in March in Korea. ⓒ Park Yong-seon By 2014, Pheavy had sufficiently honed her skills to sweep national amateur club competitions. In January 2017, she officially registered as a professional player, and before the end of the year, having reeled off a series of tournament victories, she was ranked the No. 1 female billiard player in Korea. Being a non-Korean in the Korean billiard community was head-turning in itself. Pheavy’s meteoric rise to the top was entirely unexpected and paved the way for appearances at international tournaments. Despite her many previous victories, the World Championship tournament was especially difficult. Even the qualifying rounds were so stressful that she could not sleep properly, and after waking up, she had to spend one or two hours taking deep breaths to calm herself. “I was so stressed that my body didn’t feel like my own. To be sure, nervousness was nothing new to me, but it had never been this serious,” she says. Billiards is a game where the outcome depends on the correct posture and the elimination of unnecessary movement before a shot is taken. During the title match, Pheavy’s hands visibly trembled. “When I saw myself like that, I became more nervous, and the more nervous I became the more my hands trembled. And then my nervousness increased... It was a vicious cycle,” she says. Fortunately, she regained her composure and was ultimately able to deliver the news of her World Championship victory to her parents in Cambodia. PAYING BACK SUPPORT Sruong Pheavy's primary motivation is to earn prize money that will help improve the lives of Cambodian children. ⓒ Park Yong-seon “My husband sometimes thanks me for not giving up, apologizing for his previous nagging. Of course, there were moments when I wanted to give up too. But every time that happened, I thought about the children in Cambodia and pushed on,” Pheavy says. She emphasizes that without her fans’ support, she would not have been able to climb to the top. That parallels with one of the aspects of Korea she finds most endearing — genuine kindness. It is far different than in Cambodia, she observes. There, someone who offers to help carry heavy luggage, for example, will eventually often ask for money, but in Korea that would not happen because help is heartfelt, she says. “When I was going through tough times, a word of encouragement and support from my fans gave me strength. Just last night, I shed tears while reading some of their comments. Whatever you do, you cannot accomplish great things just by yourself. I realize time and again that I got to where I am with the help of many people. I want to become someone who is indispensable for both Korea and Cambodia.” Hwang Jung-eun Writer Lee Min-hee Photographer

Taking Paths Unplanned

In Love with Korea 2023 SPRING

Taking Paths Unplanned With an interest in everything from science and design to travel and skiing, Marie Boes has followed an unexpected path to become a small business owner with a slew of certificates and awards as well as an honorary citizenship of Seoul. Marie Boes first visited Korea in 2014 after finishing a summer course in China. A few years later, she returned intending to only stay a month but her activities spiraled into open-ended residency. When Marie Boes came to live in Korea in 2016, she started writing a blog, mostly to assure her grandmother that she was fine. It eventually evolved into two businesses, a media content production agency, and an SEO (search engine optimization) marketing company. At the age of 29, Boes, born and raised in the quiet Belgian city of Ypres, now finds herself a small business owner living in Seoul. “It was never really planned. I just rolled into it,” she says. “Everyone who moves abroad starts a blog for their family to read. That’s when I started writing. Then I got the opportunity to go on free trips if I promoted places. I thought, ‘This is cool. I’m 23, I’m getting these free trips, and I like writing. Maybe I can do something with it.’” LIFE TURNS Living in Korea was not planned either. After completing a summer program in China as part of her master’s degree in 2014, Boes came to Korea, believing it to be a safe place for a young woman to travel alone. “I had no idea what to expect. I had a Lonely Planet book and that was it,” she recalls. “I ended up doing a lot of hiking. I went to the coast, I went to Seoul, Busan, Gyeongju, and Sokcho by myself. Then I went back to England, worked for a year and half and was going to move back to Belgium. But then I thought, ‘I’ll go back to Korea. I really enjoyed myself there.’ So I came back for a month, and I’m still here.” At first, Boes did a lot of odd jobs, including teaching English, ski instructing, and working on a movie set, in addition to writing her travel blog, “Be Marie.” She also began writing for other websites, all the while wondering how she could get more people to read hers. So, she taught herself about website development and SEO by watching YouTube videos. As her blog grew and attracted more and more traffic, she began to think she was quite good at what she was doing. Other people thought so too, and asked her to work on their websites. That’s how one of her companies, Namu Marketing, was born. Boes, however, had not studied media or information technology. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering at Nottingham Trent University in England. It was a major she chose because she didn’t know what she wanted to do. “I wanted to do everything. I was interested in everything,” she says. Industrial engineering combined science and design, two things that she loves, and has stood her in good stead as she now works on several medical websites. COLORFUL CAREER Design has been and remains an important part of Boes’s life. She completed courses in product design in Belgium and Italy, and has experience in designing bicycle accessories and sliding roofs. She even co-founded a fashion brand. When COVID-19 hit and brought tourism to a standstill, she had little work to do. So, she applied for Asan Sanghoe, a six-month global entrepreneurship course that brings together young re-settlers from North Korea, foreign residents, and locals to generate startup ideas. There, Boes met a woman from North Korea, and they founded IStory, a social impact fashion brand that produces T-shirts with elbow patches that conceptually illustrate the stories of North Koreans who have settled down in the South. Though she is no longer involved, Boes says, “I am very proud of that work. We were in the New York Times! It was really cool.” On her own Boes now designs blankets, bags, and T-shirts inspired by dancheong, the colorful paintwork that decorates wooden buildings at palaces and temples. This work is driven by her love of traditional Korean patterns and the failure to find what she wanted in museum shops. Though she doesn’t actively promote them, she gets ten to twenty orders every month. During the Asan Sanghoe course Boes also met Lee Ji-an, a university student originally from North Korea, and Min Gyeong-hwan, who had returned from the U.S. to fulfill Korea’s compulsory military service requirement. With their diverse backgrounds, they had different ideas but a shared purpose — to promote Korea globally. Later they created the “How Is Korea” YouTube channel, for which they produce video content on topics ranging from teaching English, travel spots, food, and K-pop to advice on safety, taxis, and how to use Kakao apps. Both through her blog and “How Is Korea,” Boes saw interest in Korea rise throughout the pandemic period. “Before, if I talked about Korea to Belgians, they had no idea what to imagine. But now K-pop and K-drama are really popular in Belgium, too. I really feel Korea has put itself on the map culturally. So many people are now eagerly waiting to visit the country,” she says. DOWN TO BUSINESS Boes has a marketing business and YouTube channel that promotes Korea. She is also interested in public speaking and mentoring young women in business. Though Boes heads two companies, she does not employ full-time, office-based staff. She is at her office twice a week, with her two partners, and all other work is done by freelancers on a project basis. Most days she works from her home in Seoul’s Itaewon area. The set-up may sound casual but she says she is very structured. “I always wake up at 7:30 a.m. and have a slow morning breakfast, and then I start work at around nine. The morning is my most productive time, my ‘crunch time.’ That’s when I write website content, proposals, or reports. Anything that requires my full attention.” Afternoons are more relaxed and may involve meeting friends or a hike up Mt. Nam nearby before returning to her desk. She loves Korea’s café culture that allows her to spend hours working in a café if she wants to. When the pandemic upset her routine, she took on a regular desk job, working on the marketing team for a beauty export company. She sat in an office from eight to five and experienced the intricacies of Korean office hierarchy and personal relations. Like many others who have relocated to Korea because they like the country and the people, she found herself struggling with social relations. “I really tried to integrate in every sense. I studied hard to learn Korean, I tried to make all Korean friends. People didn’t know how to treat me because I tried to act Korean,” Boes says. Life became easier when she made peace with the fact that she is a foreigner. She admits that it is because her environment now is not typically Korean, with most of her friends being foreigners and most of her work in English. As a business owner, being young, foreign, and female has meant Boes had to work hard to prove herself. “I felt that whatever a man would do I would have to do three or four times better. But that did make me a better business owner in the end,” she says, and also stresses the importance of having a good lawyer and accountant. Boes now has a solid track record, working for clients such as the Seoul Law Group, that speaks for itself. In 2019, she won blogger awards from the Korea Tourism Organization and the Seoul Tourism Organization, and in 2021, she was named an Honorary Citizen of Seoul. INSPIRING OTHERS Considering all of Boes’s education and experience, the years don’t seem to add up. Only 29, she is indeed at a different stage of life compared to most of her peers. And yet, she calls herself not only a slow person but also very shy and a misfit: “I grew up deep in the countryside. I’ve always struggled with fitting in and I was the shyest person you can imagine. I had short hair and played basketball. I was very boyish. I just didn’t fit in.” Moreover, she has not taken an easy path in life. Having overcome many obstacles herself, Boes is now keen to work on public speaking and mentoring other young women to share her experience. Last year, she participated in several related programs, including one for women in the sciences at Ewha Womans University. She tries to inspire young women and show them that they don’t have to follow the path laid out for them. “The response is so positive and I get so much back from it,” she says. “If you look at the path I took, I jumped from place to place and it has worked out well.” Yet, it seems her grandmother’s worries about her not being in Belgium in a stable desk job are still on her mind. As she poses for some photos, she smiles and comments, “This will help her believe I do have a real job.” Failing to find the goods she wanted in museum shops, Boes decided to make her own products, including bags, T-shirts, and blankets inspired by traditional dancheong patterns. Boes sells goods inspired by traditional Korean patterns through her website “Be Marie,” which provides a wealth of information on travel destinations in Korea and introduces interesting aspects of Korean culture. © Be Korea Shop Cho Yoon-jung Freelance Writer and Translator Lee Min-hee Photographer

Take a Seat with “Dan and Joel”

In Love with Korea 2022 WINTER

Take a Seat with “Dan and Joel” YouTube is their main medium. Their objective is to tell a story. Britons Daniel Bright and Joel Bennett do it by simply inviting strangers to pause and chat over a meal or drink. Daniel Bright (seated) and Joel Bennett prepare to shoot another installment for their YouTube channel, “Dan and Joel.” They like to wave at and chat with passersby, enjoying such everyday encounters. Daniel Bright and Joel Bennett sit down outside a cafe in an alley of Yeonnam-dong, Seoul, and prepare to film their next video. It is a sunny late autumn afternoon. They will be leaving for London soon to shoot a promotional video on a Korean Wave event in London for the state-funded trade and investment promotion agency KOTRA, and it seems a good time to reflect on their past five years in Korea. As they set up their cameras – greeting everyone who walks past – an elderly gentleman stops to chat, eager to practice speaking English. The Yakult lady chugs by on her motorized cart and they wave. “It’s moments like these, that’s what I love about being here,” says Bennett. PEOPLE AND THEIR STORIES These moments may seem ordinary but that is the whole idea. Bright and Bennett operate the YouTube channel “Dan and Joel,” and their videos are based on the simple premise that everyone has a fascinating story to tell. When the two Britons arrived in 2017, they say they made more stereotypical content, walking around and talking to the camera – two more foreigners having fun in Korea. “As we progressed, we were encouraged to take a step back and take a more observational look at Korea. A big part of that was our faith in God, and the time we were spending asking him what kind of content he wanted us to make,” says Bennett. They pinpoint two videos that marked a change in their style and direction. One day, Bright decided to take a table outdoors and make some kimchi jjigae while Bennett filmed him. “This moment came when people started to gather round and this interaction began, which Dan was able to do thanks to his Korean language ability, his friendliness, and warmth,” says Bennett. On another occasion, they were about to leave Gwangjang Market around closing time when they saw a man sit down at a stall with a few bottles of soju. “He looked a bit sad, or lonely. It was a feeling that you can’t specifically describe,” Bright says. He went to talk with the man while Bennett filmed. “We were no longer looking at the camera, entertaining. It was just me and this guy having a drink together and talking,” Bright says. Later they realized that it was a unique interlude. Soon their videos began to resemble documentaries, “capturing the moment rather than contriving or forcing it,” as Bennett puts it. People around them – an old lady eking out a living collecting scrap cardboard, a homeless man living at Seoul Station, and others – catch the duo’s attention, leading to straightforward videos, with Bright sitting down with people to eat and chat. Even before moving to Korea, Bright always stopped and talked to every homeless person he saw, Bennett notes. Bright remembers comments such as “Oh, it’s just because you’re foreigners,” or “You’re just doing that to make content.” “It’s a funny thing to say because, yes, it is content. It’s like saying I’m sitting in this chair to sit in this chair,” he muses. “But I think people like our content because it’s not too provocative or intense. When we talk about social issues, we don’t tell people what to think. I’m more interested in meeting the person. The fact that the homeless man was living in Seoul Station was fascinating but it wasn’t his identity.” Viewers say they love the videos and often leave comments on their warmth, depth and visual quality. CONVERGING LIVES Bright and Bennett met through a mutual friend, Josh Carrott of the “Korean Englishman” YouTube channel. First, they appeared in his videos and then they decided to branch out on their own to do something a bit different. It entailed moving to Korea. The documentary quality that emerged in their videos can be attributed to their skills and perspectives. Bennett studied film and video at London College of Communication. After graduating in 2010, he worked with a company making ethnographic videos for marketing purposes. “Mundane stuff, filming people brushing their teeth for instance. But varied demographics, from slums to rich places, and in Europe, Africa, China… It really gave me an eye for not just seeing things at the surface level,” he says. Bright did an online master’s degree in photojournalism at the same school in 2019. But before that he majored in Korean studies and linguistics at SOAS University of London, and also worked at the Korea Trade Center in London for two years after graduation. While growing up on the coast of North Wales, he was quite familiar with Korea. He attended a church where the pastor had a Korean wife. He first came to Korea for a year in 2012 as an exchange student. Bennett on the other hand says he hardly realized Korea existed until the 2002 FIFA World Cup was held here. He was into B-boying and had a vague notion that there would be many other street dancers in Korea. But through a friend he ended up doing a four-week stint teaching English in Pohang in 2011. Bright and Bennet do not seek fun only or make provocative content just to increase the number of views. For them, YouTube is a medium for communicating sketches of all types of people, including the young and old, the employed and the homeless.   BEING KOREAN? The camera has also been turned on foreigner friends in Korea for the series “Woori Mates.” It is the same kind of conversation format. One of the subjects they address is “Will I ever be Korean?” Korean immigrants around the world have for decades wondered if they would ever fit in. To hear people from other countries discuss identity issues in Korea is eye-opening. For Bennett, living in Korea has made him question what it is to be British. “I grew up in a multicultural society in Bedford, just outside of London. Most of my friends were mixed,” he says. When he returned to the UK last year for visa reasons, he said he felt genuinely anxious. “Dan asked me, ‘Do you think you’ve become Korean?’ I don’t think so, but I don’t think I am who I was when I left.” He is now engaged to a Korean woman who grew up in the Philippines and discussion of “third-culture” children wondering where they belong is another thread in their videos. Bright’s take on the subject seems to be summed up in the title of his book (written in Korean) “Jeo mapogu saram indeyo?” which translates to “I’m From Mapo-gu” and is an answer to “Where are you from?” In his book he says, “Mapo-gu [Mapo District] is where I settled when I first came to Korea, it’s where I live now, where we started as YouTube creators, and where my child was born.” Bright’s wife is a Korean woman he met in London. They have a young son, Anu. “I don’t want my kid walking around thinking, ‘Oh, I’m really British’ or ‘Oh, I’m really Korean.’ I don’t want that to be a big weight for him,” he says. “I think identity is about how you feel about yourself and how you live your life.” When they turn their cameras onto themselves, they discuss all sorts of issues that touch on their lives such as interracial and intercultural dating and marriage, being a British father in Korea, tattoos, their Christian faith and food. Sometimes they speak Korean. Other times, they converse in English. Accents and dialects in both languages are added for fun. “Dan and Joel” also features stories about the reality of living in Korea as a foreigner. After five years of documenting many conversations, the hosts are taking stock and wondering about the future. ⓒ DanandJoel   THE FOOD CONNECTION Food plays a big part in the “Dan and Joel” repertoire. It is nearly always present in the videos, sometimes as the main star and sometimes in the background. “Growing up, I didn’t really like food,” Bennett says. At some point he says he stopped eating meat and remembers the jeering he got when he ordered a veggie burger at a friend’s birthday party at a burger place. “Then I moved here, and I’ll never forget the first time I had BBQ. It just blew my mind. But more than the food, it’s the way Koreans eat, the collective nature of it. You’re sitting around the table cooking meat together or sharing jjigae. For me, it was a drastic cultural change,” he says. For Bright it was the opposite: “I grew up in a family where food was very important. Before almost every meal we’d be like ‘What’s the meal? What’s the meal?’ Every meal was so intense, almost too important. I think I appreciate Korean food culture because I come from an environment where food was really important.” His wife shares his love of food and they talk about it a lot. “It’s a very precious thing and a big part of my life,” Bright says. The ethos of sitting down over food and swapping stories is so simple and yet so appealing. As of November 2022, the Dan and Joel YouTube channel has 310,000 subscribers. People think they are amassing a fortune. So, the question has to be asked: “Is it sustainable?” They laugh. “No!” says Bennett. “I would not disagree,” Bright chimes in. They supplement their income with freelance writing and film work. Bright also works part-time as a creative content producer for Tokki Soju and Bennett also has a personal YouTube channel. After five years and 256 videos, the duo are in transition. Rather than being YouTubers they see themselves as content creators using the platform. Now they wonder if they can continue making content, make a living for their families, and even if it is time to stop. Their subscribers encourage them and ask them not to quit. So far, it seems more stories will be told at least for a while longer. Cho Yoon-jung Translator and Freelance WriterHeo Dong-wuk Photographer

From Wall Street to the Alleys of Seoul

In Love with Korea 2022 AUTUMN

From Wall Street to the Alleys of Seoul Landing in Korea 12 years ago to work on merger and acquisition deals, American Mark Tetto never imagined that an old house would change his life. Moving into a hanok inspired Mark Tetto’s interest in Korean art and culture. Through his interviews with artists, he continues to learn about Korean ideas of beauty. Mark Tetto may have been what Koreans see as the perfectly successful New Yorker: an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, an MBA from Wharton Business School, a Wall Street investment banking job at Morgan Stanley. It does make you wonder: why did he trade in that life and a Manhattan apartment for a new career in Korea and a hanok perched at the top of a very high, narrow alley in Seoul? THREE GOALS, NEW TRACK Soon after arriving in Korea, Tetto decided that no matter how long he stayed, he would work toward three goals: attain job expertise and perform well, learn the language, and make many interesting Korean friends from different industries. “Somehow I thought, if I did these three things well, then there would be some very interesting opportunities,” he says. And after five years things did start to happen. In a nutshell: “I changed companies, changed my house, and all of a sudden I was on TV.” First, Tetto moved to TCK Investments, where he is now co-CEO. The company was formed by Ohad Topor who shared a similar vision: to do global finance from Seoul. While working in global investing, Tetto is also active in the venture capital industry. Next, he moved to a new house, or rather an old house. One of the interesting people he had met was Nani Park, who had written a book about hanok and offered to show him some in Bukchon. “On a whim, I followed her here. I wasn’t looking to move but she showed me this house, and I ended up living here,” he says. Renovated to include a new basement area, the house is named Pyeonghaengje, meaning “a house where lives unfold in parallel.” While all this was happening, Tetto was asked to appear on “Abnormal Summit” (a.k.a. “Non Summit”), the JTBC show that has f luent Korean speakers from various countries exchange views, giving insights into different cultures and ways of thinking. Sometimes, when the discussion turned to tradition, he ended up talking about his house. Thus, Tetto became engraved in viewers’ minds as a foreigner who is very knowledgeable about Korean culture. In fact, Tetto had started studying up on old Korean furniture and art out of necessity. He realized that none of his old furniture and nothing he could buy in the shops was suitable for his hanok. “I thought, if I was going to live here, I was going to do it properly. I decided to learn about this space, and to do that, I thought I should learn about the Joseon Dynasty and what furniture people had in their houses,” he says. FROM CONNOISSEUR TO COLLECTOR What started out as a simple quest for a living room table turned Tetto into an art connoisseur, collector, writer, and lecturer. Eventually, he made the table himself, an octagonal piece inspired by traditional latticed doors. In the process, he mentally pictured other items for the house, thinking, “Should I put a bandaji [chest] here, or a dojagi [ceramicvessel] there?” He began visiting museums and doing his research. “I first started studying Joseon baekja [white porcelain], and then you look further back to Goryeo celadon, and then even further back to Silla togi [earthenware]. You go back but then you go forward as well, which I didn’t expect. I might be researching online for a dalhangari [moon jar], and then all of a sudden the names of modern Korean artists come up, names like Koo Bohnchang and Ik-joong Kang. I found the pattern of white porcelain moon jars can appear in modern Korean art,” Tetto says. So, Gorye Dynasty jar sits on the kitchen bench top, and coffee is served in colorful lacquered copper cups by Huh Myoung-wook. In the living room is a folding screen featuring Koo Bohnchang’s ethereal photographs of blue and-white porcelain. A piece of Silla earthenware adorns a Joseon wooden chest with a modern monochrome painting hanging above. From a wall closet, Tetto casually brings out an antique wooden lunchbox and an ancient unified Silla roof-end tile. Downstairs, he slides open the doors of the wardrobe he designed himself, revealing shelves and racks in a composition inspired by Joseon chaekgado (painting of a scholar’s bookcase), with his clothes hanging like curios. On the wall facing the bed in the guestroom is a photograph by Kim Hee-won printed on traditional mulberry paper, or hanji, showing latticed doors opening out onto the garden, as though extending the room and bringing the outdoors inside. Tetto’s collection is a mix of old and new, and every piece has a story. All of the modern pieces were made by people whom he met when interviewing artists for Living Sense magazine. “Once you hear an artist’s story, that person’s work becomes much more meaningful. Now that work is not just an object, it’s something that I have a relationship with,” he explains, giving his dishes by the potter Ji Seungmin as an example. “The plates are not just plates. I know this person. I met him and his wife before they married. They invited me to the wedding. So now there’s a story with these objects.” Over the past four years, Tetto has interviewed some fifty artists. This has given him a precious education on Korean art, and has led to opportunities to lecture on what he has learned. Tetto’s hanok, named Pyeonghaengjae, is decorated with objects just right for the house, including old furniture, ceramics, artworks old and new and even a table that he designed himself. SECOND CHAPTER When first asked to lecture on Korean art from a foreigner’s point of view, he asked himself “Am I qualified?” He pored over his interviews and house and found three common threads in both traditional and modern Korean art: yeobaekui mi, jayeonui mi and jeong. The best English approximations, respectively, would be “the beauty of empty space,” “the beauty of nature,” and human touch and warmth that, for want of a better word, is often translated as “affection.” “As foreigners, we do see things in a somewhat different way. One point I can share is how amazing these things are to us,” he says. “I take a lot of joy in trying to get the word out about Korean art and artists. I didn’t go to art school nor did I study art or art history or art criticism. But meeting the artists one by one taught me a lot about Korean ideas of beauty.” Tetto is now enjoying what he calls the “second chapter” of his life in Korea, and says, “The Mark of today is very different after five years of living in a hanok. Just sitting in this space was teaching me things and transforming me.” Appreciative of the opportunities that have come his way, he has turned to philanthropy to give back to society. He joined Young Friends of the Museum, and together they raised money to purchase two precious Goryeo Buddhist artifacts from Japan, which they donated to the National Museum of Korea (NMK). On his own, he purchased 21 ancient Silla roof-end tiles (sumaksae) from an American collector, which also went to the museum. In addition to the NMK, he also supports the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) and the National Ballet. The flowers and plants lining the path leading from the front gate to the front door of the house enhance the beauty of the seasons NEW PERSPECTIVE This year, Tetto was asked to serve as ambassador for the Museum Week, held in mid-May. His role was essentially to encourage people to visit museums and art galleries by hosting a number of events and creating social media content. Though New York has some of the greatest museums in the world, he says he rarely went to them. But now museums, and an old house, have changed his life. Tetto has 177,000 followers on Instagram, and the comments left there suggest his perspective on Korean art and culture has made many people take a second look at what is around them. As he walks home through the alleys from his office in Gwanghwamun, he basks in the sense of neighborhood. In his writings about Korean culture, he calls the alleys the face of Seoul, the place where the real life of the city takes place. And when he gets home, a Joseon Dynasty official on a hanging scroll in the entry (whose identity Tetto is investigating) watches over him as he takes off his shoes. While many Koreans may have aspirations about New York, Tetto says, “It’s a very exciting and diverse life I’ve found in Korea. If I was in the U.S., I would mostly be doing my day job and going home. That would be it.” And probably sitting on furniture and eating off plates from Wal-Mart, he muses. The portrait of a Joseon Dynasty official, who seems to be guarding the entryway, is thought to date to the early 20th century   Cho Yoon-jung Freelance Writer and Translator Lee Min-heePhotographer

Following Where Opportunities Lead

In Love with Korea 2022 SUMMER

Following Where Opportunities Lead For many who come to Korea, teaching English is a brief stop on the road to something else. For Christopher Maslon, it became permanent. But he also thrives in art, his original pursuit, and dabbles in other areas, always ready to add to the things he loves to do. Christopher Maslon is difficult to categorize in one word. He thrives in a classroom, an art gallery and a gym full of bodybuilders. Dressed in a blue shirt and striped tie, Christopher Maslon certainly looks the part of an English professor. But the stripes have a bit of a sparkle to them, suggesting that there’s something more. Look him up on social media and you’ll find his Facebook is devoted to art while his Instagram is filled with bodybuilding photos and the occasional picture of characters such as Spiderman and Superman, and oddly enough, a gentleman from the Victorian era. You begin to wonder if his accounts have been hacked. “I don’t like to let my left hand know what my right hand is doing. I like to separate things into different categories,” says Maslon. Aside from being a professor, it turns out that Maslon is an artist, as well as a bodybuilder who does a bit of cosplay on the side; there are occasional modelling and acting gigs and bits of Victorian gothic art and fashion. His attitude to life calls for taking opportunities as they arise, and should they fall in unfamiliar territory, to simply learn along the way. “Whenever something is offered to me that seems massive, I completely throw myself at it,” he says. Still, Maslon did not immediately jump at the chance to try life in Korea. When Maslon, living in the U.S. state of Ohio after graduating from art school, received a mass email sent out by his Korean neighbor, he was dismissive. The solicitation said, “Teach English in Korea.” Maslon promptly hit the delete key. Nevertheless, the email niggled at him for days. Finally, he went to confer with his neighbor, a professor of computer technology, who exclaimed, “You’re the one!” Taken aback, Maslon protested but soon found himself on a plane to Korea, enticed by a free ticket and a guarantee that he could return after a week if he didn’t like it. A New Life “I landed in Korea on March 31, 2002, which I call my ‘Korean birthday,’” Maslon says. “That was 20 years ago, and I never went back home.” It was the year of the Korea/Japan World Cup Finals. Though Maslon wasn’t a soccer fan, he got caught up in the fever. He even attended a dinner where he sat next to a middle-aged Dutchman, only to realize later while watching the news that the man was Guus Hiddink, the head coach of the Korean team. “It was so wonderful to be here at that time. It was magic. I felt like I was a part of history,” he recalls. Over time, Maslon came to admire Korea’s work ethic and fell in love with its food and period TV dramas, forming an especial affinity for Joseon kings and yangban (the nobility). He also fell in love with a linguistics student, Kwon Sunae, whom he met at church on his third day in Korea. They were married three years later. At this memory, Maslon laughs and mimics the advice of his Korean landlady back in Ohio: “Now, Christopher, don’t go marrying the first Korean girl you see right off the plane!” Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 2006. Unexpectedly, Maslon also fell in love with teaching. He began with a nine-month contract at Dong-A Technical High School in Daejeon, the fifth-largest metropolis in Korea, and realized that he had found his dream job. “I was meant to explain things. Share things. Describe things. It’s my passion. It is the absolute greatest thing that ever happened to me,” he says. After three years he moved on to Daejeon Health Sciences College (now Daejeon Health Institute of Technology), where he continues to teach not only English courses but also art history, art design and photography. To increase his professionalism, he obtained an MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Andy Warhol Effect For Maslon, this career turn was unexpected because, apart from hating school himself, he felt he was born to be an artist. When he was four years old and left to amuse himself one day, he found a box of crayons and drew all over the walls – mostly trees and animalsin black and purple. Maslon’s main media is silkscreen printing, inspired by Andy Warhol’s iconic “100 Cans,” which he first saw in a high school art class. “Fireworks went off in my brain. From that day forth, I was fascinated with printmaking and became obsessed with learning the process that Andy Warhol used to create his Marilyn Monroes and Campbell’s soup cans,” he says. Knowing exactly what he wanted to do with his life, he gained a scholarship to Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and threw himself into the art of serigraphy. In Korea, he was delighted to discover its time-honored printing tradition that includes Jikji simche yojeol, the oldest book in the world printed with movable metal type. Fortunately, his teaching job left time to work on his art as well and he soon joined the Daejeon Arts Collection (DJAC), a group of foreign artists. “Lucky Numbers” 2015. Silkscreen on vinyl. 30 x 42 cm. “Telephone Series #1 (3)” 2015. Silkscreen on vinyl. 30 x 42 cm. Neo-Pop Identity A breakthrough came when his silkscreen of a 1940s American refrigerator featured at the DJAC spring show in 2015 caught the eye of the gallery owner. He took Maslon to a studio known as the Korea Printing Residency Program. “As soon as I came to the doorway of the building, I could pick up the smell of the intaglio ink. I knew I was discovering a place where printers met. I was in nirvana. I was given a two month residency. For the first time in my life, I could spread my wings and do anything that I wanted,” he says. During those two months, he produced 60 works, in the process establishing his identity as a Neo-pop artist and expanding into printing on plastic. A series titled “Rocket Number Nine,” inspired by the Lady Gaga song of the same title, was featured in a solo exhibition at Gallery Yian in Daejeon in 2016. Four of those prints now hang at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the office of physicist Dr. Phillip Metzger. The two met online through a beach sand collecting group. While some may look for deeper meaning, Maslon says, “My artwork is about the things I love. And I have learned that that there is someone else out there who loves the same things.” Many of these things are everyday objects such as washers, dryers, telephones, typewriters, gramophones and animals or vegetables. He has also done microprints of bodybuilding. “My Neo-pop prints are collections, an electric mixture or mass of modern and vintage images together. This represents a feeling or a collection of feelings. A fuzzy conglomerate or layering of sometimes unclear images. No one knows where it starts, or ends,” he explains. “I also create singular objects and electrify them, to be adored or looked at with reverence. Studied. Admired. I have always loved individual labeling, singularity and making sure something is identified and given a proper name, with a proper history, to what it is and where it is from.” In addition to teaching and art, Christopher Maslon enjoys bodybuilding. Exercise not only changed his body, it also boosted his confidence and opened up new, interesting opportunities. Bodybuilding & Gothic Fantasies Aside from his two passions, teaching and art, Maslon says that bodybuilding is one of the best things he has ever done. In 2004, he realized his fitness had waned too far; he had trouble climbing the stairs at the high school where he taught. He started exercising and, for three years, traded with a personal trainer: one hour of English lessons for a one-hour workout. Then a bodybuilding show caught his attention. He told himself, “I will do this.” A year later, he was standing on the same stage and came third in his division. In 2014, he placed third in the Men’s Classic division of the Seoul Musclemania competition – not something on the resumé of many English professors. Once a skinny boy who was reluctant to take his shirt off at the beach, Maslon says, “Bodybuilding not only transformed my body, it transformed my confidence level. This really affected my life because I realized that I had become a completely different person.” Bodybuilding and his Facebook profile photos have led to some “amazing opportunities.” A modeling agency contacted him in search of a muscular foreigner to star in a television commercial for the English app “Santa TOEIC” with legendary actor Lee Sun-jae. Then he was cast as an American scientist in the movie “The Spy Gone North” (Gongjak), where he appears for three seconds. He also indulges in occasional costume play, dressing up as superheroes or in Victorian garb. His love of things Victorian and gothic harks back to the 1960s American television series “The Addams Family” and his own experience of growing up in Monson, Massachusetts in a house almost 200 years old. As the outcome of fantasy photography projects with Daejeon-based Alla Ponomareva, Maslon makes a lot of props these days – skeletons, skulls, gothic coffins, Tiffany-style lamps. If you can imagine it, he can make it. Almost Perfect When Maslon speaks, a sort of carnival gets underway on his face. His eyes light up and all his facial muscles go into action as he changes expressions to match the topic of conversation. And he gestures with his hands as well. Apparently, this is why his Korean neighbor in Ohio thought he would make a good teacher: “He said I was charismatic, crazy. I talk and talk, and talk with my hands. I’m a visualist.” But as he described his experiences since leaving the United States, he occasionally closed his eyes. “I’m a sensitive man. I have to close my eyes because my emotions take over,” he explains. “Korea has given me so much.” In his head, he was visualizing and remembering the past 20 years. He says the journey has been 97 percent good so far – so good, in fact, that he wants to keep it to himself. “I don’t want to invite anyone here. It’s my own private thing,” he says.

Experiments with Sound and Visuals

In Love with Korea 2022 SPRING

Experiments with Sound and Visuals What this young Frenchman does – or what his art is about – is not easy to explain. He says he has long been interested in “making disparate elements meet” by “integrating everything related to sound and the visual arts” or “gathering those two worlds together.” And he chose Korea as his studio. Growing up in Marseille, France, Rémi Klemensiewicz heard about Korea and its neighbors through his father, an art professor who often had exhibitions in Asia. By the time he entered the Marseille-Mediterranean School of Art and Design (ESADMM), Klemensiewicz was leaning toward Asia and Eastern philosophy. He befriended Korean students at the school and, at the invitation of one of them, made his maiden trip to Korea in 2009, bolstered by his self-taught Korean language skills. “That visit had a very strong effect on me. It felt like another world,” Klemensiewicz says. “I felt there were some things here that were perfectly coherent to me, and at the same time, totally different from what I was used to. And somehow those different things fit with me very well.” In the following years, Klemensiewicz spent all his school vacations in Korea. He found it difficult to articulate his motivation, but felt the trips were the “obvious” and “natural” thing to do. While studying the language and soaking up the culture, he experienced the experimental art scene in Seoul. He also discovered that Koreans were very receptive to his art ideas. One of his academic requirements was an internship abroad, so Klemensiewicz did a fourmonth stint at an art consulting firm in Seoul in 2011. This experience galvanized his resolve to make Korea his new home. After graduation, he told himself, “I have to go there, I have to spend time there, I want to do things there.” In 2013, he returned to stay. Klemensiewicz is often called a sound artist or intermedia artist, but his self-deion is simply “an artist who is interested in sound.” He roams through two domains: experimental music and visual art combined with sound. “Sound is the central thing for me. What interests me most is making these two domains meet,” he says. The results vary in expression. One week he might be performing a concert, the next week showing off his latest “sound sculptures” or exhibit installations, with additional time spent composing and performing in collaboration with a choreographer. SOUND (OR NO SOUND) Paradoxically, some of his works have no audible sound. Many feature broken speakers, such as “Speaker Flag, Broken Flag,” which is a speaker set inside the Korean flag. “For Interpreters” is a video that uses sign language, leaving viewers to imagine the sound. It plays on the idea of “representing sound without sound.” Over the years, Klemensiewicz has exhibited and performed at major venues such as the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, the National Hangeul Museum and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. But he likes to work in small, experimental spaces in the Hongik University area, where he started out and still lives. One of his first projects in Korea was “Takeout Drawing,” a residency in 2014 at a café of the same name in Itaewon, Seoul. Every day for two months, he performed either an impromptu solo concert, a formal concert with guest performers, or oftentimes just a rehearsal. The lack of structure befuddled some customers. “What was interesting for me was playing with the line between a proper concert and a rehearsal – an ambiguous situation where no one knew what was happening,” he says. Born in Marseille, France, and living in Seoul since 2013, Rémi Klemensiewicz is known as a sound artist or intermedia artist. He explores ways to bring together the worlds of sound and visuals, and analyzes the difference between existence and interpretation, moving freely between exhibitions, live performances and stage music. ENIGMAS Klemensiewicz seemingly enjoys paradoxes and ambiguity, which not only inform his work but are the very qualities of the Korean language and culture that intrigue him. For example, the use of honorifics in Korean is generally considered a way to maintain a proper social distance between individuals. But Klemensiewicz feels there is more nuance present. “When I’m around students and their teachers, I can notice the students’ respectful behavior not only in their words but also in their movements and other subtle things,” he says. “But despite the strict rules, there’s an almost family-like relationship between them. This is contrary to what I felt in France. We would use first names with our teachers and talk like friends, but I seldom felt close to them.” He also finds a paradox in the exterior appearances of his homeland and Korea. Although Paris and other places around France impress visitors with their beauty, Klemensiewicz feels tradition and spirituality have been lost. He finds Korea to be the opposite. “When I first arrived here, I saw so many chaotic buildings. But despite the visual chaos, I felt there was order in people’s minds,” he says. “If I compare the two countries, in France I feel there is order on the outside and chaos within. In Korea, there is chaos on the surface and order inside, and there’s a connection with tradition and the past.” Such discoveries beguile and stimulate him and keep him in Korea. For visa reasons, however, he had to spend much of the pandemic period in France. While there, he stayed in the countryside, and when he returned to Seoul recently, he realized anew how its concrete and natural features intricately overlap. Subway lines transport riders to the foot of surrounding mountains and a bike path parallels the Han River with huge apartment complexes looming a stone’s throw away. “To me, this is crazy,” he says, laughing. Klemensiewicz performs “Handmixer,” a part of the Contemporary NonMusic Vol. 11 Series, on November 19, 2019 at Donquixote, an art space in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province. © Artspace Donquixote LIVELIHOOD While spending much of the COVID period in the French countryside, he used the downtime to make online Korean language lessons for French YouTube users. What started out as a diversion suggested by a friend turned into a serious endeavor. He eventually spent months planning and writing lessons, with a long introduction to Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. The tutorials are based on his own experience. An artist working with sound, Klemensiewicz recognizes most of his works have no commercial potential. Language lessons – French to Koreans and vice versa – have enabled him to ignore suggestions that he should find a regular job. Klemensiewicz says teaching is for balance, but he ultimately likes to experiment with language. Besides, he admires the visual qualities of Hangeul and has incorporated them into his work. “Sound Word Series,” presented at the Nam June Paik Art Center in 2018, features Hangeul words composed of speakers and cables. As part of the exhibition, he held performances in a cage with guest musicians; together they improvised using only four notes – C, A, G, E. Teaching art classes has also provided Klemensiewicz some stability while opening up new possibilities. He started with art workshops for middle-school students at the Nam June Paik Art Center and now has regular classes at Hello Museum in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, where he teaches children about sound and visuals. Teaching a course in “sound design” at PaTI (Paju Typography Institute) also led to his next project, a collaborative work with the Korea Contemporary Dance Company. “Interpreted Masks,” presented by Klemensiewicz at the exhibition “Project Hope?” held October 12-28, 2017 at Post Territory Ujeongguk, a cultural complex in Seoul. It consists of paper masks, speakers, cables and sound. © Rémi Klemensiewicz PROGRESS Although Klemensiewicz’s work is difficult to define, there is one constant: everything he sees and hears somehow seeps into his art. Against that backdrop, his almost instinctive attraction to Korea, which is constantly in motion, is easier to understand. When he first arrived, he had a honeymoon period, which is typical. “I could sleep on the floor and be happy. I could eat jjajangmyeon everyday and be happy. It could rain everyday and I would still be happy,” he recalls. As time passed, he started to be bothered by what he calls the “rhythms of work,” or the difficulty separating work from his private life. But he admits that he isn’t very good at separating work from leisure anyway because, the way he sees it, art is related to everything. “Besides, when I’m doing an exhibition or concert, I love doing it so much that I don’t really consider it as work.” After nine years in Korea, Klemensiewicz’s life so far seems to resemble an experimental artwork in the making, with an emphasis on the process in the spirit of the Fluxus artists who have influenced him. It’s no surprise, then, that he is currently submerged in an exchange project with choreographer Ro Kyung-ae and his alma mater in France. It requires him to create and perform music for dancers who cannot hear.

A Life of Miracles

In Love with Korea 2021 WINTER

A Life of Miracles Catholic Father Kim Ha-jong, born Vincenzo Bordo in Piansano, Italy, arrived in Korea in 1990 and embarked on a life dedicated to looking after the poor. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, his welfare center distributes lunch boxes to hundreds of hungry and homeless people each day. For the past 30 years, an apron has been a necessity nearly every day for Father Kim Ha-jong. His office at Anna’s House soup kitchen in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, has a picture of Cardinal Stephan Kim Sou-hwan, the late archbishop of Seoul who was at the forefront of Korea’s democracy movement against military dictatorship in the 1970s to the 1980s. As the COVID-19 Pandemic continues to menace the world, Father Kim Ha-jong is quietly spreading a different sort of virus. He defines sharing as a “virus” that infects people with highly contagious happiness. At Anna’s House, the social welfare center that he operates in Seongnam, a satellite city of Seoul, sharing takes many forms. Since early 2020 when the pandemic first appeared in Korea, the most palpable of those forms has been the daily preparation of hundreds of lunch boxes for the poor and homeless. Father Kim first opened his soup kitchen years before COVID-19. Most other soup kitchens shut down when indoor dining restrictions went into effect, but Father Kim refused to succumb. “You can’t close a soup kitchen because stomachs don’t go on vacation. Seventy percent of the people who come here have only one meal a day. If we don’t give them anything, they don’t eat,” he says. FREE LUNCH BOXES Making the switch to lunch boxes was difficult. It required a different operating system and higher costs due to packaging, as well as health risks for everyone involved. But since January 2020, with the permission of city authorities, Anna’s House has been providing some 650-750 lunch boxes daily with no major problems. To Father Kim, every day feeding the needy is a miracle. He recalls one day when he realized that there was very little rice left. “Each day, we use 160 kg of rice. We only had two days’ worth left. I was worried, but the cook said, ‘Jesus will send some.’ The next day we found 100 sacks of rice left out front.” In this way, people donate food , money, clothes, masks and various other goods. Many also volunteer their time to take care of food preparation, packaging, cleaning and managing the long queues for the lunch boxes. The volunteers assemble from all walks of life. They include not only Catholics but also Buddhist monks and Muslims, as well as celebrities, office workers and students. There’s even a dog named Louis Vuitton, who makes people smile. The needy come from all quarters of Seongnam and even Seoul for the lunch boxes, which are handed out at 3 p.m. As they pass out the meals, Father Kim and the volunteers greet each recipient and say, “Welcome. We love you.” “It’s true that the pandemic is giving us a difficult time. But here, it has become a time for the virus of love and sharing. It’s another experience of the pandemic that is really beautiful,” Father Kim says. Before finishing high school, Vincenzo Bordo, the future Father Kim, had already decided to join the priesthood. After his university studies in Oriental philosophy and religions, he joined the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, whose focus is on serving the poor. His interest in Asia led him to Korea, and shortly after his arrival in May 1990, he started working with a nun who looked after poor families. In his book, “A Moment of Fear, Miracles Every Day,” published in 2020, Father Kim recalls a turning point in 1992. He met a half-paralyzed man in his 50s who was living alone in a moldy basement and relying on neighbors to bring him food (or not eating at all on days when they didn’t). After talking to the man and tidying up the room, Father Kim hugged him with his permission and smelled a stench so foul he felt like retching. At the same time, he felt an indescribable happiness and peace. DEDICATION Realizing that so many people were left out of the welfare system, Father Kim started a canteen for the needy the following year. Korea was a different place back then. “People would ask me why I was feeding the homeless. They told me I shouldn’t do it because they are alcoholics who will only cause trouble. It’s not like that anymore. Our society has really changed,” he says. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, many people lost their livelihood and became homeless. The following year, Father Kim started a soup kitchen with the help of a benefactor whose mother’s name was Anna, hence the name Anna’s House. He started serving free meals every day except Sundays. For many years, the soup kitchen operated out of a space provided by Seongnam Cathedral. But it had to be vacated in 2018. As the time to leave approached, Father Kim’s anxiety rose. Seongnam city officials advised him that greenbelt restrictions on the land across the road would be lifted and he could build a new place there. It wasn’t a viable solution, though; he didn’t have the money to buy the land. “I wondered if it was really the end,” he recalls. “I thought I might really have to stop and retire.” Help came in the form of an interview request. Father Kim reluctantly relented, taking an appointment he mistakenly thought was with a local newspaper. But it turned out that the interview was with KBS, a national TV network, for its “Human Theater” (Ingan Geukjang) program. After the episode of Father Kim aired, “another miracle happened.” Donations flooded in, quickly reaching 1.2 billion won, enough to buy the land. A NEW HOME Anna’s House reopened in a new building in 2018. Although the soup kitchen is its primary concern, Father Kim’s efforts have led to an expansive list of services. Anna’s House currently offers medical care, rehabilitation, legal aid services and humanities education on a weekly basis; shelters for the homeless, elderly and runaway teens; a share house for youths; and a mobile outreach program for runaways and other vulnerable young people. Father Kim says that it is love that gives him the energy to serve the needy in what was once a foreign country to him but is now his home. Whenever tough times have pushed him to the breaking point, someone always emerged to help keep Anna’s House open. He attributes the timing to the power of love. Before COVID-19, the outreach program AJIT (acronym for aideul jikineun teureok, meaning “truck that safeguards the kids”) met with scores of boys and girls on the street each night. The pandemic has halted many activities, but Father Kim still takes AJIT, now a little bubble car, on the road from time to time. AJIT in Korean means “hangout” or “safe house.” “We give hope. We plant the seeds of hope in people. The seeds can become big trees or fail. Nobody knows. But we are called to do whatever is possible,” he says. For the past 30 years, Father Kim has donned an apron almost every day. On Sundays he swaps it for cycling gear and goes riding along the banks of the Han River, relishing in a precious moment of relaxation. Although wonderful things keep happening, it is mentally stressful – not to mention physically exhausting – to look after others so carefully day after day. When he noticed that his heart was beating faster than usual, he went to the doctor and was advised it was due to stress. For a while he had to give up his morning espresso, the only Italian habit that he has retained. “You can’t close a soup kitchen because stomachs don’t go on vacation. Seventy percent of the people who come here have only one meal a day. If we don’t give them anything, they don’t eat.” GOD’S SERVANT For all his hard work and giving, what does he receive in return? “Working with the poor makes me happy. For me, this isn’t a job. My mission, my life here, is to welcome these people, to love them and help them,” he says. This mission is reflected in his Korean name Ha-jong, which means “God’s servant.” The surname Kim is a tribute to Andrew Kim Tae-gon (1821-1846), the first Korean-born Catholic priest who was executed during the anti-Christian Joseon Dynasty and canonized in 1984 along with other Korean martyrs. Father Kim’s work has not gone unnoticed. He has received many awards, including the prestigious Ho-Am Award in 2014. When asked which of the awards means the most to him, Father Kim beams and talks about a group of kindergarten children who recently presented him with a bundle of worn 1,000 won notes that they had saved up. Another reward that made him particularly happy is his Korean citizenship, granted by presidential order in 2015. Long before his naturalization, he decided he would stay in Korea forever; he even signed the papers for posthumous donation of his organs. “I am Korean, not a foreigner,” he says. “When you fall in love, there is no reason for it.” At 1 p.m. every day, volunteers gather at the kitchen in the basement of Anna’s House to prepare lunch boxes. They must move quickly to pack rice, side dishes, soup, bread, canned goods and other items. Father Kim (white cap) always works with them. From 3 p.m., Father Kim and volunteers distribute lunch boxes to homeless people who line up in front of Seongnam Cathedral across the road from Anna’s House. For about two hours, more than 700 lunch boxes are handed out.

Steering Tourism Elsewhere

In Love with Korea 2021 AUTUMN

Steering Tourism Elsewhere Steering Tourism Elsewhere From her base in Sunchang, a rural town in North Jeolla Province, Lea Moreau makes forays to lesser-known destinations around Korea in hopes of sharing with others her urge to experience the wider world. Every Wednesday and on weekends, Lea Moreau serves as Sunchang County’s Tour Bus guide, usually wearing a dress inspired by hanbok. The bus stops at major attractions of the Sunchang area, including the traditional Gochujang Village, Mt. Gangcheon County Park and Mt. Chaegye. Hailing from Yzeron, a village of around 1,000 people near Lyon in France, Lea Moreau describes herself as “not a mainstream girl.” Much as she admires BTS and Blackpink, currently among the top K-pop groups, her favorite Korean artists are the indie rock band Se So Neon. And rather than the attractions of Seoul, she prefers life in a small town. In Sunchang, a rural town in North Jeolla Province with rich folk culture and customs, Lea promotes tourism as a county civil servant. Naturally, tourists are surprised to have a non-Korean assigned to extoll the county’s tourist hotspots. Her Korean pronunciation isn’t perfect, but Moreau smoothly creates a pleasant vibe as she conveys insights. While Sunchang is famous for its gochujang (red pepper paste) and has many scenic spots, it is also rather off the beaten track. To attract more visitors and help them move around easily, the county created a bus tour in 2019 and searched for an onboard guide. A friend of Lea’s who runs a jazz café in town recommended her. “My friend argued that I could help attract both Koreans and foreigners because I speak French, English and Korean,” Lea says. She already had a YouTube travel channel and some experience in the tourism industry. When the county decided to create the position of tourism promotion officer for her, it had to get the green light from “higher up” authorities to hire a foreigner into the civil service sector. Six months later she was employed. Locals call her the “French gongmuwon,” meaning the “French public servant.” Lea is a popular figure around the county. She rides about on her scooter, its cubbyhole filled with items such as work gloves, a pair of baggy work pants, a camera and a hanbok. In the course of her job, she never knows when she’ll need to lend a hand to farmers in the fields or be inspired to shoot a video. She also considers TV appearances on shows like KBS’s “My Neighbor, Charles” to be an extension of her duties. She wants to dispel the idea that there’s little to see in small towns and show there’s much more to Korea than Seoul, K-pop and K-dramas. Wanderlust It was a love of travel that brought Lea all the way to Sunchang from Yzeron. Growing up in the French countryside, she was always curious about the rest of the world. A family backpacking trip around Bali as a child lit the fuse. “We rode on motorbikes. My parents put my sister and me between their legs. I think that trip really changed my life,” she recalls. “It taught me that there are other people, other cultures and other languages. And I realized that learning another language would open up many more opportunities.” After graduating from high school, Lea spent 18 months in Australia, working, learning English and occasionally enjoying diving at the Great Barrier Reef. Then she moved to Thailand, from where she traveled across Southeast Asia. Finally committing herself to the travel industry, she completed an online course that earned her a bachelor’s degree in tourism management. One of her course requirements was a six-month internship in any country. A Korean friend recommended Pedro’s House and Voyager’s Café in Gwangju. She arrived in 2016 and ended up working at the guesthouse for almost two years. “I loved Gwangju,” she says. “I learned about Korean history when I was very young from my grandfather, who loved history. He taught me about South and North Korea. But I didn’t know at all about Gwangju and the democratic uprising there on May 18, 1980. It was a good place to learn about contemporary Korean history and society.” While living in Gwangju, she traveled extensively in the Jeolla region, especially to remote places, including many nearby islands. However, those trips were taxing for a foreign backpacker due to a lack of tourist information for non-Korean speakers. That prompted her to write a guidebook with Pedro Kim (aka Kim Hyeon-seok), the owner of Pedro’s House. The book was never published, but they went online and created the YouTube channel “Jeolla Go.” Later, curiosity about the Gyeongsang region led her to a stint at a cultural center on Geoje Island, where the shipbuilding industry accounts for most jobs. When she returned to Gwangju, the opportunity in Sunchang provided an answer for her pursuit of something permanent. The COVID-19 pandemic has halted foreign visitors, so trilingual Lea Moreau is speaking Korean almost exclusively these days as only small numbers of domestic tourists visit Sunchang. They will be surprised to find a foreigner is their guide. © Lea Moreau A Guide on the Go As a tourism promotion officer and seasoned backpacker, Lea delights in helping other travelers discover overlooked sites. She wants to dispel the idea that there’s little to see in small towns and show there’s much more to Korea than Seoul, K-pop and K-dramas. Sunchang, Lea points out, is home to one of the longest chulleong dari, or “wobbly bridges,” in Korea. It is also one of the best places in the country to enjoy the cherry blossoms in spring, being less crowded than Jinhae or Hadong. In autumn, meanwhile, the colorful foliage at Mt. Gangcheon National Park is enticing. Soon after starting her new job, however, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, bringing tourism to a virtual standstill. The Sunchang tour bus, with its smiley face and roof that opens, specially made by joining two buses together, now only carries about 10 people a day, three days a week. In accordance with pandemic protocol, everyone undergoes a temperature check before boarding. The tours are conducted in Korean, unless foreigners are on board. At a time when most travel is virtual, Lea’s promotional work continues thanks to social media. Once every week or so, she uploads something new to Jeolla Go, and she also collaborates with Sunchang Tube, the county’s official YouTube channel. This is the work she enjoys the most. “I love filming. When I was in high school, my class traveled to Madagascar and I was in charge of filming our trip. It wasn’t really good quality back then, though,” she says. Evidently her skills have improved; she won a prize in a tourism video contest last year. With the prize money of 1.5 million won, she bought a drone for her film panoramas. Around Sunchang , Lea is known as “the French public servant.” She is officially an employee of the Sunchang Microbial Institute for Fermentation Industry and her duties include promoting the gochujang (red pepper paste) and doenjang (soybean paste) for which the county is famous. © Lea Moreau Living the Dream Lea recently renewed her contract with Sunchang County for another three years. “For me, the most important thing is meeting people and sharing part of their daily lives to understand more about Korea,” she explains. “The main reason that I’m staying in one place is the people I meet and friends that I make. Koreans are really welcoming. If they see a foreign face, especially in the countryside, they’ll try to offer help. For me, such an encounter is an adventure in itself.” Lea appreciates the efforts of her coworkers at the county office to teach her about the government system and work with the fact that her Korean isn’t perfect. “I know they have really invested in me and trust me,” she says. For that she is grateful and spends 10 hours a week taking online Korean lessons. Lea’s personal motto is, “Don’t dream your life, but live your dream.” She has many goals for the future, such as writing a book about living and traveling in Korea, doing a travel TV show, and contributing to the local community by helping to promote local businesses to provide them with a greater voice and more visibility. More than anything else, Lea says she hopes to continue inspiring people to travel and to share her global journey. Cho Yoon-jung Freelance Writer and Translator Heo Dong-wuk Photographer

Nikolaos Kordonias NIKO’S PERFECT CONTENTMENT

In Love with Korea 2021 SUMMER

Nikolaos Kordonias NIKO’S PERFECT CONTENTMENT In a tiny alley just a block away from Ik￾seon-dong, in the center of old Seoul, an unexpected haven of Greek culture beck￾ons. Niko Kitchen, occupying a hanok, or tradi￾tional Korean house, showcases its devotion to true Greek cuisine, building a loyal clientele. The owner and chef, Nikolaos Kordonias, better known simply as “Niko,” grew up on Samothrace, an island in the Aegean Sea that is home to the mythical Sanctuary of the Great Gods, including Nike, the winged goddess of vic￾tory. Niko’s deion of his ancient birthplace is idyllic. It conjures familiar images of a Greek island filled with whitewashed villas: “Beauti￾ful, quiet, nice people. The pace of life is slow.The people are laid back, easygoing. They don’t worry. They have their houses, their work. They don’t expect a lot from life. But they have their standards and they’re happy.” And of course, there is “very good food.” The conversation lingers on organic produce, fresh chicken and tasty fish from the cobalt blue water around Samothrace. Growing up, the food that his mother and grandmother cooked captivatedhim. “It was the smells, I think,” Niko says. All of that informs his life and work today. When he arrived in Korea in 2004, he immedi￾ately noticed the scent of different foods. Soon,aromas guided the direction of his casual walks. “The smell of food stalls, the cooking in the street. It was different. It was in the air – the chili, the kimchi,” he recalls. Every morning, owner-chef Nikolaos Kordonias personally opens the gate of his restaurant housed in a traditional￾style Korean home near Changdeok Palace, Seoul. The nameplate sports a transliteration of Niko Kitchen. Making Korea Home Niko had accepted an offer to work at Santo￾rini, the now-closed Greek restaurant in Itae￾won, a vibrant Seoul neighborhood with inter￾national flavor. He had no prior inkling of what Korea might be like, no experience except for childhood taekwondo lessons. But coming here wasn’t a difficult decision; moving was natural to him. After working on cruise ships traveling around Mediterranean and Caribbean seaports, he studied at a culinary institute in New York andworked in Manhattan with leading chefs. Then he spent about six years in Canada, where an acquaintance owned several restaurants. While cooking in Itaewon, Niko met Seo Hyeon-gyeong, who happened to be working in the same building as Santorini. They ran into each other coming and going and ended up get￾ting married. Niko packed away any thoughts of returning to Greece and Seo shelved plans of leaving for Japan, where she had lived for manyyears. “Some things are just meant to happen,” Niko says of the way Seoul became his perma￾nent home. In 2018, Niko and his wife opened Niko Kitchen. He wasn’t looking for a hanok specif￾ically, but its architectural style pleased him.When he took ownership, two stone statues of haechi, mythical fire-eating animals, came with the café that had previously occupied the build￾ing. They stand guard now in the exquisite little courtyard filled with potted flowering trees.Niko Kitchen is in an alley off a road once used by Joseon Dynasty soldiers when they patrolled around the royal ancestral shrine. Adja￾cent to the shrine is Changdeok Palace, a UNE￾SCO World Heritage site. Close by is a historic Buddhist temple, and just a few strides along the alley is the Saekdong Museum, exhibiting tradi￾tional Korean fabric featuring colorful stripes. The restaurant is open every day, and Niko does all of the cooking. His wife calls him a workaholic, but Niko seems perfectly happy. “This is my life and I like it,” he says. “I like food. I like people to like the food and smile and come back.” Between lunch and dinner, Niko allows him￾self a break; he strolls around Seoul, to palac￾es and temples, and to Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream flowing across the downtown area. Before the pandemic, he enjoyed relaxing at a sauna, but that’s on hold for now. Being in a quiet spot away from the buzzing activity of Ikseon-dong, Niko Kitchen has few walk-in customers. Nevertheless, it’s always fullybooked. Korea’s insatiable appetite for cooking shows led to the restaurant, and Niko appeared as both a guest and a judge on several TV programs, such as Yeogi GO and O’live Show (on the cablechannel Olive). As media exposure swelled, would-be diners appeared early in the morning, and telephoned and emailed at all hours. Nikoacknowledges the benefits of the TV exposure, but for now, he wants to focus on his own kitch￾en. The diners have a leisurely meal, sip wine and unwind. This is what Niko likes to see, the mood that he wants to create. Niko does all of the cooking alone. His menu features Greek home cooking and dashes of Spanish and Italian dishes. Niko Kitchen has only four or five tables, so reservations are recommended. Niko hopes to eventually have a bigger restaurant and serve Greek food exclusively. Discovered by Foodies The menu is based on Greek home cooking.Moussaka, a traditional dish made of eggplant and ground meat, is a perennial favorite withcustomers. Other popular dishes are Greek salad made with feta cheese, burrata salad, chicken souvlaki and shrimp saganaki. Because Greek food can still be unfamiliar to many Koreans, the menu also includes pizzas andpastas, but made in Niko’s own style with hand￾made sourdough. He opted for fusion cuisine so that his hands wouldn’t be tied. He likes the free￾dom of ladling up Spanish or Italian dishes when he’s in the mood. However, the keys to his food always remain the same: Mediterranean style, healthy and made with fresh, natural ingredients; mostly vegetar￾ian, no sugar and minimum deep frying. In the early days, procuring Greek ingredients posed problems, but these days he can find everything he wants online. When a particular type of cheese or some other ingredient has to be obtained in a hurry, he stops by the shops in Itaewon, where he still lives today, on the way to work. Like most restaurants, Niko Kitchen lost business to the COVID pandemic. But it has fully recovered now. Many customers are regu￾lars, including staffers from the Greek Embas￾sy and even the monks from the temple nearby, whose colorful façade featuring scenes from theBuddhist sutras can be seen over the top of the restaurant’s front gate. The diners have a leisure￾ly meal, sip wine and unwind. This is what Nikolikes to see, the mood that he wants to create. Greek salad made with fresh tomatoes, olives, cucumbers and onions, and topped with crumbly feta cheese is one of Niko Kitchen’s signature dishes. Reminders of Greece decorate Niko Kitchen.Magnets bearing photos of famous places in Greece cover one side of the refrigerator. Days Ahead When he muses about his adopted country, Niko mentions well-kept buildings and roads, an absence of public eyesores like graffiti, and theeducated and polite population. “This is like a paradise, the perfect place. That’s why I’m happy to be here,” he explains.Although he says he doesn’t really miss Greece, once the pandemic is over and the world begins to heal, Niko would like to go back to Samothrace. He wants to relax a bit, see his fam￾ily and friends, eat some good food and do somesea fishing. He’s also looking forward to the next step in his life, which is to open a bigger restau￾rant where the menu will be exclusively Greekdishes, not fusion. He’s been testing the waters and now has an idea of what people like and don’t like. Thus, he anticipates applying all his experience and knowledge in one place. “I want to make people happy – and make some money,too,” he says. “Eat good food and you will feel good.” This is Niko’s simple philosophy. That said, his wife chips in with a revealing rejoinder: Niko likes hamburgers and occasionally indulges in Ken￾tucky Fried Chicken. Food is what brought him to Korea, what keeps him here and what makes him happy. “At the end of the day, if people aren’t satisfied, then you’re tired. But if people are satisfied and smile, then all your problems and fatigue go away.” Cho Yoon-jung Freelance Writer and Translator Heo Dong-wukPhotographer
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