I happened upon the postcard you wrote quite by chance—on an American website where people buy and sell secondhand objects

Whenever I encounter old images of familiar landscapes, I feel as though invisible layers of time briefly reveal themselves. For that reason, I enjoy looking at—and sometimes collecting—old postcards published in Korea. That day, as I browsed through a number of them, one caught my eye: a postcard titled “Bugok Hawaii, Korea, 1984.” I could not quite imagine what this pairing of two place names—Bugok and Hawaii, seemingly unrelated—was meant to signify. Out of curiosity, I looked it up and discovered that there had once been a theme park called “Bugok Hawaii.” I had never heard of it before. The images of the front and back that the seller uploaded were too low in resolution to read clearly; I could only make out that the postcard had been sent from “England.” I found myself wondering about you—someone who had visited a place in Korea that even I, having been born and raised there, did not know, and who had sent a postcard from there to England.

In 1984, it could not have been an easy journey to reach Bugok-myeon, Changnyeong County, in South Gyeongsang Province, across the sea. How did you come all the way to that theme park? What did you see, and what kind of time did you spend there? I imagined many things as I waited for your postcard to be shipped from a seller in Greece.

Because it took several days to arrive, bearing multiple stamps, I spent that time searching for more information about Bugok Hawaii. It was a theme park established in 1979 by a Korean resident in Japan, following the discovery of a hot spring in his hometown. At the time, it was enormous in scale and enjoyed tremendous popularity, but its appeal gradually faded, and it eventually closed in 2017. Had it been just five years earlier, I too might have been able to visit.

When I finally held your postcard in my hands and read the small, densely written lines on its back, something in my heart sank heavily. Until then, I had freely imagined you as an English woman delighting in a carefree day at a water park. But your letter spoke of a different life—of a new daily routine that had begun with dancing on the stage of a theme park in Korea. You described the crowds that would gather in great numbers every weekend, and the green hills surrounding your stage and living quarters. You wrote of how much you longed for yogurt, yet could not find it anywhere. And when you mentioned that you were only able to go to the post office once a week, I felt I could understand something of the state of mind with which you inscribed those tiny lines.

In search of the place you described, I traveled to Bugok and met several people. Among them was a former troupe leader who had lived in the performers’ quarters with foreign dancers in 1984. Though he did not remember your name, perhaps he once lived alongside you. I also met someone who had built the stage where you danced, installing its lights and facilities. Although I still do not know who you are or where you might be—and cannot meet you—Bugok Hawaii remains, its gates closed, much as it was. I was able only to trace its perimeter, walking along the outer walls.

The crowds that once filled the place, and you as well, have all departed. But there are still those who remain. I was told that the tropical plants inside the grounds could not be relocated. Gathered from various places to evoke a sense of “Hawaii,” they were brought here without knowing why, and have taken root beyond those walls, entwining with one another as they continue to live. No one comes any longer in search of Hawaii, yet they persist, carrying on their daily performance of survival.

I imagine the moment when the glow of sunset settles into the darkened greenhouse. The artificial lights that once illuminated those exotic leaves and branches have long been turned off, and human presence has faded. In that abandoned space, I picture the warm light of dusk falling gently, revealing forms and quiet struggles beneath it. Between tangled stems, I imagine, fleetingly, the trace of someone’s dance. Driven by a desire to see what I have never seen, I layer brushstrokes upon brushstrokes.

Have you ever seen your own dance—your own performance? You must not have seen yourself upon the stage, dancing, just as we can never truly see our own faces. Through you, I think about life as a performance—one that cannot be rewound or replayed. Each of us dances our daily routines upon our own stages, yet what kind of performance this dance becomes can only be remembered after we have stepped down from it.

March 2022, Kayoung Choi

Painting from an Unlived Past: Staging Memory and Survival in Kayoung Choi’s Survival in Fantasy Sungah Choo Kayoung Choi, who has the unusual hobby of collecting old postcards, one day came into possession of a peculiar bundle. Among them was a postcard sent in 1984 from Bugok Hawaii, containing an account written by a British individual identified as J. What drew the artist’s attention was not only the spectacular tourist site—Bugok Hawaii, located in Bugok-myeon, Changnyeong County, Gyeongsangnam-do in the 1980s—but also the curiosity about how and why this British woman, J, had come to stay there. This large-scale theme park, situated in what might have been an unfamiliar rural village even to the artist’s parents’ generation, was a simulacrum of Hawaii—an imagined earthly paradise at a time when overseas travel was not easily accessible. The printed image on the postcard, seemingly taken from an aerial viewpoint, does not so much replicate Hawaii as it embodies a collectively imagined exoticism of the 1980s. It offered a crude utopia that could be consumed through water attractions and themed facilities.

The fact that J, a British woman, lived there as a stage dancer in a place even more “exotic” than foreign countries themselves appears almost fictional, while simultaneously revealing a bittersweet facet of that historical moment. What, then, motivated Choi to trace the relationship between this implausible, phantom-like place and the foreign laborer who once inhabited it? As the artist has noted, “Complete death arrives only when there is no one left to remember.” By rediscovering and tracing Bugok Hawaii in the present, she seeks to continue the residual memories embedded in the site through a new act of recording. Why does Choi focus on saeng (寫生, painting from life) in this series? Although trained in Korean painting, she employs canvas and acrylics in this body of work, yet notably uses traditional Korean brushes with softer and longer bristles. Her choice of a long-bristled line brush, rather than a coloring brush, emphasizes strokes over tonal gradation, translating bodily movement and speed into gestures that attempt to recall the structural essence of the subject. Traditionally, in Korean painting, the concept of saui (寫意, expressive or idea-based painting) has been discussed in opposition to saeng (寫生), often framed as a dichotomy between subjective interpretation and the depiction of objective reality.

However, the imagined yet unexperienced site of Bugok Hawaii—based on oral accounts—and its abandoned, non-functioning landscape suggest an attitude that merges these two approaches. If painting on-site constitutes one form of saeng, then faithfully transcribing words, narratives, or facts can also be considered another. The former relies on visual immediacy to observe and render the essential qualities of a place, while the latter involves incorporating oral histories and interviews with real individuals, as well as adopting the highly personal perspective embedded in the postcard text. Together, these two modes of saeng lead to a perceptual imagination of Bugok Hawaii as an aggregate of memories where survival and fantasy coexist. In this sense, the act of storytelling—attentive to the particularities of human experience—resembles a way of thinking about how to speak of an unexperienced past or an unrealized (or unrealizable) future. Perhaps the accidental arrival of a forty-year-old letter in the artist’s hands and her subsequent tracing of that unexperienced time suggest that past and future might, in some sense, converge.

The artist’s method, rooted in oral transmission and expanded through the act of painting, ultimately constitutes a form of record. The multiplicity of perspectives—“he said this, you say that, and I say something else”—becomes a crucial point of reference. As Alberto Manguel suggests, the concept of a stage set by text reflects the narrative’s capacity to take on a life of its own and intervene in lived experience. Similarly, Choi constructs space as a stage and organizes her works as if composing a theatrical piece, thereby opening up a fluid relationship between self and other. In Survival in Fantasy (2022), the artist approaches Bugok Hawaii not merely as a physical site but as an abstract and virtual domain, separated from reality and grasped in ontological terms. Yet, through the three-dimensional format of a theatrical stage, she resists reducing it to a purely conceptual or representational image. Instead, she unfolds the diverse narratives and sensory experiences associated with the site through painterly means. Like a faint, flickering memory, the works employ diluted lines and pointillist techniques with low color saturation and contrast, capturing a surreal moment under intense sunlight.

While maintaining the method of painting from life, Choi avoids flatness by exposing the wooden supports of the canvas and incorporating them into the stage-like structure. The use of a red carpet to amplify the theatrical setting further reveals the crude and artificial nature of this constructed fiction. By collecting both the physical “fakeness” of Bugok Hawaii—modeled after an imagined Hawaii—and the memories of insiders and outsiders left behind after its closure, Choi constructs a distorted perspective of an unexperienced place. Visiting what is now effectively a ruin—still existing yet no longer functioning—the artist focuses on tropical plants that were transplanted there decades ago and continue to survive. Drawing on collected narratives, she evokes a sense of nostalgia. The existence of Bugok Hawaii, which seems “not entirely over even after it has ended,” reveals a powerful vitality, where nature has flourished behind the closed site. Choi associates this vitality with the sense of survival experienced by J, the foreigner who once lived there. Interestingly, the theme of survival is not directly depicted but instead appears through interview excerpts attached to the structural supports behind the canvas, facing away from the painted surface.

By combining oral narratives and the remnants of landscape, the artist lends credibility to a place that otherwise appears entirely fictional. This approach resonates with a realist stance that acknowledges the existence of places and objects outside subjective perception. The memories of the site, staged in this way, become a kind of apparatus—another latent potential. Through the artist’s editing, painterly images and texts are salvaged from fragmented memories and brought into reality. By performing a “spatial turn” on the stage, these subjective yet objective realities are transformed into fragments of images, where opposing concepts coexist through the continual opening and closing of memory and perception. While Survival in Fantasy constructs a unified, stage-like composition, Ninety-Nine Fragments of Bugok Hawaii—From J, 1984 (2022) begins with the postcard image itself. For the artist, the postcard is not a fixed image but a fleeting one. By enlarging and segmenting the low-resolution printed image, she reveals previously unnoticed details. Each fragmented scene generates new narratives.

The site-specific image, once produced as a tourist commodity, becomes a medium through which the artist records newly imagined scenes of Bugok Hawaii, based on collected information in the present. The dispersed fragments of memory—those of domestic tourists, foreign workers, and local residents—are both concrete and deeply personal. Ultimately, the works presented in Survival in Fantasy and Ninety-Nine Fragments of Bugok Hawaii—From J, 1984 draw on both saeng and saui, separating and recombining them to present an open field of shared memory. Since no one can fully capture the past without having experienced the same time and space, the artist inevitably engages with a drifting, folded spatial condition—what might be described as a “space folded outward.” At its core, Choi’s work is sustained by the careful act of storytelling, which establishes a meaningful relationship with the attitude of painting from life. Although the work begins from specific references, its process of recording, painting, and staging transforms scenes and texts into new forms of language. In this way, the movement of stories across time and space remains perpetually unfinished—much like the persistent survival instinct embodied by J, the British dancer, and the enduring tropical plants—continuing a long journey that ultimately meets the gaze of the viewer.

I call for each star Pae, Kyeong, Ok, such foreign girls’ names, ...... names of poets like ‘Francis JAMMES,’ Rainer Maria RILKE’

In YUN Dongju’s “A Night of Counting Stars,” he categorizes the names of exotic girls and poets as Pae (佩), Kyeong (鏡), Ok (玉), and includes figures like Francis JAMMES and Rainer Maria RILKE. However, during my childhood, all these names carried a sense of the exotic. The emotional gap conveyed by the term “exotic” surpassed that associated with a foreign country. Exotic taste is composed not only of physical distance but also of the yearning arising from unfamiliarity. In reality, the actual physical distance is inconsequential. What holds more significance is the kind of identity or crystallization that these blended tastes possess.

From Hawaii to Serbia to Furutsu

CHOI Kayoung’s journey spans from Serbia to Hawaii and eventually Furutsu. However, for the purpose of this essay, I will trace the narrative in reverse chronological order—from Hawaii to Serbia and, finally, to Furutsu. This sequence mirrors the order I was introduced to CHOI.

From Hawaii

The Yongin Natural Farm, established in Gyeonggi Province in 1976, underwent a transformation in 1996, rebranding itself as Everland. The theme park, situated on the same grounds, underwent a reorganization aimed at “Creating the infinite value of time and space to improve the quality of life.” While Everland ascended as a haven of dreams and aspirations, Bugok Hawaii in Changnyeong-gun, Gyeongnam, inaugurated in 1979 as a belated counterpart to the natural farm, experienced a decline post-1990s, culminating in its closure in 2017. This sets the backdrop for the discussion of CHOI’s exhibition Survival in Fantasy. Survival in Fantasy was CHOI’s solo exhibition at the The Kumho Museum of Art in 2022, a showcase that left a profound impact on me when I happened upon it by chance. As a child hailing from Bugok Hawaii, delving into the 99 chapters of Ninety-nine Pieces of Bugok Hawaii - From J in 1984 (2022) transported me back to the enchanting days of watching dancers perform on a stage filled with exotic allure. These memories, ignited by a postcard of J (Jacky) discovered by CHOI on eBay, unveiled the vividly colorful and glamorous stage adorned with various tropical plants, people adorned in vibrant swimsuits beside swirling lukewarm water, and an exceptionally long water slide, evoking a profound sense of nostalgia. The work took the form of a lenticular arrangement, presenting shimmering images at intervals against a white background that served as a gap in the memory, echoing those days when reality seamlessly intertwined with the imagined. While CHOI’s paintings evoked concrete experiences, for her, the imaginary realms were constructed through J’s postcards and low-quality home videos of Bugok Hawaii. She expressed, “I felt that the gap in my imagination would never be filled, even though the thickness of the imagination seemed to be building up like this...” The exotic allure sparked by J was once again brought to the forefront, yet instead of people from that era, including J whom she had never met, tropical plants assumed their place. Despite the slight time lag that separated CHOI from Bugok Hawaii, an interview with the remnants of Bugok Hawaii was structured to bridge the gaps in her memory embedded behind the paintings.

Through Serbia

There is also something to be said for CHOI’s solo exhibition A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac at Art Space Hyung in 2020. Serbia is more like a foreign country than France, Germany, or England. I was speechless when I saw CHOI’s A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac, which depicts the Benzas quarry in Serbia. If Bugok Hawaii draws a line in the sand between me and CHOI, Serbia draws a line in the sand between me and anyone else who has ever been there. I wouldn’t call it a unique experience, but there was a time when I was invited to a wedding in a small town in southern Serbia and danced a dance that looked like something out of an Emir KUSTURICA movie. CHOI, who is the subject of A Serbian Mountain, a Quarry, Venčac, had never been there. Rather, this exhibition led to an exhibition in Serbia in the fall of 2023. The idea for the exhibition was to receive local photographs from Serbian artist M (Maria) and paint them with the idea of walking and exploring the mountains in the photographs. However, she was shocked when she later realized that the landscape in the photo was a quarry. “I felt like the mountain was crumbling,” CHOI said. Perhaps this realization led to different preparations for the postwar exhibition. Regardless of whether it was a mountain or a quarry, the conditions for viewing and composing the transmitted image on a monitor were the same. While they may have had tremendous texture and color in the field, the pixelated landscapes appeared as paintings with “flattened surfaces” that made the foreground and background of the space appear closer together than they actually were. For this expression, she decided to try acrylic on canvas instead of hanji. Of course, the change has its own meaning, but CHOI seems to have focused on the desired expression rather than the change. For her, the tools of painting, such as support, pigment, and brushes, do not accompany her to rethink efficiency. The basic concepts of Oriental painting are still important to her. Therefore, in her paintings, strokes are definitely more prominent than surfaces. The sense of movement and speed through handwriting is a constant challenge for her, even with acrylics on canvas, and she makes flexible choices when necessary to find the right expression for the landscape she has not experienced. The surface of the paintings boldly reveals the omissions, fragmentation, juxtapositions, and combinations she chose to make in the process of taking in the discontinuous landscape, as the fictional landscape was altered in a way that could reveal its fictional nature. After the exhibition in Serbia, I received from her a few archival photographs of the place she had approached for the first time physically and for the second time conceptually. It will be interesting to see what these unfinished fragments of a foreign country will provide for CHOI in the future.

To Furutsu

CHOI Kayoung’s solo exhibition in the fall of 2023, titled Furutsu (Gallery Chosun, Seoul, 2023), conjures images of canned fruit cocktail, a symbol of 80s hospital visits. Aside from the pineapple and cherry in the honeydew, I didn’t even know the names of the individual fruits. When I looked it up, I found out that it contains papaya, coconut jelly, etc. Unlike the trend of seeking seasonal and organic fruits today, tropical fruits are the best for savoring exotic tastes. CHOI’s chronicle of Hawaii, Serbian quarries, and furutsu is a perfect example of embodying exoticism. However, rather than basking in the euphoria of exoticism, she brings forth discomfort. The fruits featured in Furutsu are not truly tropical, and even the flavors labeled as “tropical” originate from places unrelated to the tropics upon closer examination of the ingredients. Pineapple, a central element of Hawaiian pizza, was introduced to Hawaii with American capitalism and represents the cause of the Hawaiian kingdom’s collapse.

If that’s the case, what does the array of fruits displayed in Furutsu, arranged like still life paintings, mean to her? CHOI Kayoung considers these fruits as contemporary still lifes, each coexisting in an environment artificially stimulated by capital. As a trained Oriental painter, CHOI is undoubtedly familiar with the symbolism of the Four Gentlemen – plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum. However, given that the virtues of the Four Gentlemen are distant from contemporary concerns, new perspectives are often required to shed light on contemporary issues. Among the fruits in Furutsu, the dragon fruit, despite its vibrant appearance, possesses a subtle sweetness. CHOI skillfully captures the disparity between external and internal qualities. For the monstera, its aesthetic appeal as an interior decoration contrasts with its evolution to adapt and survive in a transplanted environment. Her exploration delves into the homogeneity between fruits and the human condition, emphasizing the necessity for survival skills in the face of environmental discrepancies. When asked if her perspective on this process is pessimistic or cynical, CHOI simplifies it by saying, “I tend to look at them as cute.” However, beneath this simplicity lies her complex feelings of compassion, understanding, and disgust, revealing the inhumanity of humans while challenging viewers to contemplate humanity within non-human entities. From Hawaii to Serbia to Furutsu, where “there are no people in the picture, but people are important,” CHOI’s formulated artistic space is convincingly thought-provoking.

The Statis/Stagnation of the Exotic Taste

Why, then, is there this twist, where exotic tastes take center stage externally but are ostracized internally? I couldn’t help but ask what is CHOI’s consciousness which can only be introduced after securing distance. She used the expression “stranger from afar” in reference to Furutsu. I was convinced by her assertion that maintaining a distance had become a habit to break free from the inertia of repetitive reflection. Reflective thinking, inherent to critical philosophy, involves internalizing the reconstruction of perception from external sources, prompting us to reconsider romanticization and idealization. Choosing to reclaim a deteriorating artifact of entertainment like Bugok Hawaii instead of letting it fade away, altering painterly conventions as modern landscape painting transforms into pixels on a monitor instead of a portrayal of life, and questioning the systems of production and consumption rooted in imperialism and capitalism as reflected in still life—all these endeavors address the byproducts of illusion and misperception. They highlight the illusion that we are sensing something even when it doesn’t physically touch our skin. While CHOI consistently emphasizes that illusion and idealization are half-hearted survival techniques for both humans and non-humans, her painterly task, as an artist, is one of completion and resetting. Despite occasional concerns about whether her themes are clearly conveyed in each solo exhibition due to the direct sensation conveyed by her painted images, I have high expectations for the overlapping and successive establishment of her tasks as a painter. CHOI, to me, resembles more of a filmmaker than just a painter. The continuity in her work, where even a single scene or object from one exhibition becomes the focal point of a connected worldview, exhibits her strength. The stasis of exoticism carries a living movement, much like the contraction and relaxation of the heart, moving forward in a way that avoids stagnation.

Hyunju KIM contemplates the gift value of art as an alternative to the commercialization of art. She intends to intervene as an art in social issues and problems of social minorities, and is more interested in nomadic activities than settlement.