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.