Broadie Meeting!!! And Learning How Outside Impression and Truth Can Differ!!

So today I got to meet up with Han-je, my Korean post-doc friend from the now independent Broad Institute. I called his wife on Friday, without having chatted with Han-Je since my departure. As luck would have it, without my even knowing, Han-Je happened to be in Korea this weekend. His wife and two adorable kids live in Chuncheon, where I am. It felt so nice to see a familiar face again. Even though everyone in the program is wonderful, it still is nice to be reminded of who you are through a person of familiarity. His wife, Eun Hee, is sooo nice, and his two children, both boys, are absolutely adorable. We ate dinner and I told him what my initial impression of Korea is. And as luck would have it, he brought along a friend who just received his PhD in chemistry from KNU (the school where I'm staying). Such a small world!

So far Korea has been amazing. People have been really friendly, the food (outside of the cafeteria that is) has been sooo delicious (as you know, that seems to be all I take photos of), and visually things have been quite interesting.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a guest speaker, Michael Hurt, a former ETA from the 90s. He discussed social issues differences between that of Korea and the US, in order to give us a bigger picture in order to understand where certain behavior comes from. Basically, giving us a better key to the code of social constructs. It was very helpful. But what was even more interesting to me is that he does street photography and actually just published an awesome book on Seoul fashion. It was interesting b/c he said that Korea wants to be a top fashion competitor world. However the nature of the conservative Korean government won't allow imagery that could compromise Korea's "pure" image, in other words, allowing any imagery out of the country that could be seen as riske or too edgy. This is a shame, b/c there is a lot of interesting fashion here. Even just walking the streets of Chuncheon, college age kids (men and women alike) dress way more interestingly than their American counterparts. I can only imagine how things are in Seoul! But because of the conservative nature of the control of imagery, the outside world just thinks that Korea is conservative and has no young edgy fashion scene. You really have to come here to observe it for yourself. I think the same problem exists in the fine arts. Most of the imagery that Korea sends out to the Western world is more in reference to traditional ink painting, and not the younger contemporary art scene that exists. Hence the West gets a skewed idea of what is being made in Korea, which is that their arts are safe, traditional, and boring. I was happy to see that someone else saw this disjoint in disseminated imagery with that of what is really happening and is trying to get the word out that Korea does indeed have a bustling young creative circle. This made me feel even more confident in my reason to come here and investigate their gallery scene, and if I was only to be lucky enough, to participate in it as well. Oh, and I bought his book in the end, it's really cool, so I can show you all when I get back to the States!