Visual Storytelling_South Korean Picture Books

The original folktale of “The Fairy and the Woodcutter” narrated in English. This is the original Korean folktale that inspired the retelling of the story in Heena Baek’s Longevity Bathhouse Nymph. 

In Heena Baek’s picture books, the characters/figures from Traditional Korean culture or folktales often appear. Such as..... 

the Strange Mother, in the book, The Strange Mother. 

and the Nymph, in the book, The Longevity Bathhouse Nymph

These characters directly stem from the Korean culture and one of the reasons why Heena Baek’s books are appreciated is because of the celebration of traditional Korean culture and the effort of bringing it to contemporary audience. 

The Strange Mother and The Nymph can be suspected to be employed from same Korean folktale: The Nymph and the woodcutter. 

In the traditional Korean folktale, these “Nymph” characters are known to live in heaven and come down to earth to take baths. They usually wear distinguishable hairdo and clothing, and these can be found in Heena’s books. 

These are the images of the nymph in the folktale, and you can see the hair and the outfit resemble the ones that Heena Baek’s characters are wearing. 

Heena Baek: The Picture Book Artist 

Heena Baek is a South Korean picture book artist from Seoul. Her first picture book, Cloud Bread, was sold more than 400,000 copies and it was an unusual record for picture books in South Korea. Cloud Bread is known to be the best picture book published in Korea in 2000s. 

Heena Baek studied in Educational Technology at Ihwa University in South Korea before she moved to U.S. to study Animation at CarArts in California. 

Heena Baek is well known for her unique crafting method in creating her characters using different materialities (-- that resembles animations of Tim Burton, and it is interesting to note that they both studied at CarArts in California) and utilize photography for the background setting. 

One of the prominent elements in South Korean picture books is its diverse materialities that are utilized to create the scenes. In Heena Baek’s picture books, characters are created with paper, paper mache, yarn and fabrics, and the background scenes are at times created with papers/cardboards as well, or the the sceneries in the real world are often photographed to be used as a background. 

And this materiality is not only limited to Heena Baek’s picture books. When you walk through the picture book isles of Korean bookstores or look through the category of picture books on online Korean bookstores such as www.aladdin.co.kr, you can easily see that this is rather a picture book trend in South Korea. 

Looking at this aspect of South Korean picture books, what is the effect/affect of materialities? 

There are two benefits of materialities in South Korean picture books. 

1. The materialities provide experience of “touching” by looking at the pictures. While looking at the images of different materials, children can feel the textures of them by seeing, and this enables sensory learning experience. 

2. The materialities help children in the process of visual thinking since the sceneries are crafted to resemble reality in a three dimensional way, rather than two dimensional that requires more skills of visual literacy to interpret how the images indicate reality. This enables younger audience to understand the images easier. 

Looking at Heena Baek’s Picture books for children, vulgarity seems to be a running theme, and this is not only limited to Heena Baek’s picture books. If you walk around in the Children section of bookstores in South Korea and browse through popular (and often bestseller) picture books, vulgarity -- naked body images, farts, boogers, even poops!! --are all common materials for children’s picture books. Growing up in South Korea, I remember growing up reading books of such, looking at those images, and never really thinking that these images or materials can be seen “vulgar”. But when you present these books to a different audience situated in a different culture -- say, a group of first-year college students in a Midwest suburb (I know this because I tried it myself in my student teaching) -- the audience either 1) can’t stop laughing, or 2) gets triggered and real upset. I would say, these books with naked body images and farting scenes may be censored in North America to keep children “safe” from the harm of vulgarity. If a bunch of college freshmen was triggered by these images, I can only imagine how the parents of little children would react to. 

But why, though? Why are these images received uncomfortable in one culture but not in another? 

And as I start thinking about this subject, I don’t think this visual culture just pertain to South Korea. 

Have you ever seen these figurings called “Sonny Angel”?

These little male baby figurings are from Japan and they usually wear animal head shaped hats (or helmets?) and completely naked. They utilize “blind packaging” (From Sonny Angel Official Website), which means you won’t know what kind of Sonny angel you will get until you open the box, and the Website explains “He is always by your side to make you smile. Sonny Angel will provide healing moments in your everyday life”.

While some may speculate that there might be a reference to some kind of a messed up pedophilia with these little dolls, the culture -- as someone who spent most childhood and part adulthood immersed in this culture (as S.Korea is heavily influenced by Japanese culture) I can confidently argue -- is rather, well, quite normal. Or at least received as normal. These are supposed to be cute and endearing and that’s really, no, I mean it, really, the extent of it. (No matter how weird they seem). And also one aspect of it is the kind of primitive humor of naked images that comes from it. 

Same argument goes to the naked images of South Korean picture books, specifically in the example of Heena Baek’s 장수탕선녀님 (Longevity Bathhouse Nymph). It is safe to say that Longevity Bathhouse Nymph is not only full of naked body images but almost it is body images. 

The protagonist, “Dukji” goes to a public bathhouse called “Longevity Bathhouse” with her mom. And while trying to entertain herself, she meets n incredibly strange-looking lady. They spent a course of a day playing various games in the bathhouse. This lady reveals that she is not just a strange-looking lady, but she is in fact the nymph from the famous Korean folktale, “The Nymph and the Lumberjack”. Later, Dukji, playing too hard and playing in the cold bath, gets a cold but the strange-looking “Longevity House Nymph” comes back to Dukji and cures her. 

What’s really interesting about this story is the “re-telling” aspect of the storytelling and how the concept of “nakedness” in the Korean tradition is situated and represented in the picture book format. 

In the traditional folktale of “Lumberjack and the Nymph”, Nymphs come down from heaven (they live in heaven) and take a bath in a hot spring. The lumberjack, single and lonely, secretly watches the nymphs taking a bath behind a rock. He knows that what gives nymphs the ability to fly to heaven is their winged clothes. So he steals one of the nymph’s clothes, and hide it. The nymph, realizing this, hides herself behind a rock and cries alone when all her friends went back up to heaven. Lumberjack shows himself to the nymph (while not revealing that he hid the clothes) and offers his house as a shelter. They soon gets married and have three children. One night, the lumberjack couldn’t resist his conscience anymore and tells the nymph that it was him who hid the clothes, but refuses to give the clothes back to her. He cries -- something in the lines of -- “But what about the kids?!?!!?!?” 

The nymph, homesick, thinks of a trick and says something in the lines of, “Oh honey, you don’t have to give the clothes back to me. I am not going to go back. Why would I go when we have three children to take care of? So don’t worry about it. But.... I do miss my beautiful clothes, though. They are made of this gorgeous silk and... oh, well, I don’t really remember.... can I see it? Can I try it on, just one last time?” 

Fooled, lumberjack gives the nymph her clothes. As soon as she retrieves her clothes, she put it on, takes her three children in her arm (sounds impossible but the clothes gave her the power to fly so who knows?) and flies back to heaven, living the lonely lumberjack all alone. 

I just did a storytelling of the old Korean folktale from my memory. And this is not even impressive. I am 99% sure that most Koreans can do this storytelling in slightly different ways. The storytelling of folktale has an immense power in culture because it situates itself in a culture so powerfully that the stories repeat itself generations after generations. That’s the interesting part about Heena Baek’s picture book, The Longevity Bathhouse. To really understand this book, you need to understand the story of the old folktale that I just told you. 

What’s suggested in this “adaptation” or “retelling” of the storytelling is that the nymph never retrieves the winged clothes from the lumberjack. The nymph, a supernatural being, outlives the lumberjack, probably outlives the children, and now all alone and.... well, lost. She now lives in a public bathhouse -- which is hilarious -- and can only be seen by children probably because they stay curious and attentive to their surroundings. Oh and one important thing, she is an old woman in the picture book whereas she is the youngest nymph of all in the folktale. With this understanding, this story makes so much more sense and becomes way more interesting than as a story about a kid who meets a strange-looking lady. 

Then, maybe, this can explain something about the vulgarity of children’s picture books in South Korea. Just like the story of the nymph from the folktale was situated in the picture book, the vulgar or naked images in children’s picture books in general, are situated in the Korean culture in a way that is seen rather natural. Less tabooed than some cultures might. This aspect connects very well to and can be expanded to the concepts of visual literacy. 

Perry Nodelman, a celebrated scholar of children’s picture book, claimed reading of pictures heavily involves “cultural assumptions” (9). The reading of pictures is always “historical” and “depends on the reader’s knowledge” but further, “pictorial perceptions of people with different cultural backgrounds” are also hugely different (10). Like many things (almost everything, I must say), picture books are also deeply situated in a culture. Especially with platforms that utilize visual images, it is almost impossible interpret them without cultural knowledge since they are supposed to present ideas through what is seen, rather than what is read; what it “is”, rather than what is “about”, like Nick Sousanis analyzed about images and words in Unflattening, a dissertation written in the graphic form about visual thinking. In picture books, words usually accompanies images. But words and images not always work together. Words may explain or clarify images but they can also work together or play against each other (Nodelman, viii). It is almost impossible to avoid the gaps created in pictures and words because they are two separate narratives and the explanation of the gaps is not always provided. 

In conclusion, yes, I know, South Korean picture books can be vulgar, or... simply... pretty weird. Or at least that was the majority of reaction I got from my students who engage with the activity that involved reading Heena Baek’s picture books. However, I suspect that what we can learn about from this unique representations is that our reading of any images or visual storytelling involves “cultural assumptions” and we need to be aware that we are reading the stories from a different culture that we might project our own cultural knowledges to, but fails to help us understand. We need the open mind to accept something that is from a different culture but some background stories will also help, just like the case of “The Lumberjack and the Nymph”. 

Works Cited 

Nodelman, Perry. Words About Pictures, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Hi, all! 

I made a blog to start curating and showcasing my materials for the research topic, “Non-Western Storytelling Narratives”. For this topic, I am going to examine one of the most celebrated author of South Korean picture books, Heena Baek, in particular. 

Some of Heena Baek’s celebrated picture books include: 구름빵 (Cloud Bread), 이상한 엄마 (The Strange Mom), 이상한 손님 (The Strange Guest), and 장수탕 선녀님 (Longevity Bathhouse Nymph). 

I will post more about her picture books, translations, interviews, art-making process, materials she use, characters, South Korean Culture, and more!

Stay tuned -- Peace & Love,