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An Ordinary Day

Styling Palatal Pleasures

An Ordinary Day 2024 SPRING

Styling Palatal Pleasures Food stylists use food and tableware to orchestrate the presentation of table settings. They must convey the texture, taste, aroma, and appearance of food through photos or videos, which requires creativity and attention to detail. Food stylist Kim Bo-seon checks the appearance of one of her dishes. Once she is satisfied, she must get her client’s approval. Tucked away in an alley off a main road in Seoul’s Mapo District, there is a two-story house built some fifty years ago. It has no gate, and a large persimmon tree fills the corner of the yard. Birds from nearby Mt. Seongmi use it to rest, and the neighborhood’s curious cats and dogs drop by, attracted by the constant aroma of delicious food. A studio within operates day and night, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. It is the workplace of food stylist Kim Bo-seon. Kim helps businesses maximize the appeal of dishes that appear on menus and packaging and in publications and cooking demonstrations. In addition to being an accomplished chef, she wears the hats of a culinary researcher, florist, coordinator, and designer throughout the day. Even with twenty years of experience, completing her clients’ requests often leads to a grueling, tightly packed schedule that can be subject to delays and disruptions. JANE OF ALL TRADES Kim usually wakes up at eight in the morning and walks to her nearby studio, which opens at nine. But when outdoor photo sessions are scheduled, she must get ready at five to begin shooting at nine. . Before, most of the workload involved photographing food for print magazines, but as advertising has increasingly migrated to the internet, there are now fewer magazine shoots. “These days, my work mainly consists of branding projects on social media and setting up for exhibitions and events. Sometimes, when new kitchen appliances are launched, I test the products, develop new dishes, and create brochures,” Kim says. Cooking and styling used to be treated as separate tasks, but now, Kim explains, the range of work depends on whether you know how to do both. “A food stylist needs to excel not only in cooking and styling but also in other areas, such as spatial design.” “If the cooking isn’t up to par, there’s only so much you can do as a stylist, so you end up learning how to cook. For example, to enhance the look of a stir-fry dish, you need to decide whether to brush it with oil or glaze it with syrup, and to make that judgment, you need cooking knowledge. You also need to know at what temperature different types of meat look the most appealing. So, you must have an understanding of ingredients as well.” Excelling in a country’s gastronomy may sound ideal but it does not guarantee success. Kim must be adept with a range of cuisines, including Korean, Western, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as their corresponding ingredients and cooking styles. “You never know what assignment may come your way, so you have to be able to do everything well.” Kim’s design for the prestigious Le Pain Baguette Championship in 2023 featured breads suspended above an eight-meter-long table filled with different kinds of baguettes. ⓒ Kim Bo-seon EXPANDING HER HORIZONS During her junior year at university, Kim happened to watch a TV program that described food styling and greatly inspired her. “I had a lot of interest in cooking to begin with and wanted to do something related to it, but if you work at a restaurant, you end up making the same dishes day in and day out. On the other hand, the work of a food stylist — creating new dishes, making them look more inviting, and producing works for photo shoots — seemed more interesting to me.” Kim took a leave of absence after her junior year and began actively pursuing her dream. However, at that time, no schools or academies had a curriculum dedicated to food styling. “I joined a class run by a teacher who was working as a culinary researcher and food stylist. But when the teacher had other things to do, the weekly class would be canceled or postponed, and there were times when it was held only once a month.” As she learned food styling, she realized that she needed to step up her cooking skills, so she enrolled at the Culinary Training Center for Shilla Hotel. “My goal was to become an assistant to a food stylist after learning Western cuisine at the center, but there were too many candidates and not enough job openings. Thinking it would be advantageous to get some culinary experience, I began working at a trattoria.” Using that experience as a stepping stone, she achieved her goal of becoming an assistant. In her senior year, she packed all her classes into one day and spent the rest of the week working. After graduation, she decided to study in Japan. “Back then, Japan had a more diverse range of cuisines and ingredients than Korea. The scope of desserts and wine, for example, was much broader, so I thought it would be an opportunity to expand my horizons.” In Japan, Kim worked three part-time jobs to cover her living and educational expenses. Finally, in 2005, she returned to Korea and set up a small studio in the basement of her parents’ house, embarking on an independent career as a food stylist. “There was no work. I’d only get a call every three months or so. Afraid of falling into depression if I just sat and waited, I continued studying by going to libraries and bookstores. Then, whenever I landed a job, I made sure I got a lot of practice out of it. I would test the camera angles several times to see which would be best, and in a shoot that only required a single cut, I’d make a back-up plan, and another back-up plan for that. It took me about five years to establish myself, and I’m indebted to repeat customers who introduced me to other potential clients.” High-quality, fresh ingredients are essential to creating the color scheme and texture for an eye-catching presentation. ⓒ Kim Bo-seon ATTENTION TO DETAIL When Kim receives a job request, her ensuing days entail discussions about the image to be created. This involves preparing everything: suitable tableware for the food, preparing and testing recipes, and selecting props for the atmosphere and presentation. The latter includes coordinating tablecloths, napkins, utensils, seasoning containers, and flowers. While simple tasks may take about a day, more complex assignments, especially those involving hard-to-find ingredients or props, may take several days. The most crucial factor is the client’s approval, says Kim. A dish and presentation may be perfect in her eyes, but if it does not align with the client’s vision, she does not consider her work a success. Photo shoots are scheduled about two to three times a week. In recent years, she only gets around four hours of sleep a night, so on days without shoots, she goes to work later or catches up on sleep. Otherwise, Kim tends to pre-production tasks such as purchasing items, testing recipes, and checking test photos, as well as organizing receipts and tax invoices and assigning tasks to her staff. While Kim lends her culinary skills to millions of potential consumers, she hardly uses them for herself. Breakfast may be boiled eggs or a sweet potato, and lunch and dinner she has delivered. “There are plenty of good ingredients in the fridge, but I don’t have the time to cook or tidy up. I finish work early in the morning almost every day, so at home, I do almost nothing but sleep.” Occasionally, when she has time, she meets people for a fine meal, but even that becomes an extension of work. When she sees particularly impressive food, she instinctively switches from diner to food stylist. She carefully studies the dishes and thinks of possible recipes if she was asked to style them. “Food styling is creative work that can only be managed and executed when you have ideas. It’s not like brilliant ideas come to you just because you work from nine to five. That’s why it’s impossible to isolate work from everything else. This is something you can’t do if you don’t love the work. I used to be a person that gave up easily, but this job suits me. The more I work, the better I want to be.” Watching the birds flying around the persimmon tree in the yard offers Kim comfort and a short break — or perhaps some inspiration. Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Fixing Fountain Pens

An Ordinary Day 2023 WINTER

Fixing Fountain Pens In an age that may be labeled “posthandwriting,” some people’s love for fountain pens remains unbroken. For them, a fountain pen represents both a small luxury and a source of joy. If they need a repair, there is one person who takes service to an unparalleled level. In an age where people rarely write by hand, Kim Deok-rae has made a career out of repairing fountain pens. He says it’s not just about fixing pens; it’s about connecting with people. When it is Kim Deok-rae’s turn to make breakfast, he arises around seven o’clock, feeds his two children, one in middle school, the other in high school, and sends them off. It is the rou­tine of millions, but after that, Kim’s day contin­ues unlike anyone else’s. “Manyeonpil,” the Korean term for “fountain pen,” suggests that it can be used for thousands of years. Of course, nothing lasts forever. The nib of a pen will eventually wear out, if the pen doesn’t break before then. Simply not using a pen to en­sure it lasts is not a solution; left unattended for too long, its ink can dry out. Apart from the fountain pens made by domestic stationary brand Monami, most others that are available in Korea are imports. If they require a repair, some can be returned to the retailer, but for those that have been purchased abroad or from a second-party vendor, there are virtually no read­ily available repair shops. Even if one manages to track down a repairperson, there is no guarantee the pen can be fixed if the damage is too severe. Heirloom fountain pens passed down through generations are especially at risk, since spare parts for old, vintage models are often scarce and hard to come by. Enter Kim Deok-rae. INCOMPARABLE The small closet attached to Kim’s bedroom serves both as his workshop and resting place. The space is filled with letters and gifts from satisfied customers as well as fountain pens, tools, and colorful inks. When repairing a fountain pen, Kim relies on his bare hands and fingers more than tools. He believes no tool is as sensitive and precise as one’s fingertips. The first impression that Kim emits is that he defies expectations. Instead of being a sage-like senior citizen who has been repairing pens for decades, Kim is a 49-year-old who has been repairing pens for less than five years. For Kim, going to work around 9 a.m. means squeezing into a small dressing room attached to one of the bedrooms in his apartment in Gimpo, a city in western Gyeonggi Province. Fountain pens, countless bottles of colorful ink, notes stuck to the walls, a workbench, a computer, and an un­dersized refrigerator stuff the cozy nook. A little window allows a sliver of sunlight. “This space is my work and resting place. If I didn’t have a window, I wouldn’t know day from night. My workload is so heavy, in fact, that I reg­ularly forget to eat,” Kim says. The fountain pens that find their way to Kim tend to fall into three categories: those that have been dropped, damaging the nib completely; those that look fine but do not function properly; and those that are actually fine but belong to someone who feels that something seems off. In short, the categories are: “severe,” “mild,” and “normal.” Most of the fountain pens Kim receives qualify for the “severe” category. The nib is the heart of the fountain pen and its most expensive and delicate part. As such, it must be handled with extreme care. “If you try straightening a bend in a nib with anything stronger than itself, you’re likely to make it even worse, so I find it’s best to just use my fingernails to straighten it, bit by bit,” Kim explains. That is why he uses his bare hands instead of tools. No tool can duplicate the sensitivity of fingertips or the precision of fingernails. Disassembling the pen, straightening the nib, cleaning the barrel, reassembling the pen, and refilling the ink does not end the job. It simply means that it is time for the second stage, the testing. This process is even more deliberate and time-consuming. “I’ll leave a fountain pen lying on its side for half a day before I try it, and the next day I’ll leave it standing up all day and try it then,” Kim says. “Sometimes I will even turn it upside down. Because, ultimately, it should write well no matter what.” When the pen is ready to be pressed onto pa­per again, Kim muses about how the owner will use the pen and creates the scenarios repeated­ly. Sometimes this process takes a day, but other times, it can take as long as ten days. Either way, when he is finally satisfied, Kim uses the pen one final time to write a letter describing the work done and sends it together with the pen. “The content of the letter helps the client understand, ‘Ah, so that’s the process my pen went through.’ I explain what the problem was, what I did to fix it, and how I tested the results, along with advice to help them use it well, moving forward. The letters are partly to demonstrate how well the pens write now, and partly to convey the joy of receiving a handwritten letter in an age when they are so rare.” No doubt there are others in Korea who can repair fountain pens. But finishing a job with a handwritten letter makes the difference. Some might argue that Kim could spend his time more efficiently by forgoing the writing tests and only fixing pens. However, for Kim the writing phase provides meaningful closure. It is when the physi­cality of repairing melds with the mind and heart.   A NEW CHOICE Kim does not feel a repair job is complete unless the pen is tested thoroughly. He imagines and recreates ways in which the owner might use it.   When he was younger, Kim enrolled in the civil engineering department at Samcheok Industrial University but, encouraged by an old high school friend, he dropped out after the first year and en­rolled in creative writing at Seoul Art College. Eventually, Kim embarked on a broad array of jobs, including working at a clothing boutique, an international shipping company, and a leisure goods manufacturer, and as social worker, cook at a Japanese restaurant, and auto mechanic. Finally, in 2012, he joined a distributor of imported foun­tain pens, although he lacked sales experience. To show his appreciation to his boss, Kim was the first to arrive and last to leave every day. Most of Kim’s duties were in customer care, and one day, it occurred to him that it would be nice to be able to fix the customers’ broken foun­tain pens. So, after work and on weekends, he taught himself how to fix his own fountain pens, deliberately breaking and repairing them. When he began fixing those of his customers, word spread quickly. Before long, he was asked to deliv­er a lecture at a local university and got featured in the school’s webzine. All this, in turn, led to more requests for lectures and columns. “There came a time when I had to make a choice: stay in a stable job or follow my heart. My wife couldn’t believe it, but I quit my job. That was in 2020.” Thus, even though Kim did not become an en­gineer or professional writer, he still entered a profession that allowed him to optimize equip­ment and write extensively.   NO PRICE FOR HAPPINESS Kim’s clients range from elementary school stu­dents to senior citizens. Some of them are former coworkers, others contacted him after reading his columns, and still others were referred to him by existing clients or found him online. Before ac­cepting a pen, Kim explains the repair process in detail. “If it’s something they can fix themselves, I’ll tell them how to do that. If it needs proper repair, I tell them how much it would cost and how long it would take, and then ask them to carefully con­sider it before sending in their pen. There are a lot of variables in play, so I only take requests from people who can wait.” He also explains that repairs can cost as little as 40,000 to 50,000 won or as much as ten times that amount, and that the process will take three to five months. He repairs about 20 to 30 fountain pens a month and may have as many as 40 more in the to-be-fixed pile. “Twenty days a month, I focus on repairing fountain pens. Of the other ten days, I write for about a week, and then for two or three days, I visit my parents in Gangneung. I rarely leave the house except to go to Gangneung, donate blood every two weeks, or go for a walk every now and then. I don’t have weekends or holidays.” Kim’s day may last until midnight, and some­times he even works until dawn the next day. His days are filled with repairs, tests, consultations, documenting his work, writing letters by hand, and exchanging pleasantries with clients. “There are months when I can’t even complete ten fountain pens in total. Somewhere along the line, I started slowing down. Things I would have been satisfied with before don’t feel good enough anymore. It’s my job to make these pens the best they can be. I may be stuck in my tiny workroom, but I get to touch pens from all over the world. If I spent less time on each pen, I might make more money, but I’d be less happy. And more than any­thing, I love that I have customers who recognize that I’m a fountain pen specialist who cares about these pens more deeply than anyone else. I love this life. After all, it is the life I’ve chosen.” Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Reinventing a Medium

An Ordinary Day 2023 AUTUMN

Reinventing a Medium Magazine editor-in-chief Kim Tae-kyung is always faced with nearing deadlines. She never stops thinking about how to improve operations but keeps an eye on a healthy work-life balance, not allowing work to consume her. Kim Tae-kyung is the creator and editor-in-chief of Urbänlike, a magazine that focuses on city lifestyle and fashion. Kim Tae-kyung regularly awakens well before dawn. In the first 30 minutes, she greets her dog, Bany; brushes her teeth; has lukewarm apple cider vinegar and probiotics; stretches; and meditates. Then she begins what she considers the most important part of her predawn routine: reflecting on the events of the previous day, setting goals for the new one, and submitting her thoughts to her journal. This routine took shape about five years ago, when she was a night owl, going to bed and waking up late. Her health was deteriorating, so she decided to try being an early riser. “My quality of life changed, and everything felt somehow richer,” she recalls. After breakfast—a sliced apple with peanut butter, two boiled eggs, one tomato, and either nut or almond soy milk—Kim is ready to begin her tasks as editor-in-chief of Urbänlike, a self-described “urban archive magazine” that she founded in 2013. BREAKING THE MOLDS Each issue of Urbänlike covers a single topic. The magazine is published only twice a year, making each issue more of a keepsake than a monthly publication. Kim’s publication is an outlier. Technically a magazine, Urbänlike is more like a “mook.” Outwardly, it resembles a magazine, but it is intended to have the shelf life of a book, as it is only published twice a year. The volume and size of each issue, and even the paper type used for printing, change in accordance with the theme. Consequently, even past issues of the magazine generate steady sales, like popular books. Kim is a nonconformist in terms of how she manages herself and steers operations. She goes to her Seoul office only four days a week and limits herself to working six or seven hours. She simply believes that one’s ability to fully concentrate diminishes after that. By around 4 p.m., Kim is gone. Although Kim says that she does not push herself too hard—“I don’t pour my all into it”—she commits many hours to her job. “If I divide up my week, I’m working on my body for four days to get productive results, and on the mental part, where I’m inspired or studying, for three days,” she says. An office day starts with listening to a music playlist that suits her mood. Then she organizes her schedule and catches up with email, the news, and social media to take the pulse of trends. The most time-consuming task is giving directions regarding the content of each issue. Since the writers are not at the office, communication is done remotely or via email.   LUCKY BREAK The number of pages, size, paper type, cover design, and feel are different for every issue, and determined by its theme. This is why, no matter how many magazines Kim produces, the process feels new every time   It was in her first year of college when Kim took her first step into the world of magazines, assisting veteran reporters and working on street fashion pieces of her own. In 1998, her senior year, the Asian financial crisis triggered layoffs and dashed hopes of new college graduates. Nevertheless, Kim beat the odds. A magazine job offer came her way, and she jumped at it, forgoing her real dream of becoming a TV producer. “Of course, I had no idea at the time that I would end up staying.” Numerous magazine gigs followed until 2009, when Kim went to Urban Books, a publishing group focusing on urban lifestyle. Four years later, she launched Urbänlike, entering the market for monthly magazines. The focus was on urban fashion and lifestyle. But by 2016, Kim wanted to escape the monthly deadlines and decided to adopt a format she had conceived in her first year in college: publishing only twice a year and focusing on one topic per issue. “I think my idea was: ‘What can I actually do?’ The only way forward was the collectible. Selectivity plus focus was the answer,” she says. The switch removed the intensity of monthly deadlines and fit the reality of declining magazine sales and advertisers transitioning to websites. Readers appreciated the innovative concept, validating the decision to change. Past topics include “Hotel,” “Work from Home,” “Publishing House,” “Stationery,” “Dining,” and “Bowls.”   LOOSE STRUCTURE Constantly reevaluating her day-to-day routine, Kim began to reorganize work even before the COVID-19 pandemic upended office life. “It felt as though I was monitoring all the reporters at their desks, and coming into the office every day just didn’t seem efficient. None of these things were aligned with the reasons I created the company in the first place, so I shut it down,” she explains. Now, she hires freelance specialists instead of having permanent staff who may not always be suited to a particular topic. “This means I don’t have to spend energy on navigating interpersonal issues, so I can just concentrate on work.” Last year, she hired two assistants, freeing up more of her time to focus on planning and design. “I’m not a particularly good writer or interviewer, and I don’t necessarily have a ton of knowledge, either; I’m kind of middling on all fronts,” Kim admits. “For a while, I worried that I really needed to be an expert on everything. But then I realized that I just need to find people who are good at what they do and let them do it, just like I don’t need to make bowls myself to publish a book about bowls.” Project editors change with each issue, but aside from Kim, one specific photographer and two designers are permanent team members. They have been with her for a full decade now and shared her vision from the beginning. Along the way, the identity of Urbänlike has become clearer than ever. “I thought that planning each issue needed to be done as a group, together with my colleagues. Then again, I’m the one who determines the brand identity. Because in the end, it goes in the direction I want it to go. So once the theme is chosen, I receive detailed proposals built around it and hand out different roles.”   FLUID ROUTINE Besides shepherding her staff, Kim devotes large chunks of time to thinking about potential themes of future issues. “The most effective way is to travel to another city, because it allows you to objectively see the content you want to create, when you are one step away from your daily life. Of course, I am also inspired by other factors but they are just influencing me to a certain degree, and the most important thing is my own vision,” Kim says. Every summer and winter, Kim works in different cities. “No matter where I am, I just need my laptop and I am all set. I try to maintain a state where I can stop working at any time.” That is another way of her saying: “I will never settle and am always ready to change.” There are also times when you stop and ask yourself, “Why am I still doing this, and how should I proceed?” “Back when I worked for other magazines, the pressure was just too much sometimes. I think that is why, ever since I started working on my own projects, I have been trying to take better care of myself so that I don’t burn out,” Kim says. “I think anxiety is an inevitable aspect of modern society. Such feelings are natural, but I try to think positively and not to let them overwhelm me. I don’t think about past regrets or try to predict the future. If I stay focused on the present and try to do my best in this moment, I think I will achieve my goals in the end.”   NEW GOALS Kim wants to take Urbänlike to foreign markets. That has spurred her presence at international book fairs. She is also thinking a lot about bookmaking itself. “Making a book is much more difficult and complicated than making a cup, but the cost-performance ratio is much higher for a cup. I need to find a truly efficient way to do the work, and I also want my business to succeed. I don’t think the magazine industry’s heyday will return, but I want to find something else. This sort of thing is always on my mind, because when I find myself saying, ‘I’m bored of this too now,’ or ‘This feels the same as everything else,’ I want to be able to transform without hesitation.” Kim’s next goal is to create a library similar to one that she visited in Helsinki, Finland. “There were kids on skateboards and some people lying on the grass, reading, and the whole place felt like a fun, sensory space, like a playground. I want to create a space like that. I buy tons of books whenever I travel, but what is the point of keeping them for myself? I want to create a library like that close to Seoul and live as a library grandma, like the volunteer senior citizens I saw at that library in Helsinki.” Urbänlike was conceived around the question, “How can we eat well and live well in the city?” “What I am aiming for is something in the middle. I think there is a lack of concern for the middle class, and there isn’t much content for them about the fundamental things in life. People in the middle don’t have a voice, and they don’t have much choice, so I’m trying to fill that void.” Filling in the middle can be a good way to live in the city. Every day at dawn, in the solitude of her own time, Kim is getting closer to reaching this goal. For herself, and in her own way.   Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

A Familial Flavor

An Ordinary Day 2023 SUMMER

A Familial Flavor No proper Korean meal is ever without sesame oil. It completes the flavor of practically every meat and vegetable dish. The sesame oil sold at the modest, family-run shop Daeu Gochu Chamgireum makes it a go-to shopping destination for many households. Yu Mun-seok, owner of Daeu Gochu Chamgireum, has been selling sesame oil from this very spot for the past 38 years, following in his mother’s footsteps and laying a path for his son to succeed him. The shop also sells other Korean kitchen staples such as garlic, mixed rice, and anchovy sauce. When seoul subway passengers leave Amsa Station, they may quickly catch a whiff of different smells and hear animated conversations, as the Amsa Complex Market is only a few steps away. Opened in 1978, the market is packed with more than a hundred shops and stalls selling an eclectic assortment of meat, fish, vegetables, clothes, snacks, and grain. One of its distinctive gastronomic aromas comes from Daeu Gochu Chamgireum. The family-run shop opens every day, and the bouquet of its fresh-pressed sesame oil is a market constant. “A lot of customers who used to live here have moved out of the neighborhood. I would hate for them to come all the way back here and find us closed. That’s why it’s hard to take a day off,” says shop owner Yu Mun-seok. A FAMILY AFFAIR To produce sesame oil, sesame seeds are rinsed, dried, roasted, and pressed. Squeezing one mal (about 6 kilograms) of sesame seeds produces six or seven 350 ml bottles. The business is a three-person operation. There is only Yu; his wife, Shin Ye-seo; and their oldest son, Yu Seo-baek. The shop opens every morning at 7:30 and closes at 8:30 in the evening. The son takes a day off once a week to spend more time with his children. But his parents never rest until after their 13-hour workday, even though their home is only a five-minute walk away. The day is spent pressing sesame oil (chamgireum) and perilla oil (deulgireum), grinding red pepper powder (gochugaru), and making seonsik, a powder of healthy grains dissolved in water or milk. The powder includes waxy and non-waxy barley; brown glutinous rice, germinated brown rice, and black sweet rice; green kernel black beans and corn; white and black sesame, peanut, walnut, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds; as well as almond, banana, and millet. Two years ago, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yu Seo-baek quit his office job and joined his parents. “It wasn’t an impulsive decision; I’d been considering it for a while,” he says. “My father is getting older, so I knew it was time to start getting ready to take over. Then the pandemic started and I figured we ought to start selling online too, so I made the move.” His mother voiced misgivings. “Running your own business means a lot of physical labor and mental stress. Sometimes things go well and sometimes they don’t. It may look like you just sit around selling and collecting money, but it isn’t like that at all,” she says. “My stance was, ‘You go work in your office. Have a comfortable life instead of following in our footsteps.’ But then things went the way they did and now we’re all working together — so there are some aspects I regret, as a parent. We had a hard life, and now our son will have a hard life, too.” Still, Shin feels being self-employed is better in terms of income stability. “That was partly why I couldn’t really object. If you work in an office, you must quit at a certain age. This job has no retirement age. As long as you’re healthy and mobile you don’t have to worry about making a living, which is a comfort.”   WATCH AND LEARN Yu senior’s journey into sesame oil began in the late 1970s, after he had completed his compulsory military service. He helped his mother, who was selling red pepper powder. Back then, it was an essential ingredient in every household that made their own kimchi and cooked every meal at home. Demand was particularly high during gimjang (kimchi-making) season, which came around in early winter. But as times changed, the number of people looking for red pepper powder steadily shrank, as busy families increasingly opted for store-bought kimchi. “At the time, the shop right next door to ours pressed sesame oil,” Yu explains. “We visited each other all the time, so I was always seeing them work, and it just occurred to me — I could do that, too.” Sesame is the very first entry among the thousands of medicinal herbs and ingredients listed in the natural medicines section of Principles and Practice of Eastern Medicine (Donguibogam), compiled by Heo Jun (1539–1615) and included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register since 2009. Sesame is also called hyomaja, which means “better at filial piety than one’s son.” The preparation of sesame oil is designed to improve the proper absorption of sesame seeds’ nutrients. Its three virtues are said to be the prevention of stroke and myocardial infarction, the darkening of gray hair, and anxiety relief. Sesame seeds contain 45–55 percent oil and 36 percent protein, but they are also rich in insoluble fiber, making them difficult to digest. To make the oil, sesame seeds are washed, dried, and then stir-fried for about 30 minutes. After the seeds are cooled, they are squeezed in a hydraulic press. One mal is the unit of measure, which is equal to six kilograms and produces six or seven 350 ml bottles. Casual shoppers tend to think that rich color and scent are the markers of a good sesame oil, but this is not necessarily the case. The color and aroma deepen the longer the seeds are stir-fried, but, in turn, they also lose their nutritional value. In fact, there are customers who prefer a lighter color and aroma, so the Yu family constantly needs to adjust to meet customer preferences. Yu and his son perform the seed preparation, stir-frying, and pressing throughout the day, while Shin mostly deals with customers. She must always be totally aware of the type of seed used. Sesame oil pressed from domestic seeds is about three times more expensive.   GOING ONLINE As more and more people rely on food deliveries and meal kit services, sales of sesame oil and chili powder at traditional markets have declined. Nevertheless, the Yu family’s shop is open year-round even as the Yus try to ramp up online sales. Regulars who go out of their way to come to the shop from great distances are always on Yu Mun-seok’s mind. “I’ll ask them, ‘Isn’t there any sesame oil where you live? Why come all this way?’ It’s not like I can give them a better price than any other spot… All I can do is put my heart into the pressing. But still, they come back every time,” he says. Shin spends most of the day handling sales and swapping tips. “When people ask me this and that, I’ll teach them my know-how, and sometimes I learn from them too. Like how you should store sesame oil at room temperature but perilla oil in the refrigerator, or how you don’t actually need green onion or garlic when dressing seasonal greens — just salt, sesame oil, and sesame seeds will actually produce much better flavor.” The shop has been operating for 38 years, and Shin and Yu have been married for 36 years. After work, he has a well-deserved drink and she catches up with housework. Eventually, Shin may have less face-to-face interaction with customers. The pandemic considerably raised the profile of the Amsa Complex Market. Largely stuck indoors, regulars tried to order online and the market rose to the challenge. It developed the first “Our Market, Speedy Delivery” system in Korea, making nationwide sales possible. At this point, the Yu family is hanging their hopes on online sales, where these same customers will be able to receive their goods in the comfort of their own home. “We don’t have a ton of online sales yet. But we still have to move our operations more and more online,” says Yu. “It won’t be easy, but our son is working hard, so I’m sure it’ll work out.”   Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Threading Through Time

An Ordinary Day 2023 SPRING

Threading Through Time Lee Kyeong-ja has embroidered name tags on school uniforms for so long that her first generation of student-customers now bring their children’s clothes to her. Her days at the sewing machine in her sporting goods store are nearing an end, though. For the past 40 years, Lee Kyeong-ja has been opening her shop every morning. Some of her student-customers from long ago now bring their children to have their name tags sewn by her “Done in a flash” infers astonishing, effortless speed and efficiency. That would describe Lee Kyeong-ja at work. When she embroiders a name tag onto a uniform, she is finished in less than sixty seconds. She manipulates her sewing machine in a flash, but the time needed to achieve such speed was anything but short. Starting with mastering a straight line, countless hours ensued. All of Lee’s fingers are slightly bent in one direction, evidence of 40 years of carefully embroidering names into cloth at her store, Gim-il Sporting Goods, in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. “When I first started working with a sewing machine, I hurt my hands a lot. Now, of course, I have aches and pains in my fingers and wrists. Still, I think it was fairly happy work. When you’re running a sewing machine, you see, you don’t really think about anything else. Sometimes, when we’re really busy, I even forget to eat. Time truly flies,” she says. NUMBERED DAYS Gim-il Sporting Goods is always busiest in January and February, when students bring their uniforms to have their names embroidered before the school year begins. Gim-il Sporting Goods is in Bukbyeon-dong, Gimpo, at the mouth of the Han River, a 25-minute drive from Seoul. Previously the bustling center of the city, Bukbyeon-dong had Gimpo’s first district hall and post office in the 1970s. A bevy of shops, bars, and cafés followed. Today, the area is slated for redevelopment. The familiar old sights and sounds of the neighborhood are scheduled to completely disappear within a few years. “Once the neighborhood gets torn down, I’m planning to close the store. Our monthly rent is currently 500,000 won (around US$400), but if we move someplace new, we will have to pay double or triple or even more. We can’t handle that with our current income. Now that I know my days in this job are numbered, I feel that much more grateful to each customer who gives us their business,” Lee says. Students from some twenty middle and high schools in Gimpo supply a steady stream of potential customers. The name tags for each grade differ from school to school, of course. To stay up to date, Lee attaches notes to the colors of her threads — school, new student, returning student, and so on — and puts them on the wall for quick reference. Like Spinoza, determined to plant his apple tree despite the world ending tomorrow, Lee sits at her sewing machine, quietly embroidering name after name. She can also thread a needle in the blink of an eye. This isn’t because she has good vision; it’s the muscle memory in her fingers. With her sewing machine Lee replicates gungseo, a font based on the flowing, elegant calligraphy produced by court ladies during the Joseon Dynasty that was commonly used for formal documents. Made by hand, the name tags may have tiny differences. Knowing that the tags have a human touch gives them a sense of warmth, which cannot be replicated on the computerized embroidery machine that Lee’s younger brother operates. THREE BEATS Lee is the third owner of Gim-il Sporting Goods. She took over in 1983 from a high school classmate whose father founded the businesses. Changing the name of the store was out of the question. It stands for “number one sporting goods store in Gimpo.” (“Gim” is short for Gimpo and “il” means “one” in Korean.) “I liked that meaning a lot, so we kept the name as is,” Lee recalls. Sporting goods stores near schools not only sell equipment but also sports uniforms. They initially provided an embroidered name tag as a freebie for loyal customers. Eventually, all the students expected the same and the stores realized they had another potential revenue source. They started making name tags for all school uniforms. Lee charges 2,000 won (less than US$2) for an embroidered name tag. Some may say this is far too cheap, and others may think it a bit pricey. In any case, Lee does not quibble. She just smiles and keeps sewing. “In the early days, we would take the school uniforms and gym uniforms we sold here to another shop to get names embroidered, because I didn’t know how to do it myself. But it wasn’t sustainable, so I began to learn and practiced whenever I could,” Lee explained. “My sewing machine was with me always, from early in the morning to late at night. I think it took about six or seven years before I felt confident about sewing the names myself. Embroidering with a sewing machine isn’t just about using your hands — you need to control the speed with your feet by pressing the pedal, and push the knee lift to control the thickness of each letter. It’s three beats that have to line up, so it takes a long time to become skillful at it.” Some of Lee’s student-customers have returned years later to ask for name tags for their own children. At those moments she is glad she has stayed put for so long. These days, a lot of mothers of kindergarteners have also started getting their children’s names embroidered on their handkerchiefs and uniforms. Even though Lee has never seen the tots in person, she finds herself smiling as she sews their names. KEEPING TIME Having sewn so many names over the years, Lee recognizes what names are popular. Some names have up to five-characters, unlike the usual three. Lee, 69, starts at the crack of dawn. She opens her store at 10 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m. From her seat, Lee stays attuned to what names are popular. “For a while, it was Korean names without Chinese-character roots. These days, it seems to be names that are more unisex. I’ve embroidered four-character names that use both parents’ last names, and I’ve embroidered names that are five characters long. Looking back now, they’re all happy memories,” she explains. From the 1970s through the mid-1980s, the early years of her store, the Gimpo area had abundant empty, flat areas. Winters were colder then, keeping rice paddies frozen and making ice skates a big seller. After winter, roller skate sales picked up. Of course, there are steady sellers regardless of fads and seasons, such as table tennis and badminton racquets, footballs, and basketballs. Whatever the fad, Lee liked the fact that she was selling things that helped children run and play and be healthy. Nowadays, sales have plunged due to internet shopping. The sewing service has become a primary revenue generator. In addition to school uniforms, name tags for work clothes are embroidered, and an increasing number of people come to have patches sewn on their clothes, simply because they don’t know how to sew by themselves. “When a customer wants a patch to cover a hole in their garment, sometimes I’ll just sew them a design in the shape of a rose or a leaf,” Lee says. “It looks better to sew a design with thread in the same color as the garment rather than attaching a patch that’s actually a different material. The customers like it, too, which makes me feel good.” In addition to Lee’s store, there is another sporting goods store in the neighborhood: Gimpo Sporting Goods. This place also offers embroidery services, but the two stores are not exactly fierce rivals. For example, before a new school year, they calculate how many gym uniforms the local schools will need, and each store will order half the amount. If one store sells out first, they will direct customers to the other store. Everyone has learned through experience that the secret to the long haul is in helping each other out. The same can be said in regard to Lee’s children. Before moving to its current location in 1992, Gim-il Sporting Goods occupied what used to be Upare Theater, once Gimpo’s only movie theater. The family lived above the store and Lee raised her two children there with the help of neighbors. It was difficult to work full-time and be a mother, but these days Lee finds herself waxing nostalgic about it all, especially how the whole neighborhood was so full of warmth. “I was born in Yangchon-eup in Gimpo, and Gimpo is where I attended elementary, middle, and high school. I married my high-school sweetheart, and I still live in Gimpo to this day. When I was young, there was nothing here but farmland. Autumn was always so beautiful, the rice fields ripened to gold. As the city grew, the atmosphere of those old days disappeared, but I still have all the warm memories in my heart,” she reminisces. “I want to keep on living right here until the day I die.” Park Mi-kyeong Freelance Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Seals of Unmatchable Excellence

An Ordinary Day 2022 WINTER

Seals of Unmatchable Excellence Nearly everyone in Korea has a seal to stamp their name on contracts and documents. Today, most seals are made quickly with computers and machines. At a tiny shop in Seoul, however, Park Ho-yeong hand-carves seals that are beyond unique – something he has been doing for the past seventy years. Park Ho-young started making seals to survive the Korean War – and has never stopped. Nowadays, signatures are used on legal papers more and more, but Park remains undaunted, creating personal seals that are one of a kind. Park Ho-Yeong’s workday begins with a one-hour subway ride to his snug shop on the third floor of an old building in central Seoul. The shop, called Bakindang (literally, “knowledgeable about seals”), has no signboard, so Park can hardly count on passing customer traffic. Still, he manages to stay in business with a small but loyal group of long-time regulars and referrals. Surrounded with awards honoring his craftmanship, Park chooses from a variety of materials, from hardwoods to expensive jade from Gangwon Province, and selects the calligraphy styles and designs to satisfy his customers’ demands. He then carves the customer’s name on a surface that may be no larger than a small coin. The custom-made seals, as Park matter-of-factly declares, are “one-of-a-kind.” The same deion could apply to him – there are few seal carvers left, not to mention other 84-year-olds who can handle a 10-hour workday every day of the year. Beginning The myth of Dangun, the founder of Gojoseon (Korea’s earliest iteration as a nation), mentions cheonbuin, or “heavenly symbols.” “Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms” (Samguk yusa), compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryeon (1206-1289) during the Goryeo Dynasty, states, “Hwanin [Lord of Heaven] bestowed three heavenly symbols upon his son, Hwanung, and sent him down to rule everything under the sky and save the world of man.” Considering that the word “cheonbuin” includes the Chinese character “in” (印) for “seal,” many believe the heavenly symbols would have been tokens proving that Hwanung was truly the son of Hwanin, similar to the function that seals take on today. Seals were once indispensable in every Korean person’s life. Without a personal seal, one could not finalize formal contracts, documents or even a simple bank transaction. Even Korean War refugees leaving their homes to flee south brought their seals. Park, barely a teenager then, was among them. He left North Korea and ended up on Geoje, an island off the southern coast of Korea in early 1951, seven months after the war broke out. Wielding a hacksaw, he made the tools he needed to carve seals and used wood that he had cut himself. If a person did not have any money to buy a seal, he accepted payment in grain. “I lived on the island for three years. At first, each person got three cups of rice a day, but then the rations got smaller and smaller until eventually, they dried up completely. There was nothing left to live on then, so everyone scattered again, back to the cities,” Park said. Park moved to a shantytown in Busan. About six months later, a relative told him of a job opportunity: “I know someone who’s running a seal shop in Seoul’s Sindang-dong. What do you think about working there?” The sixteen-year-old Park packed his bags and moved to the capital. “I worked in that shop for ten years. I learned from Master Kim Du-chil, who was a member of the Chusache Society,” Park says. (“Chusache” refers to the calligraphy style of Joseon literati painter and calligrapher Kim Jeong-hui, whose pen name was Chusa.) “He would write the characters during the day, and I would carve them at night. I also went to night school to get my high school degree. When things were busy, I would sleep only two hours a day. Back then, I got paid for each letter I carved. There were times when I carved 1,000 characters in just 24 hours.” It was during this period that Park mastered the calligraphic styles and conventions of Chinese characters, including jwaseo (reversed , with characters right and left switched), jeonseo (seal ), yeseo (clerical ) and choseo (cursive ). He had already memorized the “Thousand Character Classic,” an introductory text widely used for learning Chinese characters, which was immeasurably helpful. Transformations Park was 26 years old when he started his own business; the beginning simply amounted to placing a desk in the corner of a printing shop in central Seoul. After moving from place to place for a few years, he eventually landed in his current location in a well-worn part of Seoul’s business district in the vicinity of Cheonggyecheon, a stream running through Seoul. This was 11 years ago, by which time Park’s cohort of seal carvers was already dwindling rapidly. The advent of computer programs and carving machines in the 1990s meant that seals could be churned out quickly, thereby rendering hand-carving obsolete. Also, the use of signatures in lieu of seals in all kinds of dealings means that having a seal is no longer absolutely necessary. “There are hardly any shops left anymore where they actually carve each seal by hand, one at a time,” Park says. “You just can’t make a good living that way, not to mention the difficulty of carving itself. No one wants to learn the trade anymore. You must know Chinese characters, and you have to learn calligraphy. If you don’t start when you’re young, it’s hard.” Still, Park has no thoughts of stopping. Barring illness or unforeseen circumstances, he leaves home in the morning, 365 days a year, to open his eight-pyeong (26.4 square meters) shop. Park’s working hours are, technically, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., but he often leaves his shop during the day. “As I get older, I have to go to the doctor more often. Around 3 p.m., I tend to go out for lunch,” he says. The doctor’s visits are a side effect of Park’s vocation. According to him, seal carving has two requisites: focus and effort, both of which have exacted a toll over the decades. Some orders require Park to carve up to 24 characters on a surface smaller than a coin. Due to repeated eyestrain, he suffers from degeneration of the macula, a nerve tissue in the center of the retina, where most optic cells are located and images are formed. Macular degeneration can cause visual impairment and even complete blindness. In some cases, it can make letters or straight lines appear bent, twisted, or partially obscured. “My left eye is fine. It’s the right one that’s going bad,” Park says. “It’s already been about 20 years. You can’t fix it with surgery, so I need to stop and rest a lot when I work. These days, I only make about one seal a day.” When he is working, Park concentrates so hard that he does not even know when a customer enters his tiny shop. Although his eyesight has degenerated from long years of engraving letters onto a tiny surface, he laughingly says he might develop a worse physical problem if he quits. One of a kind “A seal is something you use your whole life, once you get one. And the seals I make are impossible to counterfeit,” Park says. This is why consultation with the client is so vital. First, a material is chosen for the seal. Then Park determines how many Chinese characters and strokes will be needed to carve out the client’s name. Most Korean names (surname and given name) consist of three characters. In some cases, however, Park will add an extra character at the end to invite blessings and luck, in accordance with a school of thought which asserts that a person’s luck is affected by the total number of strokes in the characters of their name. After this calculation, he chooses the calligraphic style that best suits the client’s name and first writes it on the surface of the seal with a brush. Then comes the engraving work, which requires intense concentration. “Even a tiny slip means starting over, from scratch. When you are really focused, time flies. But I do have to rest a lot these days, because of my eye,” Park says. Park has an address book that holds the names, contact numbers and seal imprints (the ink mark left by the seal when stamped) of 4,700 clients. In 2001, Park’s semi-basement shop was damaged by the flooding of Cheonggyecheon, the stream in front of his shop. After that, although he was over 60 at the time, he purchased a computer and taught himself how to organize and store his customer records. Then he moved onto learning how to use Photoshop. Records of seals made by Park show the uniqueness of each one. After losing his paperwork to flooding in 2001, he started counting his output again. His total was nearing 5,000 seals by the end of 2022. Last Etches When I ask whether he carries around a seal, Park reaches into his pocket and pulls out two seals. Their tiny cases were sewn for him by his wife when they were both young. “My wife says I have done more than enough, and that I should rest. But I don’t want to. I don’t know anyone in my circle who’s still working. When you don’t have work, all you have left to do is eat and sleep. That makes your brain and your body atrophy. I can’t stop working, because I’m afraid that will happen to me, too.” When I ask what he would say if he could make just one wish, he chuckles. “A wish? No. I’m at the end of my life, what would I have to wish for? I just want to be healthy until the day I die.” In Korea, it is often said that people leave their name behind when they die. A person’s name is believed to embody every action they have taken, every path they have walked, and every seed they have sown and harvested. The names carved by Park, and the names he has yet to carve, are no light matter. Even after many years have passed, his seals will remain as one-of-a-kind proof of life, witnesses to each individual existence. These days a seal can be made in a few minutes using a computer program, but Park still engraves each letter by hand, wishing for his customers’ happiness. This is something a machine is not capable of doing. Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Han Jung-hyun Photographer

Running the Tables

An Ordinary Day 2022 AUTUMN

Running the Tables Kim Man-youn combines 30 years of corporate experience and exceptional billiard skills in his retirement job as the owner of a pool hall. His stress on maintaining a friendly atmosphere and paying attention to people keeps him ahead of thousands of competitors. Retiring after 30 years as an office worker, Kim Man-youn took out a new lease on life as the owner of a pool hall. To Kim, nothing is more important than genuinely caring customer service. “Two okdoldae [bi l liard tables] were kept in the eastern corridor of Injeongjeon [throne hall of Changdeok Palace], and from time to time he would take up a cue with members of the court.” This passage appears in Sunjong gukjangnok, a photo album documenting the funeral of King Sunjong, the last ruler of the Joseon Dynasty and such a billiards enthusiast that he designated Monday and Thursday as “billiards day” (okdolui nal). The first billiard table in Korea appeared in 1884 in Jemulpo port (today’s Incheon), thanks to an American missionary. Fifteen years later, billiard balls were racked up in the royal court for the first time. By the time King Sunjong was enjoying the game, many Japanese-run billiard halls were already thriving.The first Korean-owned hall, Mugungheon, opened in 1924 and became a social hub of the upper class. Some 100 years later, billiards is enjoyed across all social classes. In 2021, there were nearly 16,000 registered billiard halls in Korea, and in a survey of 9,000 men, 1,125 said they played more than once a year. More than a few frequent the DAVINCI Billiard Club and Academy. HEARTFELT GREETING Stroll through any alleyway in Seoul’s Guro Digital Complex, and a seemingly endless forest of “Billiard Hall” (danggujang in Korean) signs scream for attention. Many players make their way to DAVINCI by 4 p.m., when owner Kim Man-youn begins his workday. His first task is to weave through the tables and dole out heartfelt greetings and friendly banter. “Around here, there’s basically a billiard hall in every building. So, to get customers to come to ours, we’ve got to be different somehow. The most effective method I’ve found is greeting every customer. I always take a little stroll around the place. A ‘Good to see you’ here, an ‘Anything you need?’ there – just, hellos and goodbyes and the occasional joke. Tell me, what do you think a billiard club actually sells?” Service? “That’s right,” Kim declares. “We’re in the service industry. The actual players are the ones who sell the game. That’s why it’s important for the owner or the manager to always be around, so people can see them working hard – because people are coming for the service. We need to be able to anticipate our customers’ needs, to give them what they want even before they ask.” Kim’s workday officially lasts six hours. He heads home at 10 p.m., when the night manager arrives. But not before he circles the tables another time. Handshakes, high fives, and knowing looks and nods abound. “Whenever I hire a new employee, the first thing I talk to them about is how we greet our customers. You know, it’s important to always have respect in your heart, and to express that respect to people, that’s what a real greeting is. And to me, that’s where real service begins.” Before opening the pool hall, Kim was an office worker for 30 years. Most of that time he spent in planning and coordination at a major corporation. There, Kim became keenly attuned to service and customer satisfaction. SECOND CAREER Kim retired in 2021, but after two months of idleness, he became restless. “Maybe because I’ve worked my whole life, all that relaxation wasn’t actually very…relaxing. I started wondering whether I should try something new, and then I wondered what that something might be,” Kim recalls. “Eventually, I asked my kids what they thought, and my second oldest daughter said, ‘Well, Dad, what are you good at?’ I told her, classical guitar, golf, bowling, Go, billiards – I’m good at them all! And she told me billiards seemed like the best bet. She said just relax, and do it on the side. I knew how to play billiards but I didn’t know how to run a business, so I went and bought a book.” The title was “Maybe I’ll Open a Pool Hall?” One passage really caught his attention. “It said something like, ‘200s will succeed, and 1,000s will fail.’ This means a 200-level player will work hard to provide his customers with good service, but a 1,000-level player will end up trying to teach his customers, and go out of business.” In fact, Kim actually is a 1,000-level player (in four-ball billiards) – as high as many professionals – but he took the lesson to heart as he acquired his first hall: “Don’t try to teach your customers!” Just when Kim was becoming accustomed to operating a pool hall, the owner of the hall next door lured all his regulars away with promises of better facilities and service. As his customer base dwindled, he fell deeper and deeper into the red, falling behind on rent payments. That was when he decided to tack in a different direction and teach his customers after all. He began writing a column for a famous online billiards forum, calling it “The Math and Physics of Billiards.” “In middle and high school, you learn the formulas, and then in college, you learn how the formulas are created. In your basic billiard primer, all you get are the formulas. You can memorize them as is, but you’ll forget them right away. Once you really internalize the principles, though, that’s when you can start getting creative. That’s where I put my focus. I spent a full year, you know, printing out one sheet at a time and handing them out to customers.”Business slowly improved, but not enough for Kim’s pool hall to get out of the red. As he began to consider quitting, a close friend and professional pool player, who also was on the National Billiards Team, suggested that they tour the Guro Digital Complex. A relatively recent development on the site of the old Guro Industrial Complex, once the heart of Korea’s textile and other labor-intensive industries, the area is now a hub for IT companies and teems with young professionals taking their first steps into the real world. Foot traffic is nonstop, as the whole area bustles every hour of every workday. “We got here around six in the evening, and people were basically lining up to catch the subway home. When I came back a second time, it was to sign a lease,” Kim said. The first location lasted two years. The second and current location for the past eight years. The space is 363 square meters, and holds 16 tables. A month’s rent is ten million won (about US$7,500). On the first day, the takings came to only 300,000 won, but within the first two weeks, the daily amount exceeded 1,000,000 won. Around 10 percent of the annual income is reinvested into the business, for example, purchasing new cue sticks and other equipment. Officially open from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next day, the pool hall may stay open as late as 5 a.m. if there are customers. During the day, the customers are mostly retirees in their sixties, enjoying their free time. After the workday, the hall fills up with office workers in their thirties to fifties. On weekday mornings, a wave of teens and twenty-somethings take up their posts. Each day, DAVINCI averages more than 100 customers. To Kim Man-youn, playing billiards isn’t just entertainment – it’s science. In his own book, Kim writes: “Billiards are physics, operated according to Newton’s laws of motion, and the angle of that motion is mathematics.” The pool hall is constantly bustling. During the day, customers in their sixties enjoy their leisure time. After the workday, office workers unwind. And in the wee hours after midnight, young people delay their bedtime. EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE Kim learned to play billiards fresh out of high school, when he was attending a prep academy to retake his college entrance exams. Asked whether he was a natural, his answer is matter-of-fact: “No such thing. It’s all about study and effort.” “It was 1974 when I entered university, and back then there wasn’t much of an entertainment culture to speak of. But about ten years ago, we got a cable channel that was all billiards all the time, and a lot of new people began learning the game. When it was selected as an official event for the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, well, billiard halls basically became sports facilities.” As the number of people playing billiards grew, the number of new halls skyrocketed as well. A sudden surge in “senior start-ups” added fuel to the fire, driven by the growing population of retirees dreaming of a new lease on life. According to the National Office of Statistics, five out of six new businesses opened by seniors over the age of sixty failed in 2020. In order to survive, it was necessary for Kim to offer differentiated service. “It’s nice to have some extra space, so people can have a seat and take a break, but our club is so packed full of tables that it’s not that nice,” Kim admits. “We work hard to make up for it, though, and improve things wherever we can. Each table has a VAR (Video Assistant Referee) system installed, so if there’s any kind of conflict over a game, you can check the video playback. Before 6 p.m., you get an unlimited number of games for just 11,000 won. And at least once every hour, we bring a beverage cart around and ask everyone, ‘Is there anything you need?’ There are no clocks on the walls. If there’s something on a wall, you end up looking at it, and if there’s something to read, you end up reading it, and all that just breaks your focus. We don’t even have call buttons. That’s us saying, we’ll come to you before you have to call us.” “When you’re older and retired, and spending time with your friends, you get the most bang for your buck all around with billiards,” according to Kim. It does not cost much, and you have to use your brain, so it is good for preventing dementia, too. Kim’s online billiard column was recently published as a book, and has been causing quite a buzz. Not surprisingly, he has attracted new customers to DAVINCI, and these days, Kim even gives private lessons to some of them. “Playing billiards is basically physics, where you can apply Newton’s laws of motion wholesale – and the angle of that movement is mathematics.” This sentence is from the cover of Kim’s book. Turn the page, and right there is a diagram and the Pythagorean theorem. Kim gets a real thrill from watching people truly understand a formula rather than just memorizing it; he loves seeing their skills improve by the day. Billiards, of course, but also golf, classical guitar, poker, and Go: Kim can claim skills that go beyond those of any regular amateur in each of these arenas, but there is, apparently, still room for more. Recently, he’s become a mountain bike aficionado. Every Sunday, after a work week that spans Monday through Saturday, he takes his bike into the mountains. “When my youngest son gets married, I want to play a classical guitar piece at his wedding. That’s my dream. I’m retired now, so my job is really to enjoy my life as much as possible,” he said. After thirty years as a member of the workforce, a project that began with “Maybe I’ll Open a Pool Hall?” has become a source of new energy and drive. For Kim, retired life is as full of territories to explore and enjoy as before. The pool hall lacks much space for sitting and lounging, but the facilities are well-kept and customers can count on the kind of customer service that anticipates their needs. Hwang Kyung-shinWriter Lee Min-heePhotographer

Signs From the Heart

An Ordinary Day 2022 SUMMER

Signs From the Heart Need a sign made? Visit the highly reputable DISIGN M at the foot of Mt. Daeryong overlooking Chuncheon, the capital of Gangwon Province. There, you will meet CEO Park Geun-chul, and no one else. He is both employer and employee, keeping pace with steady demand. Park Geun-chul’s company DISIGN M has been producing storefront signage since 2005. Along the way, Park has become an expert at understanding the nuances of clients’ requests. Strolling through an unfamiliar neighborhood of restaurants, would-be diners are apt to pick a place with an eye-catching sign. Without appealing signage, the best food, service and atmosphere could go unnoticed. It’s the key to convincing customers to open the door. And Park Geun-chul is a master locksmith. The “DISIGN M” sign at the entryway to Park’s workplace is simple but bold. Stepping inside to a tidy, wellkept office, the stillness is arresting. There is simply no trace of human activity in a space that could easily accommodate ten workers. Then Park appears, rising from between two monitors. He can be so focused on a new design that he scarcely notices any visitors. Behind him is a bookcase crammed with journals and tidy notebooks. They match the number of signage projects he has tackled over the years. Each notebook narrates the work, from the client’s initial requests to the record of the final payments. Flipping through the pages is like retracing Park’s footprints each year. First Sign In 1997, the Asian Financial Crisis crippled Park’s family and he had to suspend his architectural engineering studies at Kyungdong University in Gangwon Province, on the other side of Hangyeryeong Pass, where he grew up in the town of Injae. Park considered being a career solider and applied to become a non-commissioned officer. But dire economic conditions across Korea meant stiff competition. In the end, he used the time off to fulfill his mandatory military service and then went to work to save money for tuition. After a spate of job-hopping, he ended up at a company in Chuncheon that manufactured signage. There, he learned sign design, production and construction. The first sign designed by Park was for a restaurant that served chicken feet. Today, the same sign is peppered all across Chuncheon, the capital of Gangwon Province; the original restaurant flourished into a chain with some 20 franchises around the region. “Looking back now, the font, the images – it all feels a bit tacky. But I’m proud to still be producing new versions of my first-ever design, 20 years later,” Park says. At the time, Park’s monthly pay of 850,000 to 900,000 won was enough for rent and food but not for his college tuition as well. Of course, even with a degree, there was no guarantee of a secure future. So Park decided the smarter route might be to forget about school and fully master the skills he was learning at the signage manufacturer so that he could set up shop for himself. The signage business demands many skills. The creation of just one small sign requires aptitude in ironwork, lighting and even electricity. Welding, grinding and drill work are all de rigueur, as is mastery of cutting, electrical wiring and working with various specific raw materials. Park started his company in 2005, equipped only with a journal full of information gleaned from design books and by peeking over the shoulders of co-workers. The beginning was rough. There were few projects available and hometown connections were usually the deciding factor. But today, thanks to his sterling reputation, Park no longer needs a sales agent. He has whittled down his personnel needs to just himself. Working with Intuition Park possesses an intuition that supplants logic, knowledge and reason, and this is displayed in his designs. Drawing on his years of experience, he is quick to grasp a client’s vision and produce a design concept that fits. The same goes for the name of his company: “M.” He didn’t spend any time pondering deeper meanings or references. Just as he was wondering, “What should I name my company?” he happened to notice a brand logo printed on a credit card. “Ah, that’s it!” he thought. It was the letter M. When Park receives a request from a client, he begins by visiting the site in question. The basic principle in designing a sign, he says, is meticulously recording the customer’s needs and desires and adhering to them. Thus, the overflowing notebooks. A typical workday begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. In the solitude of being the CEO and only designer, he begins projects by envisioning a sign that suits its surroundings. He mulls over which points to emphasize to make it stand out. Something classy that draws the eye without being obtrusive – that’s the kind of design he’s after. Occasionally, his designs are rejected. In these cases, Park never insists. Instead, he quickly absorbs the client’s feedback and immediately returns to his drawing board. As a designer, he has an open mind. This and his intuition are his company’s most valuable assets, ensuring its continued success. From time to time, Park will receive a sad order. Banners that read “For Rent,” for example, for clients forced to shut down their business. Out of empathy, he refuses payment for these orders. He simply puts up the sign and leaves. Sign work requires proficiency in working with metal, lights and electricity. With all the wiring and ladders involved, a certain amount of risk comes with some orders, making safety precautions a must. Hazards Park doesn’t spend all day hunched over new designs. He also gets involved in the installation of his creations. At the worksite of a new client, a restaurant specializing in spicy octopus, Park straps on a heavy toolbelt and mounts a hydraulic lift without hesitation. As he finishes wiring the sign, putting the cap back onto each letter, a heavy drop of sweat rolls down his forehead and falls to the ground. This installation phase was much more dangerous when Park first started in the sign business. At the time, even huge signs that weighed hundreds of kilograms had to be hoisted by manpower alone, using complex systems of ropes to suspend the technicians themselves during installation. “It was all so scary back then. We didn’t have equipment like we do now – there were no ladder cars or anything. We’d just pull the sign up onto the roof of a four- or five-story building, and then rely on simple scaffolding to support us through the installation. Just thinking about it now, I still feel dizzy.” On average, each person would be responsible for pulling about 100 kilos of weight. Accidents occurred from time to time. One mishap involved eight people on a roof pulling up a sign that was 30 meters long, while one person on a ladder pushed it up from below. The man on the ladder suddenly fell from a height of three stories. “The latch in the extension ladder had come undone and he slipped. The guy had just gotten married too, not long before… To this day, he still uses a cane,” Park says. Park raises his left thumb. “I can’t bend my thumb. Severed a ligament while working with a drill,” he explains. On his middle finger, too, an obvious scar marks the spot where his glove, sucked into a drill mechanism, left another wound. The first sign Park ever designed himself, two full decades ago, was for a restaurant that sold chicken feet. The restaurant become a wildly successful franchise business, and copies of the sign hang over more than twenty locations in Chuncheon alone. Whenever another new location is ready, Park is called. Soloing Smoothly Park’s signs themselves do the job of marketing DISIGN M, showcasing his decades of design and construction in Chuncheon. They appear at a wide range of places, including restaurants, office buildings and schools. The biggest sign was 30 meters long; an eight-person crew dangling on ropes was used to construct it. Over the years, the technical aspects of signs have changed, as has the technology to make them. A common square sign is called a flex sign, made by printing on fabric and pulling at the four corners. Nowadays, signs that make letters using LED modules are popular. Park is also in demand to design business cards and simple brochures, which further adds to his exposure in the advertising market. Indeed, his reputation is only strengthened by the deep trust he is able to forge with each client. And yet, Park is stumped when asked to explain how trust is established. Perhaps one factor in his case is that ruthless ambition is absent, unable to complicate his business relations. Park has no big plans to grow his company or retire soon. He’s satisfied with being his own workforce and plans to continue as long as possible. He simply pledges to carry on as he founded his company, putting his all into diligently designing and carefully creating the best products that he can for his customers.

Convenience, with Heartfelt Care

An Ordinary Day 2022 SPRING

Convenience, with Heartfelt Care Convenience chain stores in the countryside replicate those in cities, but one in Gyeonggi Province is atypical in its operations. There, a warm-hearted former insurance broker tirelessly tends to a loyal customer base. Her mission is to make her store the beating heart of the community – that one familiar spot where everyone knows they will receive an extra warm welcome. For Lee Jung-shim, the proprietor of a convenience store in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province, receiving, checking and sorting twice-daily deliveries are important daily chores. She is weathering new local competition and the COVID pandemic disruptions to make her store a welcoming and restful oasis for her rural community. Past the city hall of Anseong, there isn’t much to see. Empty rice paddies line both sides of a two-lane highway before a reservoir finally signals a change. The town of Toheyon-ri is nearby. Here and there, a few PVC greenhouses, livestock sheds, machine repair shops and small factories spring from the flat land. They are juxtaposed by several tall residential buildings. At their base is a convenience store, the type of chain store that dots every urban neighborhood. It’s a slight surprise to see a corporate symbol in this rural town. Nevertheless, the store and adjacent diner are a welcome sight for anyone who has craved a hot cup of coffee during the drive, only to find that not a single café exists along the way. The tinkling of the store’s doorbell incites a robust “Welcome!” It feels like stepping into the lobby of a luxurious hotel. The space is lit in a warm, tangerine hue, and directly in front is a neatly arranged display of wines.   Employees at Lee’s convenience store are treated like permanent staff members rather than contract workers or parttimers. Consequently, they display a real sense of ownership in handling their duties and interacting with customers. BOTTOMLESS HOSPITALITY A large window fronts the diner section, affording a relaxing view of the quiet rice paddies between sips of hot coffee. They seem to be enjoying a wellearned rest and recovery after another year’s harvest. Suddenly, their barren appearance seems less cold than before. The store is part of the nationwide eMart24 chain and one of some 40,000 convenience stores under the umbrella of Korean retailers. It’s far from the stereotypical image of small, rural stores that often have disorderly layouts and dusty products on half-empty shelves and in random piles. Manager Lee Jung-shim is expected to adhere to guidelines from the corporate head office, so without doubt the store resembles its urban cousins. She does that and then some. The tidy shelves are crammed with a myriad of daily necessities. Cookies, instant foods, beverages and wines are a given. Here also are all the makings of a hearty meal, from an array of side dishes to generous lunchboxes and fresh produce. Then there are the Q-tips, nail clippers and countless other small goods, and many items normally only found at a standard grocery store, such as treats for pets. “My hope is that our neighbors can find the little daily things they need close to home, without having to get in their cars and drive far away,” says Lee. Born in 1969 in Namhae, an island county in South Gyeongsang Province, as the youngest of five siblings, Lee began working as soon as she graduated from her hometown high school, moving to Suwon to join one of her older sisters. Her first job was as a cashier at a mid-size grocery chain. Married at just 22, Lee soon became a mother of three. Wanting to contribute more to the household income, she landed an entry-level job in the insurance industry in 2002. That began a 17-year career during which she garnered a steady series of promotions and even an award for leading her team into the top 100 (out of 1,300) nationwide. “I didn’t know it when I was looking after the kids, but once I fully entered the workforce, I realized that I have a real knack for interfacing with customers. When I first started working in insurance it was kind of scary, but over time it occurred to me that there was no reason I couldn’t do that work as well as anyone else. I always kept my appreciation for our customers in mind. That mindset has turned out to be very helpful in running the convenience store, too.” CAREER CHANGE It all started in 2016, when Home Plus bought out the discount market and convenience store chain 365 Plus. This was also right around the time Lee was starting to feel worn out, physically and mentally. The owner of the Tohyeon-ri convenience store at the time was one of her insurance customers – and oddly enough, something about the place had always appealed to her. She kept getting the sense that if it were hers to operate, she could be successful. She wasn’t wrong. Almost as soon as Lee took over the shop, business started to boom. It was hard work, but meeting her new customers became a source of energy. It breathed new life into her day to day. Of course, there were challenges, too. Lee seemingly became a victim of her own success as another high-profile convenience chain store opened nearby. The tinkling bell that announced her customers’ arrival began to ring less and less frequently. She was disheartened, but she kept despair at bay, persevering instead and working harder than ever. And eventually, perhaps sensing this sincerity and commitment, the very neighbors whose visits had fallen off started to come back. When Home Plus dropped out of the convenience store business in 2021, Lee switched her store to eMart24. She also took over the diner next door and expanded the space to be more than twice its original size, which meant higher property costs. If she was thinking of profits alone, there would have been no need to expand the store, but Lee had her heart set on something else altogether. Lee’s typical day is an elongated grind. It consists of two work shifts, from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. In between, she rests and takes care of her granddaughter. At the store, Lee checks the inventory and sends resupply orders to the head office twice a day. Otherwise, she can be found cleaning, stocking shelves and tending to customers. The time in the store, she says, is enjoyable and seems to pass quickly. The hardest part of the day is getting out of bed. The four-hour gap between leaving her store after midnight and returning before dawn means persistent sleep deprivation. Lee wipes down a table placed at her storefront window. She wants her customers to enjoy a restful view while eating and drinking. Recent COVID-19 restrictions on eating in make her long for pre-pandemic times. CAFÉ VIBES A major change came after her takeover. “It always felt like a bit of a shame that the store was so small. Customers would buy their lunchboxes and then have to eat them outside, because we had no indoor seating. I wanted to provide a space to eat that would be cool and refreshing in the summer and warm and cozy in the winter. I knew expanding to twice the size certainly wouldn’t mean twice the amount of business – but still, that was my dream.” There’s very little difference between the diner section and any destination café in a popular tourist town. The high-grade espresso machine, normally heard hissing and gurgling in specialty coffee shops, draws the eye. This is a far cry from the usual onetouch capsule machines typically found in a convenience store. “Would you like a latte? I make them myself.” She steps up to the espresso machine, grinds the beans and tamps the grounds. Then comes the familiar hiss and cloud from steaming milk. The latte is gorgeous, decorated with a heart, and the foam clings to my lip, just right. No wonder. Lee is a certified first-class barista. At this point, it seems clear that this space of Lee’s is more than just a simple convenience store. What she truly treasures, however, is something else entirely: the people who make the space possible. LIFTING SPIRITS Lee wants her employees to take pride in their workplace and treats them accordingly. Full benefits and paid time off are a matter of course, with modest but regular holiday and retention bonuses. The employees, in turn, oversee the shop with managerial commitment. The result is that, no matter when you swing by, it feels as though you’re being welcomed by an owner rather than an indifferent employee on a part-time gig. And with the workers so happy, the customers find their spirits lifting too, exiting the store with a new spring in their step. From time to time, there have even been customers who lend a hand. Neighbors who farm have shared their produce, and customers who work orchards have brought whole baskets of fruit. Gifts like these are always divided amongst the employees. In this way, Lee’s store really is the neighborhood’s beating heart, its meeting hall/water cooler. The elderly grandmother who looks after her ailing husband; the young mother with an invalid son; the farmer just in from fertilizing his fields; the immigrant neighbor in his grease-stained coveralls. When these customers enter, announced by that bright, tinkling bell, Lee becomes sister, daughter or friend – or when the customers are children, an auntie. On my way back home, Lee’s latte, so full of heart, keeps my own warm for a very long time.

Dishing Up Bite-size Memories

An Ordinary Day 2021 WINTER

Dishing Up Bite-size Memories Tteokbokki, simply put, is the soul food of Korean cuisine. Slight variations may reflect tastes of a certain region or era, but this humble dish never wavers as a go-to snack. At Galhyeon Market Grandma Tteokbokki, her acclaimed shop in northwestern Seoul, Kim Jin-sook carries on a 40-year tradition, bringing the signature taste of a secret family recipe to loyal customers day after day. To be Korean is to have at least one formative memory that involves tteokbokki. The mouth-watering smell of rice cakes smothered in a piquant sauce always seemed to lace the alleyway between home and school;this is a siren call not easily forgotten, no matter how many years have passed. The first written record of tteokbokki appeared in Siui jeonseo (“Compendium of Proper Cookery”), a Joseon Dynasty cookbook compiled in the late 19th century. It described a “royal court dish made by stir-frying plain white rice cakes with beef sirloin, sesame oil, soy sauce, scallion and mushrooms.” The most common tteokbokki today is made with gochujang (red pepper paste), not soy sauce. Street food vendor Ma Bok-rim (1920-2011) is known as the godmother of this version, transforming a food originally identified with royalty and high-quality ingredients into an inexpensive favorite of the masses. In 1953, shortly after the Korean War ended, Ma visited a new Chinese restaurant with some guests. In observance of the opening, each table received celebratory tteok (rice cake). After Ma accidentally dropped a piece of the tteok in her bowl of jjajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce), she found the result to be shockingly delicious. At home, she experimented with gochujang, which cost less than Chinese black bean paste, and soon opened a shop in Sindang-dong, then on the eastern outskirts of Seoul. Thus, today’s standard tteokbokki was born – and so was a famed tteokbokki hotspot. By 1970, tteokbokki was firmly established as a popular snack among Koreans. At the time, snack stands that catered to tweens and teens were all the rage, with some even hiring DJs who would play customers’ requests. Listening to one’s favorite song on the way home from school while sharing tteokbokki with friends became a fond pastime of an entire generation of youth. In the 1980s, Kim Jin-sook’s mother-in-law, Jin Yang-geun, then in her m id- 4 0s, bega n sel l i ng t teokbok k i from a market stall in the Galhyeondong neig hborhood of Seou l’s Eun- pyeong District. The stall didn’t even have a sign, but three girls’ high schools nearby ensured a robust lunch crowd. FAMILY’S LIVELIHOOD Kim and other family members began to work part time at the stall when Jin’s hip surgery meant she could no longer work. Eventually, Kim decided to ladle tteokbokki full time. She admits now that she didn’t realize what the commitment would entail. A large-scale urban renewal program led to the demolition of the Galhyeon Market in 2015. But Kim and her husband, Kim Wan-yong, kept their tteokbokki business alive, opening a new shop in the same spot as the former stall. The name of the shop: “Galhyeon Market Grandma Tteokbokki.” “ She was a l ready over 80 at the time, but my mother-in-law never really liked being called ‘Grandma,’” Kim laughs. “The menu is exactly the way it was at her stall in the market: tteokbokki, sundae (blood sausage), two types of dumplings, boiled eggs and seaweed rolls.” Jin Yang-geun’s basic tteokbok ki recipe is still used, but the proportions of the sauce have changed slightly to shave the edge off a tiny bit and soften the flavor all around. The result is less sweet, less salty and less spicy. Kim puts a lot of effort into selecting her ingredients, always keeping health and sanitation in mind. Her unwavering consistency and devotion pay annual dividends: the shop is a perennial on any list of Seoul’s best tteokbokki spots. Kim Jin-sook and her husband, Kim Wan-yong, owners of Galhyeon Market Grandma’s Tteokbokki in the Galhyeon neighborhood of Seoul’s Enpyeong District, spend their day on the exact spot where Mr. Kim’s mother opened a food stall to serve the bite-size rice cakes smothered in a savory sauce some 40 years ago. PERENNIAL HOTSPOT Galhyeon Market Grandma’s Tteokbokki is particularly beloved by diehard tteokbokki fans for the long-term consistency of the Kims’ signature flavor. The sauce they use was invented in the 1980s by Ms. Kim’s mother-in-law. The recipe is a carefully guarded secret. Kim’s husband arrives at the shop at 7 a.m. In the first hour, he sets up all the necessary utensils, which were cleaned the night before. Then he puts the water on as he steams the sundae, boils the eggs and makes all the other necessary preparations. “The wheat flour tteok for tteokbokki is all clumped together, and separating those pieces, one at a time – that’s hard work,” Kim explains. “You can get tteok that comes separate, but it doesn’t taste as good. Separating by hand means another step for us, but a tastier product for our customers. One box of tteok comes to 324 separate pieces, and we sell about 10 boxes a day.” Once the two hours of prep are over and 9 o’clock rolls around, the shop opens for business. Kim comes to work around 10 a.m. Husband and wife don’t follow any strict division of labor, as both have to be able to do everything in case the other is away. The most important step in the recipe is the “initial boil.” Each piece of tteok, separated by hand, is briefly blanched in boiling water before being deposited into the actual cooking pan. If this step isn’t completed properly, the tteok can become mushy and formless, or tough. The key is being able to sense the state of that day’s fresh tteok, which is invariably slightly different from the days before and after, and adjusting the heat and timing accordingly. “People often joke about quitting their office job and setting up a tteokbokki stand, but this line of work actually requires a lot more care and attention than they realize,” Kim says. The secret to t teokbokki that is tasty enough to draw an endless line of customers is in the sauce – specifically, the ratio of ingredients, the level of heat and the exact cooking time. It doesn’t matter how good the ingredients are if the ratio, temperature or timing isn’t precise. Jin Yang-geun created the process and the sauce with 10 ingredients.All of this is now the family’s precious trade secret. After a long-delayed price increase, one serving of tteokbokki is 3,500 won these days. “When the minimum wage goes up each year, that’s reflected in an uptick in the price of every ingredient, which means we’re forced to raise our prices a bit, too,” Kim says. “But at the same time, because most people eat tteokbokki as a snack rather than a proper meal, it’s not easy to pull off. We worried and debated about it constantly for six and a half years before we finally raised our prices by 500 won in April of this year.” Kim calls a single serving of tteokbokki a “rubber band.” This is because even though one serving is supposed to be 17 or 18 pieces of tteok mixed with fish cake, she always ends up scooping on a little extra if the customer is a student or a laborer. At less than 10 pyeong (33 sq. meters), the shop is quite cozy, though it’s been a full year since customers have eaten inside due to COVID-19. In one corner sits an electric rice cooker and an induction stove top; this is where the couple makes breakfast and lunch for themselves. The shop closes around 8 p.m. and by the time the couple cleans everything and returns home, it’s usually 10 p.m. “We take one day off a week, on Mondays. In all the years since we opened shop, we’ve ta ken a total of three days off that weren’t Mondays. One was the day after I had surgery, one was the day our son entered his military service, and one was the day he finished it,” Kim explains. The secret to tteokbokki that is tasty enough to draw an endless line of customers is in the sauce – specifically, the ratio of ingredients, the level of heat and the exact cooking time. Made by blanching plain white tteok in boiling water and then combining it with various vegetables and fish cake in a gochujang sauce, tteokbokki is nothing more or less than “soul food” for Koreans of all ages and backgrounds. PROMISE TO CUSTOMERS “There are times we want to take more time off, of course, but these hours are a promise we’ve made to our customers. And it’s not just folks from the neighborhood who come, you see. We get people from all over the country, going out of their way to come eat our tteokbokki, and I would hate for them to be disappointed. Besides, our days off aren’t that different anyway. I handle the house chores that need handling and go to the hospital to get treated for my carpal tunnel syndrome. An occupational disease.” Most of their customers are warm and friendly. Some have been known to drop by with cold drinks when the weather gets hot, for the Kims to have as they work, and others even bring them extra vegetables from their garden. “There are people who remember my mother-in-law from years ago and bring their children by for a visit, or even come by in a group after an elementar y school reunion. Those are customers who come to feast on memories rather than tteokbokki. Seeing customers like that reminds me of warmth, kindness and ways of spreading goodwill. I’ll find myself thinking, this is what living in the world is really about.” That’s what makes Kim feel so wistful about the fact that the shop will eventually disappear one day. The plan is to keep the place going for another 10 years, then shutter it for good. She doesn’t want to pass down such a challenging business to her two children. Though, of course, that may probably change in case, after trying other lines of work following their own dreams, either of them finally decides to carry on their family business of filling bellies, creating memories and warming hearts.

Moments Worth the Stress

An Ordinary Day 2021 AUTUMN

Moments Worth the Stress Moments Worth the Stress Managers of apartment complexes are magnets for complaints and conflicts in need of solutions and mediation. To keep thousands of people safe and content, they are supposed to display a special set of skills. Lee Sang-yong, the manager of an apartment complex of 510 units, arrives for his interview 30 minutes later than scheduled. He’d called to request the delay. An urgent matter had arisen; a resident had made a noise complaint to the supervisor of a nearby construction site. After rushing to keep the confrontation from boiling over, Lee hurries back, barely taking a breath. “It’s pretty much always like this. After all, I’m the one they come to with problems and complaints,” he says. Sixty-two percent of South Korea’s population lives in apartments. The managers of apartment complexes must ensure everyone is content with their mini-community – no small feat considering the range of priorities, tolerance levels and demands found among hundreds, often thousands, of residents. Resolving conflicts and complaints comes with the territory. And that requires superb “people skills” as well as the administrative diligence to maintain a safe, clean environment. Before he became an apartment manager, Lee spent 32 years in the military. His motto as a commanding officer was always “1 percent is giving the order,99 percent is following up.” This military command system of keeping orders simple and making verification thorough has served him well in overseeing Hillstate, a 10-building complex nestled in Seoul’s Mapo District, overlooking the Han River. After retiring from the military as a lieutenant colonel in 2009, Lee Sang-yong began an entirely different career as the manager of the Riverside Hillstate apartment complex in Mapo District, Seoul, overlooking the Han River. A Range of Complaints “It’s fine when we can talk it out, but sometimes you get people who just aren’t being reasonable,” says Lee. He recalls one resident who insisted his building was sinking because the refrigerator of every unit was in the same spot, creating a perilous aggregation of weight. Unconvinced by a history of unblemished inspections since the building’s construction, the resident forced the issue on the board of resident representatives. Three specialized contractors were contacted separately and all three said nothing was wrong. “No matter how nonsensical a complaint may seem, you can’t just ignore it. You have to take steps to address it, and then inform the person who made the complaint of the outcome,” Lee says. The most common complaint, not to mention the biggest headache, is about noise. Hillstate is in a very quiet residential area, so noise from a single unit or vehicle can be distinctive. One resident complained that vehicles simply entering and exiting his building’s garage were too noisy, refusing to recognize that it was communal area that couldn’t be entirely subject to personal whims. A few weeks before the interview, a resident complained that children living on the floor above were so noisy that he couldn’t fall asleep. A security guard contacted the household in question only to be scolded for calling at such a late hour. Lee says he was quite perturbed. “I can understand the upstairs resident’s perspective, of course, but what else was the guard supposed to do? When it comes to noise complaints like that between units, in many cases there’s honestly not much that can be done. Sometimes it’s not even clear whether it’s the unit directly overhead or not. Plus, hearing that your downstairs neighbor is complaining about you can cause bad blood, so I train my employees to be careful with their phrasing in a lot of different ways.” Up to the 1980s, becoming a housing manager was done casually, with property owners hiring acquaintances who would learn the job on the fly. Today, an examination must be passed. Some 1,500-2,000 people succeed in the exam each year, but without the proper personality and social skills there is no job.Those who qualify must also accrue at least three years of experience managing an apartment complex of fewer than 500 units before they can work at a complex larger than that. Lee supervises 15 employees, including security guards, cleaners, administrators and a bookkeeper. He tries to maintain an open line of communication with residents and employees alike. Lee’s workdays are both repetitive and highly structured. His duties include making complex-wide intercom announcements, which have increased in frequency with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting procedures. Each day, from morning to night, residents approach Lee with specific issues to resolve. Listening intently, he suggests solutions based on a full understanding of the residents’ perspectives. Military to Management After Lee retired as a lieutenant colonel in June 2009, an acquaintance suggested that he take the exam for housing management certification, thinking that it might suit his personality. Lee received his certification in 2011 and started his new career the following year at a complex that had 250 units. Seven years later, he moved to his current complex, which has a mix of singles and families in units that are comparatively spacious. “One good thing about this job is that there’s no retirement age,” says Lee. This doesn’t mean that everyone can keep working into their old age. While getting older doesn’t necessarily translate to no longer being good at your job, there are residents who think differently. Young people have lots of ideas but not enough experience; by contrast, older people can tell what’s wrong with a machine on the fritz just by listening to it, but they tend to resist change. There are pros and cons to both, Lee says. Lee’s workday officially begins at 9 a.m., but it actually starts at 8:05. Accustomed to rising early from his military years, he awakens automatically at 5 every morning. “On Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, I don’t come directly to my office but make a round of the complex first,” he says. “On Monday, it’s to make sure nothing happened over the weekend; on Tuesday, it’s to check in after the recycling company has been through here to make sure everything is all cleaned up; and on Friday, it’s to give everything a look over before taking off for the weekend.” Empathy and Patience Asked if there was ever a moment when he wanted to quit, Lee replies, “I can’t say that it’s never happened.” It’s not so much the difficulty of the work that riles him; it’s when residents are unreasonable and demand the impossible. When helplessly exasperated, irate residents invariably declare, “I pay your wages!” That’s when Lee is overcome with sadness. He then steps back to calm himself. After a kind of mind controlling period, a solution is usually agreed upon.Fortunately, the current complex doesn’t have any extreme bullies. Indeed, what it does have is a great deal to celebrate. Many residents offer up snacks and beverages when they see staff members working around the complex. One household in particular pays a fruit vendor 60,000 won every Tuesday to provide fruit to the complex’s six security guards and five cleaners. This amounts to annual expenditures of over three million won that has been done since before Lee arrived. “I’ve heard that it started with the parents, and now the daughter is keeping the tradition going,” he says. When he visited the household to express thanks, the family humbly requested anonymity. Lee leaves for the subway at 6 p.m. and arrives home shortly before 7. By 10:30 p.m., he’s usually in bed. Weekends are spent going out to eat something tasty with his family, watching his favorite baduk (go) TV show, or heading to the outskirts of the city to visit relatives and help tend their vegetable gardens. Born in the countryside, he grew up helping his father with farm work. Even today, spending time working the land helps ease his mind. When asked what qualities are most important for a head manager to have, Lee chooses empathy and patience. As the work involves dealing directly with people, one must be able to meet them with understanding and consideration, and to control one’s own temper. Thanks to his generosity of spirit and tireless attention, the complex stays well centered. Last year, many residents volunteered to help plant flowers by the front gate. Afterward, they gathered to enjoy rice wine and chat in the complex courtyard. “These little moments become opportunities to find out what’s going on,” says Lee, adding that some residents are shy about broaching an issue even if it has merit. Sometimes, as Lee makes his rounds, a resident will approach him and say, “Thank you for the other day, you were a real help, we know you work hard.” Then he thinks, “Ah, the residents do see the effort I put in. I was right to choose this path.” These are the moments that make it all feel worthwhile. Thanks to Lee’s generosity of spirit and tireless attention, the complex stays well centered. The complex that Lee manages includes 10 buildings with 510 households, yet is small compared to neighboring complexes. It is located in a forest of high-rise housing that constitutes one of the core residential districts of central Seoul’s western edge. Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Ha Ji-won Photograper

Tuned to the Past

An Ordinary Day 2021 SUMMER

Tuned to the Past Anchoring a retro hotspot in the old downtown of Seoul, record shop owner Hwang Seung-soo presents an array of old albums, cassettes and CDs that refresh old memories and spin new ones. It’s after sunset, time to relax. Hwang Seung-soo shut￾ters his modest record store, cues up his crafted play￾list, turns off the lights – and leaves. In the next four￾plus hours, songs of the past will serenade a worn but bus￾tling precinct, eliciting knowing smiles and curious glances. Situated in Seoul’s Jongno 3-ga, Hwang’s shop, Seoul Record, feels both familiar and unfamiliar, old and new.Now in its 45th year, the shop welcomes young custom￾ers who leaf through faded LP records, cassettes and com￾pact discs, seeking hit music from before they were born.In another corner, older customers reconnect with the soundtracks of their youth. All of them rummage through the shop, some 140 square meters in floor area, with as much intention to collect as to listen. Hwang is the fourth owner, the latest in a succession of former employees turned proprietor. He is slightly bemused that Seoul Record still exists. The advent of music stream￾ing turned vinyl records, cassette tapes and compact discs into unnecessary clutter. Nevertheless, the music store keepsits steady beat, boosted these days by a retro trend that has grabbed onto songs from past singers, alongside resurrect￾ed bygone clothing styles, cafés with old furniture and other reminders of the past. “Back in my day, finding music we liked and listening to it was really important. Now, though, with smartphones and streaming services, you can easily listen to anything, any￾where,” says Hwang. “So it was looking like the end of the record industry. But now, we have these people who want to collect and own the records themselves, not just listen to what’s on them.“Just the picture of the album cover floating on the screen of their smartphone, that’s not enough for them. That’s why they buy the LP, right? It startled me, too, actu￾ally, the first time I saw these young people come in and get all excited about the way the needle sounds, skipping and landing on the vinyl.” The moment the needle drops on a vinyl, Seoul Record harkens to a different era. The sound is scratchy rather than clean, yet this scratchinesshelps solidify a nostalgic vibe that reverberates every day. Shop owner Hwang Seung-soo keeps his multi-generational customer base supplied with a myriad of genres, including classical, jazz,traditional Korean gugak, rock, movie soundtracks and K-pop. Changing Hands Caught up in a retro boom, Seoul Record is constantly packed. Some come to rekindle memories, others to soak in the charms of analog sentiment. Vinyl records are sought as collectibles after being pushed aside for decades by compact discs, then MP3s and digital streaming. A recent facelift has given the interior of Seoul Record a modern look in the heart of old downtown Seoul. A song request put in the red mailbox will be played at night after the shop closes. © Gian “The shop’s first owner ran the place until 2000, when MP3s came out and it just became impossible to stay in the black.This was still a time when records were for listening to, rath-er than collecting, and so people just stopped buying them,” says Hwang. The start of hallyu, the Korean Wave, generated interna￾tional customers, helping keep the store afloat, but by 2015, the third owner decided he’d had enough, too. Hwang was in his early 40s and had worked at the shop for three years. He had always dreamed of becoming acomic book artist, but now married and starting a family, he had to be practical about time spent and income earned. Hedecided to put his chips into work that he knew well rather than a job he thought he might like. “My older brother ran a video distribution company.Distribution structures for VHS tapes, CDs and DVDs are all connected to one another. My first real experience withmusic happened by chance as a kid, when my dad brought home a record player one day. And as a teen, I’d even taggedalong with my older brother to a record company. Along the way, I got to know this world pretty well.” When Hwang started working at Seoul Record, the aver￾age age of its customers was well past 50. The shop is locat￾ed in one of Seoul’s oldest neighborhoods, with a sizeable elderly population. Behind Seoul Record is Sewoon Plaza,Korea’s first commercial/residential mixed-use complex, built in 1968; across the street is Jongmyo, the royal ances￾tral shrine established in 1394 to honor the kings and queens of the Joseon Dynasty; and next door is Tapgol Park, for￾merly known as Pagoda Park, the country’s first-ever city park, built in 1897. Customers in their 40s and 50s looking for LPs were easily outnumbered by the elderly, who usually searched for cassette tapes. Then, all of a sudden, everything veered. Overnight, the neighborhood became the latest hotspot for trendsetters, nicknamed Hip-jiro. Both Koreans and for￾eigners descended upon nearby traditional Korean houses, or hanok, turned into stylish coffee shops. Vinyl records,decades removed from the music industry, became objects of value, and the average age of the shop’s customers started to fall. Sharing Stories These days, it’s not one specific generation that seeks out the shop, but rather a wide range of all ages. Daughters bringtheir fathers, sometimes, and parents bring their children, all eager to hear and share the music they love. In a way, one could say that these customers are com￾ing to find memories, not objects. In an unfamiliar world, we search out the familiar; in a familiar world, we look for something new. “Sometimes there are people who need help finding a song – something they loved when they were young, say, and they’ll remember a bit of the lyrics and some of the mel￾ody, but not the actual title. Often, they’re a lot older, living alone and not good at using computers. And when we sleuth around a bit and find it for them, they’re just so moved. It’s a good feeling.” One customer wanted help finding a song by a band that was big in the 1960s. When Hwang found it and put it on, hewas startled to find that the customer’s voice, singing along, was incredibly similar to the voice on the record. When heasked the customer whether he was the singer himself, he admitted that he was. He had been looking for the LP for awhile, he explained, because he’d wanted to hear the song again, but hadn’t been able to find it until then. “There’s another customer who’s lived in this neighbor￾hood since he was a child. His family had trouble making ends meet, and so instead of going to school, he worked a job putting up movie posters around town. He loved movies so much, he skipped meals to go see them.” Listening to and sympathizing with the long, complicat￾ed personal stories of strangers isn’t always easy. It’s only possible, in fact, if one can call upon a genuine interest, affection and trust for people writ large. Many, having ini￾tially arrived as customers, leave as something more, some￾thing warmer, after sharing their treasured stories – and come back later with gifts of candy or tangerines, or maybea soft drink or two. The shutter of Seoul Record goes up between nine and ten in the morning, Monday through Saturday. Hwang’s wifeopens the shop, and Hwang himself arrives between noon and 1 p.m. to take over until closing at 7:30, or a bit laterif business is slow. When the shutter finally comes down, Hwang commences the last phase of his day: “Tomorrow’s Song Request.” “There’s a red mailbox out in front of the shop. If people write down a song request and put it in, we play the song for them.” Playing Requests Throughout each day, Hwang compiles a file of songs that blend well, including the requests that have come in, thenleaves it playing after the store closes. Most of the requests are for old lyrical songs or hit pop songs. Hwang’s ownpicks run the gamut of genres and sometimes mesh with the weather or season. Asked to name his favorites, he says, “Ilike it if it’s the music you like.” Until midnight, the music floats out onto the sidewalk and eight-lane street before the store. A stream of pedestri￾ans going to and from the nearby Jongno 3-ga subway sta￾tion and various coffee shops and restaurants create an audi￾ence in motion. Sometimes, a passerby will slow down andstop to sing along or even dance a bit. In the dark evening streets, it’s a sight that makes one think that life really doesjust find its way in the end. “I didn’t get into this line of work to try and make my fortune,” says Hwang. “It’s not so bad, keeping things afloatand listening to the music I love every day. I get to spend my days enjoying this place, and the customers get to come andfind the music they’re looking for.” Hwang Kyung-shin Writer Ha Ji-kwon Photographer
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