MBC | Culture Reflections Episode 374 Artist Feature: The Transformation of Korean Painting, Korean Painting That Captures Today

A woman in hanbok appears in the middle of the city, both hands full of shopping bags — and in that instant, one of her rubber shoes slips halfway off. The artist who captured that fleeting moment says, "Hello, I'm the artist Kim Hyun Jung. Hanbok is the symbol of my 'Naesung' series."

When visited in her studio, the artist was working while wearing hanbok. Asked if it wasn't uncomfortable, she replied, "I try to wear hanbok in daily life as much as I can. These days, since I'm an artist who paints hanbok, I need to understand it more deeply — so I try to wear it as often as possible, to actually experience what's uncomfortable about it and what's comfortable."

Ten years of wearing hanbok and painting only Korean painting — there's a specific reason she fell in love with the medium. "The very first time I painted with it, I found it truly fascinating. With other materials, the more layers you apply, the murkier the color becomes, but with Korean painting, the more you apply, the deeper and clearer the colors get. I was captivated by that, and I found that even the same black line carried a different emotion depending on how it was drawn. Seeing how whatever I was thinking showed up in every single brushstroke, I realized this was truly a medium that could express my real emotions."

The women in hanbok in her paintings resemble the beauties of folk paintings (minhwa), but look closely and they are the lively, unruly women of today's generation. "These days I use fast-food delivery services a lot, and I have a piece that captures that moment of confusion over whether you're eating to live or living to eat. Since the figures in my work have my own face, you might feel they resemble me."

The model for the women in her paintings is the artist herself. She expresses the hollow inner emptiness of modern people who appear sophisticated on the outside but feel lacking within. "After sketching thoroughly, I transfer it to paper in pencil and work through it meticulously, detail by detail. Then I paint the nude form, because I want to convey both the outer appearance and the inner self, the outside and the inside together — that's why I always paint the nude first, then dress the figure. I wanted to tell the story of what might be happening beneath that wide hanbok skirt."

The colorful hanbok layered over bare skin, and the sheer, uniquely textured hanji through which the skin shows — all of it is handmade paper the artist creates herself. Since each sheet of hanji, once made, is used for only one work and then discarded, every piece becomes truly one of a kind. "I dye it anywhere from five to as many as ten times, until I get the exact color I want. Since the skin needs to be visible through it, hanji like that is hard to find, so I started making it myself." Beaten by hand to create the desired texture and dyed with natural materials, this unique "hanji garment" is born.

Sheet by sheet, as the hanji garment is applied, a vivid 21st-century "new beauty painting" comes to life. What is it the artist wants to convey through such painstaking work? "I want to tell honest stories, diary-like stories. I think these are emotions that any woman my age, living in this era, could relate to. Going forward, I want to keep expressing myself honestly and keep communicating endlessly."