Sungmin ’26 is working to preserve the endangered Jeju language and honor Korean grandmother culture by translating poems and stories from a collective of elderly artists, deepening his connection to his heritage and sharing the resilience and warmth of Jeju’s grandmothers with a wider audience.
I love my Korean grandmothers. When I get the rare opportunity to visit them in Korea, it is always the highlight of my summer. My paternal grandmother, who resides in a tiny apartment in Seoul, always welcomes me to her home with a loving smile and warm, delicious food. Calling me her “baby”, stroking my hair, and always telling me to look after my health are habits that she will never stop pampering me with no matter how old I get. My maternal grandmother, who resides on the tropical island of Jeju, is much like my paternal grandmother in the way that she cares and provides for me whenever I visit. She always asks me — whether early in the morning or late at night -– if I have eaten, sometimes waking up after falling asleep just to ask me if I’m hungry, ready to prepare a meal even though it’s far past her bedtime. She laughs a lot, plays games with friends, goes to local community gatherings, and prepares a feast for dinner every evening. Despite her busy schedule, every morning at 5am, I can hear her getting ready to go to the family farm and work in the hot, humid conditions until dinnertime. This unwavering care and productivity, in my opinion, is part of Korean culture, in which all Korean grandmothers seem to share these traits. And this summer, I was able to delve deeper into this “Korean grandmother culture”, with a focus on an aspect of my childhood that was rapidly dying out; the language of Jeju Island, the words in which my maternal grandmother has nurtured me with ever since I was young.
My primary objective for this grant prior to the summer was to help preserve the endangered language of Jeju Island. This objective remained same throughout the summer and continued following contact with Social Museum Korea. An organization based in the town of Seonheul, Jeju, just 10 minutes from my grandmother’s house, first caught my attention through the popular K-drama, When Life Gives You Tangerines. Social Museum Korea is associated with the Seonheul Drawing Studio, which is a group of 11 grandmothers, the youngest being 73 years old and the oldest being 96 years old, who meet nearly everyday to draw, paint, and display their work in an art-gallery style studio that is set up in Seonheul. The studio is quite popular to not only Koreans but foreigners as well, and this popularity skyrocketed with the recent K-drama. After connecting with Social Museum Korea and visiting the Seonheul Drawing Studio, I was astonished by the artwork that these grandmothers had produced. Throughout the course of around 2 weeks, I visited every weekend when they opened their studio to the public, and even got the opportunity to draw with the grandmothers on two occasions, which was an extremely fun and memorable experience. The kindness, productivity, and jubilance that radiated from all 11 grandmothers at all times reminded me a lot of my own two Korean grandmothers. During this period, when I was not with the grandmothers, I was working on translating certain written works that were being sold at the Drawing Studio into English, specifically a Poster Book that features a drawing from each grandmother and a poem written by the grandmothers that accompanies their drawing. All of their poems were written in the Jeju Language and while translating, it sometimes felt like my own grandmother was writing to me about her own experiences on Jeju Island, and this gave me a whole new insight into the lives of these grandmothers. Many wrote about the hardships of the April 3rd Incident, a tragic political dispute resulting in 30,000 civilian casualties, and the hardships of a poverty-stricken country following the Korean War, the same difficulties and tragedies that my own grandmothers faced when they were young. This project shifted my focus of the Grant; now, not only did I want to try and preserve the language through the art, poetry, and stories of the grandmother-painters, but I also hoped to illuminate the tragic history of Korea and Jeju Island to a wider, foreign audience by translating the grandmothers’ poems into English. Through the Seonheul Drawing Studio and Social Museum Korea, I was able to attend and volunteer with the grandmothers at a convention that would showcase the art and poetry of the grandmothers on a larger stage 2 hours South of Seonheul. This was an amazing experience, as I was able to firsthand see how local farmers, divers, and grandmothers were able to display their work and products to a larger audience outside of the island.
I visit the grandmothers for the last time tomorrow, and there I hope to give the Drawing Studio my translated work and say my goodbyes to the amazing staff and the inspiring grandmothers. Throughout these past few weeks, I have fallen in love with the warmth, the smiles, and the laughter these grandmothers exude and have learned a lot about the firsthand experiences of the war and the April 3rd Incident. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this organization, and I definitely plan on visiting again in the future.
