Maeil Business TV | Issue & People: Korean Painter Kim Hyun Jung

"Good afternoon, viewers. This is Jang Yeong-su with Issue & People." The host introduced Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung, who paints 21st-century genre scenes of Korea, noting that today's hanbok has a completely different charm from the refined, elegant image usually associated with it.

Asked to introduce herself, Kim Hyun Jung laughed and said, "When I come out wearing a hanbok like this, people often ask me things like, who is that woman, did she get married today, or does she do gugak or Korean traditional dance. The most memorable question I ever got was, 'Are you a shaman?'" She went on, "I'm Kim Hyun Jung, a Korean painter who paints women in hanbok riding motorcycles and doing other everyday things."

On her nickname "the idol of Korean painting," she explained, "When people think of a painter, they usually picture someone middle-aged, but I'm younger than expected, and because I communicate actively on social media, I've built up a fandom of about 200,000 followers. That's how I ended up with a title like 'idol,' the way singers do." The broadcast also mentioned that she was named one of Forbes Asia's "30 Under 30" in 2017.

On her signature "Naesung" series, which began in 2013, she said, "I thought of Naesung as a kind of well-meaning lie — behaving differently from what's in your heart, but in a way that's not unlikeable, even lovable. It's hard to convey that concept abroad, so overseas I usually introduce the work using the concept of genre painting instead. If I had to put Naesung into other words, I'd call it 'gaze.' My hope is simply that when people look at my paintings, they smile."

She went on to describe individual works. "Today Too, an Empty Wallet" captures the feeling of opening your closet and finding nothing to wear, while "A Perfect Meal" depicts the moment of eating hastily off a delivery box used as a dining table. On her technique for rendering hanbok, she explained, "I attach hanji, traditional mulberry paper, for the upper garment and use ink wash for the skirt. I draw the figure's silhouette first and then dress it in hanbok in a way that makes the body show through slightly underneath, because I think Naesung is lovable precisely because you can see right through it."

She also introduced her "Shin Saimdang" series, a collaboration with the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation, and works from her "Naesung Olympics" series, including pieces set in a pool hall and "Twenty-Seven, the Weight of Time," set in a gym. She recounted becoming the second Korean artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "A foreign visitor looked at 'You, Who Move Me,' my painting of a woman on a McDelivery motorcycle, and called me a genius. They said that even without knowing the exact meaning, they could tell it was traditional dress, and that imagining a drive-through-style delivery service was a stroke of genius. In fact, I explained that Korea has its own delivery culture, apps like Baedal Minjok, and that we're practically a kingdom of delivery."

She described her activities across four areas: exhibitions and artwork, lectures and talks, corporate collaborations (image consulting), and influencer activities such as serving as a publicity ambassador for the City of Seoul, along with online "social drawing." "Social drawing is where netizens on social media give me ideas and we complete a piece together in real time," she said. "At first I was taken aback, thinking that was my territory alone, but I came to see it as something we create together through collective intelligence."

On her recently ongoing series "A Tray of Thirty Eggs, the Age to Marry," she said, "As the marriage rate keeps falling, I too have been asked since my late twenties when I'm going to get married. I wanted to say that we're not putting off marriage because we're immature, but because we have our own concerns, so I've been continuing this series built around the number thirty, likening it to a tray of thirty eggs," she said, closing out the interview.