The Bukchon Traditional Culture Center, located within the Buckchon Hanok Village in Seoul, will resume its series of Saturday cultural events.

Under the theme, “Bukchon’s New Spring, New Hopes,” the program for March focuses on making and sharing New Year’s resolutions.

Events will consist of a mix of online and on-site exhibitions and programs.

Kang Yong-hoon, a pen drawing artist specializing in calligraphy works of urban landscapes, will hold seminars on designing and writing postcards using watercolor.

Some of his representative works will be displayed at the Buckchon Hanok Village.

A docent will conduct the “Let’s play, Hanok!” program, explaining the basic structure and function of hanok to children, along with depicting Korean modern history. Fun activities and scavenger hunting games will be included throughout the tour for children of all ages to enjoy.

While each hanok possesses unique characteristics, this month will focus on Gyedong Modernized Hanok, also commonly referred to as, Madam Gyedong’s House. The hanok is registered as cultural property and estimated to have been built in 1921. The place is used today as a cultural center to greet visitors and tourists at Buckchon Hanok Village.

Upon applying for “Morning of Hanok” program, you can visit a traditional sarangbang, ancestors’ study room that also served to invite guests.

Docent programs and online programs can be applied at the website, hanok.seoul.go.kr, or through the Bukchon Cultural Center’s Instagram or Facebook event page.

For convenience and safety of program operations, thirty participants will be selected through random lottery for March. Additional inquiries can be made at (02) 741-1033.

Paint your imagination at a cafe in Daehangno

Have you ever imagined a cafe filled with wooden easels, colorful paintings, brushes and canvases?

The place sounds more like an art studio or a high school art room, but Grim Factory is, in fact, a unique cafe where its visitors can have drinks and express their artistic imaginations on paper and canvas.

Located at Seoul’s theater district Daehangno in Jongno-gu, central Seoul, Grim Factory is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends.

Within a 5-minute walk from Hyehwa Station Exit 4 on Subway Line No. 4, Grim Factory offers a quiet, calm place for art lovers. Entering the cafe, it is not difficult to see people in front of their easels, focused on their own drawings.

An online booking, which is available via the online platform Naver, is required and a payment of 20,000 won per person needs to be made in advance.

After the reservation is checked at the entrance, you can choose to draw freely on a canvas either with acrylic paints or oil pastels, which both charge additional 1,000 won.

If you simply want to paint over a finished sketch, the designed canvas charge you extra 2,000 won. The visitors can choose from three types of designs -- Japanese animation character Shinnosuke Nohara of “Crayon Shin-chan,” Snoopy of “Peanuts” and animated character Anne of “Anne of Green Gables.”

Paints, brushes and palette aside, the basic art tools, including aprons, sleeve protector, slippers and more, are available for a comfortable work environment.

Though the cafe can only be used for two hours, you can ask the staff for additional time, if there are no reservation during that time.

How our ancestors recorded life on view at Horim Museum

How did Koreans preserve memories when they did not have technologies like those available today? Horim Museum shows some 170 cultural relics from Korea’s ancient time to modern era, guiding us through how their memories and history can be found in the artifacts.

Looking back on 40 years of its history, Horim Museum – one of the major private museum run by Sungbo Cultural Foundation -- kicked off a special exhibition “Memories” at the museum’s Sinsa venue in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul.

One may discover some interesting facts at the exhibition: The royal family of Joseon (1392-1910) stored an umbilical cord of their newborn prince or princess in a white porcelain jar. They buried it underground on a selected day in a ceremony to commemorate the birth of the child.

In Joseon era, “gyehoedo” was equivalent to photographs of today. Gyehoedo refers to paintings produced to commemorate various social gatherings held by government officials and literary men. The scenery of the gathering was recorded as a painting on which captions and the list of participants were written.

The 40th anniversary exhibition starts from the fourth floor of the building where “Reverence” session awaits visitors. The exhibition continues through “Continuity” and “Genuineness” on the third and second floor, respectively. Visitors may encounter some works by contemporary artists as well, including Lim Min-ouk and Cho Duck-hyun. The exhibition runs through June 30.

(hykim@heraldcorp.com)
(sj_lee@heraldcorp.com)
(yunapark@heraldcorp.com)