Sports Donga | [Yang Hyung-mo’s I Love Stage] “I’ll Melt the World with the ‘Naesoong Girl'”

From Cinderella hooking a prince with a glass slipper to other 'Naesoong girls,' her exhibitions have resonated in the US, Germany, and China too

"The Naesoong girl model? At first I disliked those people — looking back, it turned out to be my own self-portrait..."

"Why?", "Why is that?" There was a girl who asked an unusual number of questions. She asked and asked, so much that adults would say, "How impudent for a child." When forced to do something she didn't want to do, she would cry and throw tantrums, rolling on the floor. The only thing that could hold the attention of this curious, stubborn girl was drawing.

As the years passed, that girl became an artist recognized by the world, now sitting before us as a woman in her late 20s, dressed in beautiful hanbok.

Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung (28) was recently named to Forbes' "30 Under 30 Asia," a list of influential people under 30 chosen by the leading American business media outlet. There have been plenty of entertainment and sports stars — Big Bang's G-Dragon, figure skating gold medalist Kim Yuna, actor Kim Soo-hyun — but Kim Hyun Jung is the first domestic fine artist to be named.

Kim Hyun Jung is an artist who has persistently pursued work on the theme of "Naesoong." Many people may not know her name, but remember her work. A young woman, presumably in her twenties, dressed in hanbok appears in her pieces. Yet this woman behaves in ways utterly out of place with the elegant, dignified hanbok. She rides a McDonald's delivery scooter dressed in hanbok, or plays a so-called "massé" shot at a pool hall. There's also the famous piece "Oops," showing a woman startled as her Starbucks coffee spills onto her designer bag while she eats ramyeon cooked in a tin pot straight from the lid. All of these works belong to the "Naesoong" series.

●"Is there any reason an artist has to go hungry?"

Kim Hyun Jung has spent her twenties busier and more eventful than many celebrities. It's no wonder she's earned the nickname "idol of Korean painting." Kim isn't the type of artist who sits back with folded arms, gazing out the window, thinking, "Good work will be recognized someday." She's the audacious kind of artist who insists that "a painter is also a one-person startup." She double-majored in business administration alongside Oriental painting at Seoul National University.

"The mother of the paintings I draw is me. I thought I ought to know at least how my 'children' grow up, where they get adopted, and where they end up living. So I started doing this alone. It's like a self-planned wedding, where you do everything yourself instead of relying on a wedding company."

In other words, her "one-person startup" began out of curiosity about who buys her work and where and how it's exhibited. Kim Hyun Jung declared, "There's no reason an artist has to go hungry." That's not to say she must become enormously wealthy from painting. Enough to hold the next exhibition — that, for Kim Hyun Jung, is the minimum threshold for "why an artist shouldn't have to go hungry."

Kim Hyun Jung's exhibitions are known to be "fun." In 2014, "Naesoong Olympics" drew the largest crowd since the opening of Kana Insa Art Center. "Naesoong Amusement Park," held in March 2016, was truly packed. Over 27 days, 67,402 people visited, averaging 2,496 visitors a day — roughly enough to fill the Seoul Arts Center Opera House's seats, every single day of the exhibition.

Kim Hyun Jung is now turning her attention abroad. Following New York, she has held exhibitions and lectures in Berlin, Germany, and has also visited China.

"You could call it the spirit of a cultural ambassador. I really love hanbok. It's not something you could wear like this for a year or two if you didn't love it. Doesn't the Naesoong story contain the whole story of Seoul women? I want to show it."

True to her role as a "founder," Kim Hyun Jung also didn't hold back on talking about the market. Korea's art market is small, at around 200 billion won. Kim noted, "And yet 20,000 art students graduate every year." The answer, ultimately, has to be found in overseas markets. The question was whether the story of a Seoul Naesoong girl would resonate with overseas audiences too. Take her signature work, "Oops" — the contrast between ramyeon and Starbucks coffee is its point, but that contrast is likely to land in reverse for foreigners. For them, ramyeon is an expensive snack, while Starbucks is just an everyday coffee they drink without a second thought. So Kim Hyun Jung painted a Disney series. Snow White taking a selfie in front of Instagram instead of a mirror, the Beast holding armfuls of luxury shopping bags with Beauty, and Cinderella dangling a glass slipper like bait to fish for the prince — these works captivated overseas art fans.

"At first, I painted the people I disliked (as the Naesoong girl). But at some point, I noticed it was turning into a self-portrait, and that troubled me. Once I accepted that the people I disliked were, in the end, myself, everything resolved. Employment, marriage — nothing is easy for young people in this era. I want to help people accept themselves as they are, while giving them a bit more strength to stand tall in the field they love."

At the end of the interview, we asked Kim Hyun Jung: since she first painted the Naesoong girl based on people she disliked, do those people know about it? Kim Hyun Jung laughed brightly. "They still don't know."

[Photo caption] Artist Kim Hyun Jung, who says "the figure in my work is my self-portrait," posed in hanbok. The smaller photo shows her signature work, "Oops." Reporter Kim Jin-hwan, kwangshin00@donga.com

Written by — Reporter Yang Hyeong-mo