Swedish home cooking thrives at Hemlagat

Walking into Hemlagat is like a gentle embrace, warm and welcoming. Swedish folk art touches dot the walls, and the wood surfaces that make up most of the interior space gleam happily. If ever a restaurant looked happy to see its patrons, Hemlagat is it.

It’s a reflection of the attitude of its owners, husband and wife team of Chef Daniel Wikstrand and Soojin Oh, who started the restaurant a few years ago when they moved to Korea to be closer to Oh’s family after a globe-trotting romance.

Finding the fun, together

“We met in China and lived there for 10 years. For five years, we operated a café together. When we were newlyweds, we worked corporate jobs and had no time together. We decided to quit so that we could spend more time together. Some people were really worried about us, but we love being together 24 hours a day!” Oh explains, telling the story of how they moved from being burned-out professionals who met taking language classes in China to a husband-wife restaurant team. “For his first birthday together, I gave Daniel an oven, since his hobby was cooking. I liked coffee and he liked cooking, so we decided to start a café.”

True to its name, meaning “home cooking,” the small, cozy restaurant brings the Swedish foods of Daniel’s family and homeland to Seoul, but also with an eye to what will appeal to local tastes. While not trained as a professional chef, Wikstrand’s firm vision and talents have created a wonderfully flavorful and beautiful menu of Swedish favorites, while Oh’s resourcefulness has turned ideas into reality. All the usual suspects appear, including meatballs and pickled herring, but also exciting dishes like wild game and a schnapps-laden cheese.

Swedish food for the Seoulite

“We never change our recipes to ‘Koreanize’ them,” insists Wikstrand, “but we do pick Swedish foods that have some similarities to Korean foods. Korean customers tell us they feel at home here because of the flavors, the smoking and the pickling. They don’t feel foreign even though it is a foreign restaurant. You have to see how the same flavors fit in the Korean palate. At the same time, we are really strong on not making adaptations. At first, people wanted kimchi, etc., but we are a Swedish restaurant, just in Seoul.”

Oh notes, “For me, it’s so similar to Korean foods. Nature isn’t so good, so it’s about getting the maximum from the ingredients, getting through the winter. We both like to pickle things, salt things.”

Hemlagat is serious about its pickling process, necessary to create the many varieties of traditional herring dishes that appear on the menu, including mustard and dill, and sour cream. “In Sweden, you can go ahead and order the herring pre-salted so you can flavor it any way you want. But we had so many problems sourcing good herring here! We spend two weeks salting them for the base, then a week or so marinating so it takes about three weeks total,” says Wikstrand. “We have three kinds per platter, and they vary by season. It’s all about the herbs and vegetables — onions, scallions, carrot, allspice, clove, white pepper and carraway.” The devotion to the process results in a deeply satisfying array of fish that brings to mind the Korean winter delicacy of gwamegi, a rich, chewy dish of half-dried herring.

Game for new flavors and old ideas

Just as bold but a little bit more off the beaten path is Hemlagat’s elk dish, served with Hasselback potatoes, mushroom cream sauce and cranberry sauce, a bit of a risk in Korea where game meats aren’t popularized yet. It took more than two years to source the elk, but the resulting dish is deeply satisfying, with crispy potatoes and creamy mushrooms playing foil to the strong, rich flavors of the elk meat. It’s the kind of traditional family fare Wikstrand and Oh want to share, bringing their love of tradition and family to the fore.

Not every dish is so straightforward though. One of the menu’s lighter delights is made from chopped cheese and came from a vintage recipe book.

“My parents found this Swedish cookbook from the 1950s by the Swedish version of Gordon Ramsey. He had a dish for leftover cheese by mixing it with herbs and schnapps. We said, ‘We have to try it!’ It works!” Wikstrand exclaimed. Served with crispy pork skins and house-made bread rich with different grains, the cheese dish packs a punch, with pungent cheese and bracing schnapps forming the perfect partner with the wholesome bread and brilliant snap of the pork rinds flavored with caraway and salt.

The perfect end to the meal is a slow sip from one of their thirty varieties of house-flavored schnapps, ranging from fruity to herbal to spicy. But however the meal ends, Oh and Wikstrand want people to walk away with a sense of how important tradition and family are: “For us, that’s what this is all about. Traditional and home cooked, true to our name. That’s the whole thing. Quality of life.”

More Info

Hemlagat

#123 Namsan Lotte Castle 35 Sogong-ro, Jung-gu

02-318-3335

Reservations strongly recommended

Written by Jennifer Flinn
Photographed by Noe Alonzo

Chef Hwa-young Lee practically embodies sugar, spice and everything nice — not surprising, considering her job is turning out impeccable cakes for not one but two dessert cafés. Along with her husband and childhood sweetheart, Seung Ki Jung, Lee’s turned her talent and passion for sweets into a mini-empire of sugar, starting with their first café, Little & Much, and now with A Lot, in Samgakji.

“I was studying design at university in Vancouver, Canada, but then my husband and I started to study pastry together when we started thinking about making a plan to return to Korea,” recalls Lee. We didn’t know anything, so we just went ahead and started!”
“Originally, baking was just going to be a hobby, but my husband wanted to start a restaurant. When we got back, there were already a lot of places selling cakes, but we wanted to make a special kind and so we decided to concentrate on mousse cakes. We didn’t even realize how rare they were here in Korea. Now there’s a lot, but when we first started, most people thought they were really different. People were more used to Japanese-style desserts.”

Making the mousse of it

The cakes are indeed something special, managing to be simultaneously light and rich, creamy but delicate. But with the opening of their second dessert café, A Lot, Lee aimed for something a little bit different and came up with a significantly expanded menu that includes a wide range of small cakes and cookies, as well as some extraordinary smoothies. Buttery sable cookies, fudgy brownies and lemony pound cakes hold court alongside decadent drinks like speculoos and rose smoothies. They’re not just sweet in terms of taste. Even the presentation aims to be sweet and charming, with flower petal decorations and heart-shaped straws.

“There’s a particular character here at Little & Much that I wanted to keep, so we decided to make our a lot more casual in style, and more experimental. I can do things there that I wouldn’t do here. Here at Little & Much, we keep things very simple and concentrate on mousse cakes. A Lot is full of cookies and smoothies so people can relax and enjoy a drink or a small thing. There are more choices, so you can eat a bit more light, a bit more simply. We’re also developing things like scones,” says Lee.

Making a lot from little

The sleek, more modern design of A Lot contrasts with the more traditional but still contemporary feel of Little & Much, with pops of bold color and simple seating that feel playful and fun. While Little & Much is a restful, warm spot for lingering over Lee’s gorgeously designed and layered cakes, A Lot encourages trying out a wider variety of simpler cookies, giving room for play across the palate in several different forms, rather than ensconced in one of their multi-layered mouse cakes. The smoothies, too, feel light-hearted and fun, despite their caloric heft. The flavors are never simple or one note, though. Coconut flour sneaks in instead of wheat, giving a financier a subtle flavor of the tropics, or a savory hint of nut and spice livens up a cookie. In a rose-flavored smoothie, raspberry and lychee manage to make the drink taste both exactly like a rose but also fruity, floral and complex.

Like a philosophy based on sugar rather than Socrates, Lee thinks deeply about each dessert and each design, whether it’s a café or a cake, seeing them both as the same kind of task and endowed with deeper meaning. “When I create a dessert,” says Lee, “it’s like designing. How should it be layered? How should it be colored? How will people perceive it? What texture should it be? Individual cakes can seem so much prettier and more special, because they’re just for one person. I think people like it because there’s not that many things like it that we can have all just to ourselves.”

“This way,” she smiles, “people can get rid of their stress through sweets.”

More Info

A Lot

B103, BF1 Amorepacific, 100 Hangang-daero 100, Yongsan-gu

02-6367-1023, www.instagram.com/alotbylnm/

Written by Jennifer Flinn
Photographed by Romain John

It took some sacrifices, but popular illustrator and author Seungyoun Kim made it all come together

From the first glance, Seungyoun Kim’s  artwork strikes you with familiarity. It’s not just that she is the hand behind package illustrations for brands such as The Face Shop, CJ Minewater water bottles and Primera. It’s that her art reminds you of your own childhood. Not a children’s book illustrator and not a commercial artist, Kim pens and draws picture books out of her graphic studio, Textcontext, in Mangwon-dong where she starts her day with coffee and scrolling through the internet. Among vintage china and color pencils, Kim talks to SEOUL Magazine about being one of the first independent publishers in Korea, her happiest moments as an author and her hobby of attending political protests.

Writing over drawing

Kim can’t say she had a particular attraction to art when she was young. In second grade, she had an “art tutor” for two months. “My mom had given an art student in my neighborhood a used refrigerator, and in exchange, I’d go to his studio for assignments like drawing Mickey Mouse,” she says with a laugh. “If given the choice between art contests or writing competitions, I’d enter a writing competitions.”

Her books started with the desire to tell a story. “When I was younger, there were no books for children,” she says. “I would read adult books and since I couldn’t understand everything, I’d skip through for the racy moments or look at the pictures. I later found there was a major discrepancy between what I thought the book was about and what it was really about. Maybe this process of making up stories ultimately helped me become an author.”

First forays into art

Despite her initial lack of interest in the arts, Kim began to pursue art academically during her junior year of high school. “When I began looking into colleges, I realized there few options to pursue writing and few career options,” she explains. Around that time, she noticed that some of her classmates were exempt from the afterschool study sessions: “They told me that they were going to art academy and that allowed them to skip those sessions.” Kim explains that she hated school, so she preferred those art classes. She moved forward with art in spite of feeling behind and disliking the rigor of the classes themselves. Although she was accepted to Hongik University, one of Korea’s top art schools, she insists she “wasn’t good at drawing.”

No crew needed

“Even after I got into college, I wondered if I made the right decision,” Kim says. She majored in design because at the time, people didn’t have a clear idea of what design was. She says, “We thought design meant illustrations, film, fashion, typography…”

She believed that design would still allow her to express herself and help her discover her true calling. “While I was a student, I did things like attend meetings for making films and making comics, and I interned at Cheil to make a commercial. I never thought I would draw,” Kim says. “While graduating, I came to the conclusion I was interested in storytelling and narratives. Later, I realized making picture books would allow me to do that alone — without, say, a film crew.”

Not destined to design

After graduating in 2007, Kim got a job at Ahn Graphics where she stayed for about a year and a half. “I wasn’t very good at design,” Kim chuckles. “Design requires you to be extremely meticulous. I didn’t want to do that — I wanted to make new content.” Meanwhile, Kim began to look into picture books and seek inspiration. She began to buy foreign picture books — there weren’t too many Korean titles back then — and fell in love with Guillermo del Toro’s films, especially “Pan’s Labyrinth.” “Previously, I had thought of picture books as simply cute and childlike but I began to rethink their potential. ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ really touched me and made me re-evaluate what kind of content I wanted to put in my books.”

First generation independent publishing

Kim freelanced for a year or so, debating whether or not she should go back into graphic design. Finding time to work on her personal projects was a challenge. “Between living life and freelancing, I kept putting off finishing my book.” A friend of hers told her about a government grant provided at the time, one that helped young people pursue their dreams abroad. Her idea to start an independent publisher was approved and she was able to work on her book for a few months. “There were a few indie musicians, but the concept of independent publishing really didn’t exist here,” she explains. “My idea was to publish a book at my own studio and sell rights to the book at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I was really a first-generation indie publisher here.”

‘Fox Hat’

Kim says her first book, “Fox Hat,” published in 2009, was about mother and daughter relationships. She was able to take the book with her, not only to Frankfurt, but across Europe. “The response to my book at fairs abroad was overwhelmingly positive,” Kim says, her excitement still evident. “If I think about it now, it was just beginner’s luck but I began to think, ‘Oh, this is easy!’”

Upon returning to Korea, news of her success spread and even her promotional posters for the book were sought after by Gangnam moms interested in interior design. Although it wasn’t sold at major bookstores and couldn’t be easily found online, “Fox Hat” sold over a thousand copies.

Happy moments

“While I was writing ‘Fox Hat,’ I had a small studio in Donggyo-dong and when I got an order to a nearby residence, I was so excited that I would deliver the book myself,” says Kim. She counts this period in her career as her happiest. “After everyone telling me I couldn’t make it, I finally felt like I had!”

During the next ten years, Kim has continued to work on picture books, producing titles like “Yarn Yarn” in 2011 and “The Opening” in 2016. If she had to pick, “The Opening” would be her personal favorite: “If ‘Fox Hat’ carries the sentiments of my mother, ‘The Opening’ carries the sentiments of my father who passed away when I was younger. Since I don’t have too many memories of him, I really wanted to include the ones I had. In the end, those memories didn’t make it into the book and somehow it was about his memory — not his presence.”

Protests and sacrifices

Kim says she is inspired by her personal life as well as by people and politics: “I went to the Park Geun-hye protests more than ten times,” she says. “It’s not just my political preference but also something about seeing the spirit of the people. After feeling like I dislike Seoulites, I’ll feel there’s something that connect us at a protest.”

To keep ideas fresh, Kim says you need constant self-analysis. “If you’re happy for too long or too busy for too long, you lose yourself. Every few years, you need to reevaluate what you do.”

She says that her projects can pile up and the deadlines can be stressful. “I found that for me, I was doing too many things I didn’t want to do in order to pursue what I wanted to do. I have made sacrifices like not having a car, not buying a house and putting off having a baby.”

Looking forward

Kim hopes that even those who cannot read Korean will be touched by the artwork in her books. “The text really only takes five minutes to read, but if the reader can feel something in the images, I like that too,” she says.

Down the line, Kim says she would like still like to make films one day and create a series of picture books. She has ambitions but seems content where she is. “These days, I think about how all the small details fell into place. I have the dog I always wanted, I have the cat I always wanted, I share a studio with my husband.” She smiles. “I don’t go to church but I think about how the Israelites wandered through the desert for forty years. I think if I got everything in one stroke, I never would have realized how precious all the small things are.”

Written by Hahna Yoon

Photographed by Robert Koehler

In ‘Seoul’s Historic Walks in Sketches,’ illustrator Janghee Lee explores the city’s rich but unknown past

“When I go overseas, all the buildings can look similar no matter how carefully I look at them. Visitors here can feel the same way. You should look at these buildings again after learning the stories they contain.”

In his new book “Seoul’s Historic Walks in Sketches,” published in Korea in early June by Seoul Selection, illustrator Janghee Lee shares some of those stories, the tales hidden deep inside Seoul’s cityscape. A columnist and contributor for several local newspapers and magazines, Lee has wandered the city’s maze of streets and alleyways, capturing in his sketchpad the stories and scenes discovered within. By collecting decades of sketches and commentary, his book represents, in a way, a life’s work. He says, “It seems I’ve been writing this since the time I was born.”

Drawing, writing and learning

“Seoul’s Historic Walks in Sketches” is, simply put, an illustrated depiction of Seoul and its past, with the focus on the capital’s historic center, the old town inside the venerable city walls. Lee’s pencil brings to life everything from Seoul’s palaces and fortresses to modern skyscrapers of glass and steel built on historic sites. Accompanying Lee’s illustrations are insightful, often witty comments on history, commentary that goes a long way to presenting readers with a view of the unknown city, a city almost exotic in its mystery.

Lee didn’t start off wanting to unearth Seoul’s hidden history. Rather, his historical research was an offshoot of his artistic pursuits. “As I was sketching the city, I became curious about many things,” he says. “How did this building come about? What was it used for? Who passed through here? As I grew curious, I began to search more, to find more books, and when I’d read those books, I’d find the buildings next door had their stories, too, so I’d end up drawing that building, and the building next to that one, and so on.”

The book was Lee’s means to learn more. “I’ve wandered around the city a lot, and I thought I knew much about it relative to other people. But the more I saw, the more I realized I didn’t know,” he says. “So I wrote this book because I wanted to learn more about Seoul.”

Raising awareness, deepening appreciation

In his work, including “Seoul’s Historic Walks in Sketches,” Lee also sets out to raise awareness of Seoul’s remaining historical sites and the need to preserve them.

This is a need that that has not been fully appreciated. He says, “One of Seoul’s biggest problems is that it prioritized development over preservation, especially after the Korean War.” In the chaos of Korea’s liberation from colonial rule and the Korean War, the authorities failed to protect many historically and culturally important buildings from the wrecking ball. Property owners, afraid they might lose rights over their property, often knocked down their own buildings before the government could list them. Though the government has since listed many old buildings, protecting them from destruction, many remain threatened. Lee says, “It seems owners still need a better appreciation for historical preservation.”

Lee says government support for preservation efforts are important, explaining that one of the reasons Hanok homes are disappearing is the high cost of their upkeep and repair. Even more important, however, is educating the public. “A lot of people need to know these places exist,” he says, noting the role writers and artists such as himself are playing. Nothing makes a building safer than public interest. “When people know those places exist, it’s difficult to knock them down.”

Written and photographed by Robert Koehler

Korea’s ‘first black model,’ Han Hyun-min adds beauty to Korea in more ways than one

On his Instagram feed, Han Hyun-min’s fierce facial expressions make it easy to forget that the internationally renowned model is only 16 years old. In real life, however, his shy, mischievous smile immediately betrays his youth. Born to a Nigerian father and Korean mother, Han has made headlines in Al Jazeera, BBC and Vogue as “Korea’s first black model.” Han was also chosen by Time Magazine as one of “The 30 Most Influential Teens of 2017.” Skipping class on a Tuesday afternoon, Han sat down with SEOUL to discuss what it was like to grow up dark skinned in a mostly homogeneous country, his modeling career and how he once dreamt of KRW 300,000 to shop at Uniqlo.

‘You are special’

The oldest of five children, Han knows what it’s like to be part of a big family. Asked if he’s ever received life advice from his mother, he chuckles. “Well, she always says, ‘Don’t get yourself into trouble!’”
A second later, he adds, “Oh, but when I was younger and getting teased, she would tell me, ‘You are special and someday, good things will come your way.’ I know it was hard for her to see what I went through.”
Though he doesn’t describe himself as “the oldest brother type,” he gave up on his dream to become a baseball player for fear that it would financially burden his parents. He also wants to protect his younger siblings from facing the kind of discrimination he’s faced.

Past is past

Han nonchalantly runs through a list of wrongs that have been committed against him. He was often teased by his fellow students, his friends’ mothers would tell them not to play with him. And throughout his life, many people have considered him a foreigner. “I hated being called a foreigner. I used to think, I was born in Korea and my mom is Korean, so why do I have to be called a foreigner?”
With wisdom beyond his years, he adds, “The older I get, the less it bothers me. I’ve told myself that’s just the way it goes. After all, I guess you can’t just look at my outer appearance and know I’m Korean.”
Han, who grew up in the multicultural Itaewon district, considers himself lucky for having been immersed in such an international neighborhood. “I imagine that being biracial outside of Seoul, or even outside Itaewon, would be even harder,” he says. “I can’t imagine that my hardships are anything compared to [multiracial people who grew up outside of Seoul].”

Textile dreams

When Han entered junior high school, his interest in fashion piqued. “I had this older friend who had just signed with a major modeling agency,” he says. “That helped me decide what sort of fashion work I should aspire to.”
As a teenager with little money, however, Han’s love of clothing was a burden to his mother. “My mom couldn’t buy me as many clothes and I wanted because I had so many younger siblings,” he says. “And I wanted different outfits for different occasions. I asked her to buy me clothes so often that she scolded me for being so superficial.”
Nonetheless, Han was determined. “My dream was to have KRW 300,000 to buy clothes from Uniqlo,” he says. “I even worked a part time job distributing flyers at night.”
A few years older now, Han says the more he models, the more his motivations for doing so seem to change. “At first, it was simply because I was interested in clothing. Right now, I feel like I want to model because I want to show it’s okay to be different.”

His lucky break

Since Han couldn’t afford to go to a conventional modeling school, he learned how to model by watching YouTube videos of Seoul Fashion Week. He also had to pay his dues. He had to pose in Versace underwear during an audition in Milan. He was conned into modeling for an online shopping mall. “I’d been photographed before, but no great images came out it,” he says.
Han’s lucky break came when SF Models agent Youn Bum contacted him for a face-to-face meeting in March of last year. Bum had found him on Instagram and wanted to meet him in person. “We met behind the main road in Itaewon. He asked me to walk and signed me right away,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t feel real.”
He credits Bum for seeing something in him. “I’m forever grateful for what he’s done for my career.”

The life of a model

Han immediately went on a few photo shoots, debuting not too long afterwards with contemporary casual wear brand Heich es Heich. “I really enjoy modeling. I enjoy being able to try on beautiful clothes and finding a way to express them,” he says. “When I try on an outfit, I imagine who belongs in the outfit. Perhaps one outfit tells the story of an attractive man walking down Manhattan. If another outfit feels like autumn, I try to recreate the season in my mind.”
A participant in several Seoul Fashion Weeks, Han describes being on the runway at the city’s biggest fashion event as one of the most exciting experiences in his life. “Being on the runway is like if you’ve just bought a new outfit and everyone is waiting to see it. I really like that feeling even though it lasts only 30 seconds.”

Normal kid Han

When he’s not modeling, Han tries to attend school as much as possible. He admits that he stopped enjoying studying in the second grade. He says, “I think school is important for meeting friends and socializing but I don’t think studying is for me.”
Although Han eventually does want to go to college, he says he isn’t studying for the university entrance exam. While most of his peers spend half their waking hours preparing for the exam, his day consists of school, playing computer games and fashion work. During large commercial shoots and Seoul Fashion Week, he hardly makes it to school at all.

Down with apples

Despite what some might call a leisurely life free from the usual academic pressures, being a model isn’t easy. “It takes two to three months to prepare for a Fashion Week event,” he says. “I have to lose weight. I have to work out. I have to go to casting calls, auditions and rehearsals.”
A lover of soondaeguk, or blood sausage stew, Han explains that the hardest part about being a model is watching what he eats. “A month before Fashion Week, I’ll live on a diet of sweet potatoes and apples. There are days I live on one apple a day,” he says. “But I do eat a lot any chance I get. There are so many delicious things in this world.”

The silver lining

Han is overwhelmingly positive about his experience as a model in Korea and quick to see the silver lining to any challenge he’s faced. “Because the color of my skin is different, there were designers who initially didn’t want to work with me,” he says. “But the upside is, I was able to develop my own look and brand, which is more important for a model.”
He’s also interested in acting. He understands, however, that his Korean-speaking roles could become limited, despite being a monolingual Korean speaker. “Someone recently told me that if I learned English, I could go to Hollywood,” he says, a glint of excitement in his eye. “I want to learn English and perhaps try my hand at acting abroad.”

What lies ahead

Still just a kid, Han is naturally uncertain about much. He seems to have enjoyed his experiences overseas. The self-described Harry Potter fan especially liked London. In particular, he enjoys the diversity he finds in some foreign cities.  “When I walk around in Korea, everyone does a double take,” he says. “In places like London or New York, I’m a normal human being. I really liked that feeling.”
At the same time, however, Korea is where Han’s heart is. “I like Korea,” he says. “It’s the place I was born and raised. It’s home.”
Han is still glowing with his latest achievements. Last year, he was appointed honorary ambassador for multiculturalism by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. “I want to show fellow biracial Koreans that they can succeed even if others have looked down at them,” he says. “As Korea becomes more and more diverse, I hope the environment in Korea can be more accepting.”
Han is very happy about the number of his Instagram followers — 146,000 as of April 2018 — and the people he’s reached. “I get messages and comments saying ‘You inspire me’ and ‘You give me courage’ and that warms my heart.” He is humbled by his mention in Time Magazine and vows due diligence. “There’s a Korean saying that goes ‘ride when the tide comes in’ so I think of that and work as hard as I can.”

Written by Hahna Yoon
Photographed by 15studio

Mike Testwuide has a unique profile. He is an American-born Korean ice hockey player whose name is among the 25 athletes in the South Korean men’s hockey team for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.

A natural-born hockey talent from Colorado, Testwuide is now stationed in the new Korean Olympic training center in Jincheon, located about 100 kilometers south from Seoul, to train as an Olympic hockey player.

“Being at this facility allows us to completely focus on training without distractions. Basically, it’s eat, sleep, hockey … repeat. Three of my favorite things,” Testwuide says just three weeks prior to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

Becoming a Korean

Hockey has been the love of Testwuide’s life since the age of eight, when he played the sport for the first time. The sport led him to venture abroad to the country in which he had never imagined living. The former American Hockey League star joined Anyang Halla, a Korean professional hockey team in 2013. The 30-year-old hockey player, now playing for another Korean team, High 1, hadn’t even known there was a hockey league here.

Coming to Korea, however, turned out to be one of his best decisions. “It has revived my love for hockey and has given me the experience of a lifetime,” he says. Life in Korea began as an unexpected turn but has opened up a new chance to participate in the Olympics for the first time.

Soon after he joined Anyang Halla, he met Jim Paek, a former NHL defenseman who was appointed to coach the Korean national men’s team. Paek suggested that Testwuide consider becoming a Korean citizen so that he could play for the Olympic team.

Testwuide had concerns with possible negative views he would get from the U.S. and Korea. He faced questions from people in both who wondered why he’d want to play for another country.

But he saw no borders in hockey and soon began studying for the naturalization exam, learning Korean history and practicing singing the Korean national anthem. He earned Korean citizenship and joined the Korean national hockey team in 2015. He currently holds dual citizenships in the U.S. and Korea.

Learning new culture

Life in Korea has given him a unique chance to experience a new lifestyle as well. Testwuide learned to love a culture he wasn’t familiar with.

“I’m addicted to Korean food and I love how social everything in this country is,” he says. “From coffee shops on every corner, to the abundance of restaurants, to the bar and club scene, you can always be hanging out with friends and having a great time.”

He still travels back and forth between Colorado and Seoul. He spends the off-season from April to August in Vail and the rest of the year in Ilsan, where he is currently based. “My hometown in Vail, Colorado, and Seoul are maybe two of the most different places on earth so I get a great balance of lifestyles,” he says. “Seoul satisfies my craving for city life while Vail satisfies my love of the outdoors.”

Athletic prowess

Testwuide thinks his Korean name, Kang Tae-san, best reflects his identity as a hockey player. He was given the name by Anyang Halla fans who came up with several Korean names for foreign players at the team.

“I chose Kang Tae-san, meaning ‘big strong mountain.’ I believe it suits who I am, where I’m from, and how I play hockey,” he says. “I am one of the biggest guys on the team and I play a strong style. I am also from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The name seemed fitting to me.”

Testwuide’s strong physique, childhood training as a ski racer and an eye for strategy qualify him to be a solid forward whose main responsibility is to score goals and lead the team for a win.

Building the strongest Olympic team

Since he and six Canadian players joined the Korean men’s ice hockey team, the national squad has shown remarkable results in international games. The team was promoted to the upper-level competition for the first time in 2017 at the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championship. Previously, it had played in lower divisions, suffering five losses in 2014. The team’s world ranking has surged to 21st, the highest since the men’s hockey team was established in the 1970s.

The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang are the first for both Testwuide and Korea. The country gets an automatic entry in the Olympic Games as a host country. Testwuide stresses, however, that the result is also the fruition of the hard work and dedication of the Korean team over the past five years.

He says, “We have prepared for this for a really long time and we couldn’t be more excited that the time is finally here. Getting to play on the world stage is truly a dream come true.”

The Korean women’s hockey team has also received unprecedented attention, but for another reason. South and North Korea have agreed to create a joint women’s ice hockey team. Testwuide admits he has mixed feelings about the recent decision.

“We get to see the women’s team on a regular basis and know how tight they are as a team. They have worked very hard to get where they are and I know they want to play as a South Korean team,” he says. “I also think it is a bit unfair that it is happening only a few weeks from the games. On the contrary, I think it is an amazing opportunity for the relationship to continue in the right direction between the two nations. I want to wish them good luck and can’t wait to watch them on the ice.”

Testwuide feels confident about his hockey and his team more than ever.

“I believe I am playing some of the best hockey of my life right now,” he says.

The Korean team is scheduled to compete with some of the strongest contenders in ice hockey such as the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Canada in the Olympics in February.

“We are going into the Olympics with a winning mindset. We are a confident team and know that we can play with the best in the world. We will most likely be the most prepared team there because we have been able to spend so much time playing together over the last few years. I predict great results!”

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Instagram: @MikeTestwuide

Written by Wooyoung Lee
Photographs courtesy of the Korea Ice Hockey Association

Nobel laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio’s ‘Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul’ is an intimate exploration of a city in perpetual change

“The most impressive thing about Seoul is that because it has so many people and a variety of elements, it’s always transforming. When you come back to a certain place six months later, some things have disappeared and new things have constantly been created. Compared with this, Paris is static and unchanging. I was talking with director Park Chan-wook, and he, too, said because Seoul transforms so quickly, he doesn’t want to leave, even for a minute.”

At a press conference at the Korean Publishers Association Building in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun district on Dec. 14, J. M. G. Le Clézio expressed his affection for the city of Seoul, a city with which the renowned French writer has grown intimately familiar since he first visited it over a decade ago. The winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature’s recently released novel, “Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul,” is a portrait of the city, its people and places, its beauty and its ugliness. For him, the Korean capital is a place full of tales. “Seoul is a place that fully stimulates the imagination. Seoul let me create stories.”

Seoul through its stories

Published in Korean and English editions, with a French edition scheduled for March, “Bitna” is a picture of life in Seoul as experienced by its denizens. Its characters come from a variety of backgrounds, reflecting the diversity of the city. Le Clézio unwinds their tales against the city’s rich tapestry of backgrounds, from the glitz of Gangnam to the grit of Yeongdeungpo’s working class neighborhoods. He weaves in many of the city’s landmarks as well, including Gyeongbokgung Palace, Changdeokgung Palace, Cheonggyecheon Stream, Bukhansan Mountain, Namsan Mountain and the Hangang River. The result is an exploration of one of the world’s greatest cities, largely as experienced by the writer himself. “All the places that appear in the novel, I visited myself,” he said in the press conference. “I don’t take taxis. I observed people while taking the subway or buses.”

The eponymous main character, Bitna, is a nineteen-year-old in her first year at university and a recent transplant to Seoul from Jeolla-do, where her parents work in the fish market. As it was for Le Clézio, the city is for Bitna an unfamiliar, crowded and lonely place. By chance, Bitna gets a part-time job telling stories to Salome, a woman with an incurable illness who now spends her days at home, waiting to die. Bitna’s stories open up a world of adventure for both Bitna and Salome.

Bitna tells Salome five stories in all: the story of Mr. Cho, a retiree who raises pigeons and imagines the home he left behind in North Korea during the war as a baby on his mother’s back; the story of the mysterious traveler Kitty and the messages she delivers to bring once-distant neighbors together in community and friendship; the story of Naomi, abandoned as a baby, and Hana, the woman who raises her, and their encounter with life and death; the story of the singer Nabi, who rises to stardom but falls victim to the greed and lies of the people around her; and Bitna’s own story, about her life in the city and the fear she comes to experience as a result of a faceless stalker. Each story is layered with diverse themes that have attracted the author’s interest over the years, including Korea’s traditions, religions, history and cuisine, as well as intergenerational conflict, inter-Korean issues and sociopolitical issues.

Le Clézio may not be finished in Seoul, either. He sees many stories to tell in the people he meets on the street. “One morning at 6 a.m. I saw an elderly people picking up waste paper in Sinchon,” he says. “Curious as to where they came from and where they were going, I wanted to follow them. I also want to write novels about a fortune teller I met near Ewha Womans University and about a Seoul taxi driver.”

Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul  |  빛나­서울 하늘 아래
Author: J. M. G. Le Clézio
English edition translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
Korean edition translated by Song Ki Jeong
Seoul Selection (December, 2017)
216 pages (English) | 254 pages (Korean)
Hard cover, 128 x 188 mm
Price: KRW 14,000
Available at Kyobo Book Centre and elsewhere

Written and photographed by SEOUL staff

Lee Sol-lim of studio SOL +plus project is not just an idol scout. She’s an educator

Despite its location in the Apgujeong, an upmarket ward in the north of Gangnam District, the offices of SOL +plus project are rather unassuming. Hidden behind a generic, cutesy patbingsu café on the third floor of an elevator-less building, this small space houses miniature rooms designed for dance practice, piano playing, vocal training, and single-person karaoke rooms. In each room and corridor one can see young Koreans going through dance routines, warming up, playing old crooner-pop songs again and again, with dedication and focus. The unprecedented postponement of the university entrance exam has given some a free day to practice and perfect their chosen craft.

There is very little flash here. Not only at odds with the neighborhood around it, the SOL +plus project studio is also a far jump from the shiny, spot-perfect version presented at the end of the K-pop factory line on weekly local TV shows such as “Inkigayo” and “Music Bank,” and now also around the world.

Lee Sol-lim is equally unassuming. For over 12 years she worked at S.M. Entertainment’s academy division, discovering and guiding some of the most well-known performers in K-pop such as Kim Tae-yeon of Girls’ Generation, Lee Jin-ki (Onew) of Shinee, and Lee Sung-yeol of Infinite – names and groups that are second nature to Hallyu fans around the world. After majoring in media communication from Sookmyung Women’s University Lee’s love of J-pop idols took her to Japan. There she learned how to organize and run music events before crossing back over to Korea, where she did the same at Seoulland. Lee formed ties with people from diverse companies in the country. Her skills as a planner and events organizer eventually brought her to S.M. Entertainment as a talent scout, working with young hopefuls. “I never wanted to be an idol myself, but I did love the music of SoBangCha, H.O.T, and J-pop idols. Now I am more of a teacher.”

© SOL +plus project

K-pop with a social conscience

Her passion shows when she talks about finding and encouraging young, talented children. In her heart she is not simply an idol scout but instead an educator and a guide, helping her students to be good and socially conscious members of a wider world. “K-pop life is not easy. A lot of effort goes into this industry. Many people have asked me to focus on making money, but I want to contribute to society and help young children.”

SOL +plus project regularly sends young groups to play and volunteer at community events in lower income neighborhoods, retirement homes and orphanages. Lee asks the parents of her students to bring food, especially rice, that can be donated in place of the bouquet of flowers they might normally bring to a concert for their children. This is one of the main goals at SOL +plus project, teaching her students to be good, socially conscious people who actively engage with the world around them. This is clearly as vital to Lee as finding the next K-pop idol.

Whereas S.M., a massive conglomerate, is focused on finding the next big idol, SOL+plus project affords Lee the chance to take on smaller groups of youngsters, for four months at a time. She interviews each applicant to gauge what ambition they have. Are they simply interested in K-pop for easy fame and fortune or do they have real enthusiasm for the talents they believe they have? If so, Lee wants to give them a chance. Whereas a parent might actively discourage their child from pursuing a pop career, Lee looks for those with the passion for music. This was the situation when she first met Kim Tae-yeon, “Her father asked us to dissuade her, but after talking to Tae-yeon separately I could see she loved the music. I asked her father to let us give her a chance.” Of course, Lee acknowledges that “making it” is not just down to ambition and talent. Luck plays a sizable role too.

A large industry

Unlike pop industries in the U.S. or the U.K. where the manufactured nature of pop music has traditionally been hidden from those consuming it, young K-pop fans are much more knowledgeable about what goes on behind the scenes, what jobs there are to aspire to and even the different styles attached to the various entertainment companies. “Nowadays, K-pop isn’t just the idols, and children don’t just dream of becoming singers and dancers,” she says. “There are diverse roles to be filled in the industry, and finding the next generation of songwriters, organizers and managers is one of the main aims of Sol +plus project.”
Lee sees her company as a K-pop industry academy rather than a K-pop star academy, and with her long list of contacts she can connect her students to the larger entertainment companies in a very practical way.

Lee tells us she and her trainers go through all aspects of a performance with their students. What does the light director do, who is the sound engineer, how does the schedule get made and so on. This, she points out, is very unlike S.M. Entertainment, who would see those questions as superfluous. But in an expanding and increasingly global industry like K-pop, there are many diverse roles to be filled, and this practical knowledge will help those children potentially gain employment in the future.

© SOL +plus project

K-pop and the world

Lee’s time spent in one of the largest entertainment companies in Korea shows when she talks about K-pop and the Hallyu wave of Korean culture that has spread out to many Southeast Asian countries. “K-pop contributes to the power of Korea as a brand internationally. It is the most important part of a larger representation of Korea on the world stage.” For Lee, K-pop is not a true representation of Korea, but she is excited to see that through it people around the world are learning Korean, becoming interested in Korean culture and history and trying Korean dishes. Through the window of K-pop, fans are motivated to come to Korea and to spend time and money here. For a small nation, the positive impact on the economy has been tremendous, bolstering Korea’s GDP year on year.

Lee’s SOL +plus project also takes advantage of this by offering K-pop camps to groups of fans and hopefuls from other nations including China, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. SOL +plus global brings these international fans together with well-regarded idol trainers, and they come and learn in the same manner that Korean youngsters do. At the same time, Lee is keeping an eye out for new talents from other countries. Perhaps this could be seen as opportunistic, but for the earnest fans of K-pop, the chance to come to Korea, to work with people such as Lee and to explore the streets of Seoul must be an unrivaled joy. “No matter the background I want to give a chance to everybody. The children coming here are ambitious, so SOL +plus project gives them a chance.” This is something that S.M. Entertainment could not, or perhaps would not, offer.

As we go to leave SOL +plus project’s studio, we see a high school student practicing piano on his own, slowly transcribing an old folk hit onto the instrument. He stops and politely introduces himself and tells us he wants to be a songwriter. As soon as we say goodbye he gets straight back to the piano again. “I like being around young people. They have a lot of ambition and that gives me energy to help them. Not just to be idols but to be good people and to contribute to society.”

SOL +plus project: www.solplusproject.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/solplusproject

Written by Ali Safavi
Photographed by Robert Koehler

“The irony of travel is that getting used to something is good, and the unfamiliar is attractive. But the boundary between the two is a pain.”

Traveler, artist, designer and now author Yoo Hye-joo explains the difficulties of life on the road over a Vienna coffee in a café near Yeonnam-dong’s Yeontral Park. And if there’s somebody who would know the difficulties of travel, it’s Yoo, who since 2009 has spent large stretches of her life on the road, visiting 74 cities in 33 countries, including Australia, Romania, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Nepal, where she survived the massive earthquake of April 2015. If there’s one thing she’s learned from traveling, it’s that luggage makes the perfect analogy for how difficult we often make life. “Every time I had to pack, I’d curse. And no matter how much you try to lessen your baggage, you always pick up new stuff,” she says. “So I always felt, ‘so, this is how heavy your life is.’ The thing about traveling is you realize just how little you need to survive, but you keep on carrying around needless stuff to make life difficult. You can apply the same lessons to life in general.”

In October this year, Yoo self-published “You Smell Nice,” a collection of illustrations and stories from a journey through Southeast Asia and Nepal that included an extended stay in Chiang Mai. The title, unusual for a travel book, refers to the unique odor of used books, in this case, those in a used book shop in Chiang Mai. “I drew a picture a day,” she recalls. “And each picture has a story attached to it, so I wrote down notes so I wouldn’t forget them. I had in mind that I could use the notes to write a book later when I returned to Korea.”

Life as it is

A year and a half later, a period that included navigating the business side of publishing’s steep learning curve, Yoo’s book is earning praise from readers who appreciate its writer’s “slow travel” approach. “Frankly, I don’t like exciting trips,” she says. “I thought I would at first, but I discovered I didn’t. I liked being alone. I liked drawing and reading books. I did that for a year and realized, ah, this is who I am.” She realized that she wasn’t a thrill seeker, that she found joy not in awe-inspiring landscapes, but in the simple beauty of everyday life. “I just liked seeing life as it was.”

Yoo illustrates this point with a story about Thai coffee. You can get Thai coffee in any coffee shop in Chiang Mai, but for the real stuff, she says, you’ve got to go to a street vendor. She was walking around one day when she happened upon an elderly Thai woman brewing coffee at a street stall using big filters into which she put three spoonfuls of ground beans. Wondering how it might taste, she ordered a cup. “It was flavorless,” she says. “No flavor, no real charm. But I was there every morning. To drink it. I thought that was a bit like our daily lives. It might not be anything special or flashy, but we can’t live without it. It seems I went to the coffee place because I felt it was like daily life.”

Yoo advises travelers not to overthink things. Don’t be afraid, and overplan. The latter is probably a waste of time, anyway. She says, “Things never work out as you plan them.”

FYI> Naver blog: blog.naver.com/hyejoo2424
Facebook: facebook.com/hyejoo.yu
Instagram: @hyejooyu

니 냄새가 좋아 (You Smell Nice)
유혜주 (October 17, 2017)
288 pages
Paperback, 110 x 180
Available at Kyobo Book Centre and elsewhere

Written and photographed by Robert Koehler