The Beauty of Korea through a Wall of Words

For Expo 2005 in Aichi Japan, the Korean Pavilion was selected as an "outstanding national pavilion." As in 2005, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency's Park Eun Woo is serving as director-general of the Korean Pavilion at Expo 2010. This time the pavilion introduces two of the things about which Koreans are most proud: their traditional culture and their information technology.

The Korean Pavilion, which has exterior walls covered with the Korean Hangul script, is the only exhibition pavilion at the World Expo that based its design on the written word. Hangul was established in the 15th century during the rule of Sejong the Great. It has a total of 10 vowels and 14 consonants.

Park, who looks a lot like Korean president Lee Myung-bak, explains that in the phonetic-based script of Korean each word must consist of at least one vowel and one consonant. Consequently, the Korean language holds within it the sense of "communication and blending," which also happen to be important attributes of urban life.

"What's more, the Korean written language is full of artistry, and studying Korean, watching Korean television shows and eating Korean delicacies have become a global trend," explains Park. "Hence, it was decided to base the design of the pavilion on Hangul."

Kang Ik-joong, a famous Korean painter now living in the United States, participated in designing the architecture. Pulling together many interesting poems, miscellany and essays, he used a total of 48,000 Korean characters in five different colors to "paint" the exterior walls of the Korean Pavilion as if they were a mosaic of "artistic pixels." It creates an interesting effect.

The most eye-catching thing on the first floor of the Korean Pavilion is a 1:300 scale model of Seoul, with mountains on one side and water on the other. The pavilion has a five-meter wide, 85-meter long water channel to represent Seoul's Han River, which visitors have to cross. A performance stage and auditorium seats serve metaphorically as the mountains. During the period of the World Expo, there will be a variety of performances every day, including folk dancing, percussion performances by Nanta Theater, the comedic martial arts show Jump, and performances of the Wonder Girls' song "Nobody."

Park Eun Woo, the director-general of the Korean Pavilion, also led Korea's effort at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Because his brother graduated from National Chengchi University in Taipei, Park has an emotional tie to Taiwan and would like to visit the island.

The second-floor exhibits focus on culture, humanity, nature and technology to demonstrate modern Korean urban life. World famous for its IT and software, Korea specially arranged four holograms of male and female idols from Korean television to lead visitors to a "moving art wall" (which has a "real-time image control system" that records images of visitors' movements and then projects them onto the walls on both sides.) Visitors also see environmentally friendly designs for home furnishings in a room that has a dining table, bed and office desk.

Korean television dramas, which met with an enthusiastic response at Expo 2005 in Aichi, is also one of the Korean Pavilion's biggest selling points. Park notes that various stars, including Lee Jun Ki, Jang Nara, Rain, and BoA, will appear at the pavilion to come face to face with their fans.

What's more, the Korean Pavilion will from time to time hold activities such as "watching Korean TV shows and learning how to apply make-up." These will allow people to gain an understanding of the "transformations" of the "traditional school" of Korean make-up that aims to "deepen the eye lines and lip lines and darken the color of the lips" as opposed to the "natural school" that uses makeup closer to skin color.

As for Bae Yong Jun, the star of the show Winter Sonata, whom older Japanese female fans went crazy over at the last World Expo, he won't make an appearance this time. "We're going in a different direction to match the particulars of the market," laughs Park.