Category Archives: Korea

The Kim Chi Chronicles – 4th Instalment

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I am in Korea to investigate ancient pottery sites where single-stone porcelain has been made and/or mined and made. These days it is most common that the stone is mined some way out-of-town and then transported to the crushing/processing plants closer to the pottery making areas. Many of the oldest sites are now sterilised by the expansion of the residential areas that grew up around the quarry/mines to support them while they were being developed and then expanded into them.

I am up in the North East mountains of Korea with two potter/colleagues and we are looking for an old mine site for porcelain stone and glaze stone. This mine is well-known, but as a name only. Of all the potters that I spoke to in Yeo Ju, the specialist, pottery making town, located a couple of hours East of Seoul. No one there had ever been to this mine, or even knew of anyone who had. It existed to them as a mythical kind of place, a long way away and high up in the mountains. It’s synonymous with Rampant BB in Australia. Every potter had a bag of it, but no-one had ever been there to check it out.

No-one actually had an address or directions of how to find it either. When I set off on this sojourn with Miss Kang, my driver. We were only going for a couple of days. Well she was anyway. I was going to stay on at the porcelain centre and enjoy their hospitality and work for a while, but all that collapsed like a quantum wave-form calculation when I got there and looked for a result. It seems that I can know the location of the centre, but not the duration of my stay, or I can know the precise length of a stay, without any guarantee of a location. Ah! The duality of light has nothing on this! Damn Schroedinger! Like any sub-atomic particle. I was only ever there in theory! So much for the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of short term, impromptu travel.

As our road trip has developed – organically into this week-long, Kerouac-esque, Dharma bum style, endless travail from one pottery site to another. We have adapted as we have had too. I am perfectly OK with this, as I packed my small, red, back-pack with 5 days worth of undies, 4 T shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, one for clay and another for clean etc. But as for these other beat-potters travelling with me, as we enter day 4. It is Miss Kang who proves to be the most resourceful and creative, impromptu traveller. Managing to cope so well with this extended expedition with so little notice.

We make our way along some pretty rough country roads heading ever higher. We eventually end up on a track that rises sharply and winds around the side of the mountain. It ends up being just 2 tyre tracks composed of a melange of concrete, bitumen, gravel and then patches of the same, randomly and very haphazardly applied to keep it navigable. It is definitely only a one way track. I certainly hope that we don’t meet anything like a fully laden 10 tonne truck coming down!

Miss Kang navigates the pot holes and ditches skilfully, always keeping up the revs and our speed to give us the momentum to get to the top. Suddenly we broach a small rise and pop out into a quarry. A very wet and slippery quarry. As it has been raining all night and is still sprinkling with a light shower even now. The air is bracing and crisp. It smells of earth and clay and moisture, with just a hint of diesel exhaust. Our breath condenses as steam as we talk.

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There are a couple of other cars up here. A processing plant straight ahead. Piles of bulker bags stacked 3 high on one side, full of product, ready for delivery. A tip-truck on the other. Over to one side there is what we would call in Australia a ‘donger’. A shipping container, that has been converted into an office. We walk over to the ‘office’ as a small thin older man comes out. He has a weathered, but kind, enquiring face.

Miss Kang introduces us. She has already spoken to him on the phone and he is expecting us. Inside we are gestured to sit down on the bare floor, which is always a challenge for me. I don’t sit well cross-legged. I’m given a special seat against the wall, so I can lean back and spread my legs out under the low table. A well-worn lady dressed in work clothes comes in and attends to a sauce pan, wok and a pressure cooker that are busy chattering, hissing and steaming away on the stove in the corner. We are all presented with a mug of hot, sweet, thick, milky coffee. It just couldn’t be a better gift to welcome us in. Thankfully, the office-donger-container has a heated floor, which is very cosy.

A brisk conversation ensues, all of which is opaque to me. As it is in rather fast Korean. But I can tell that the tone is cherrie and light-hearted, with occasional laughter. Apparently this guy has a very dry sense of humour. Eventually, I get a quick version of events from Miss Kang and am asked the question, “What do you want?”.

I ask her to tell him that I’d like to see the best grade of porcelain stone that he has. He says that he has sold out of his best material. His wife, (I’m assuming that it is his wife) But couldn’t be more wrong on this occasion. The lady doing the washing out the back and cooking lunch in here, making our coffee and generally being all things to all people is, as it turns out. The Vice-President of the company (or is this just another one of his jokes?) and the best geologist on site, it is she who directs the mining and knows all the twists and turns of the best seams.

I ask how many people work here? And am told that there is one guy who drives all the diggers and machinery, another who drives the tip truck for deliveries. Then there is the engineer who keeps the crushing and screen plant operating. And then, he says. There is me. I am sometimes allowed to press the button!

It turns out that he is a retired professor from the university. He has taken on this job to keep occupied in his retirement. Miss Kang and Jaeyong explain my quest to him and he smiles attentively. So completely different from our experience earlier in the week. He smiles a lot and nods. I feel that this is all going to end well.

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While we have been talking, the NOT Mrs miner, but rather, Vice-President lady has been out and comes in with 2 bags of samples of their very best white material. She knows where there is a little stash kept aside. I’m very grateful. The conversation turns to the topic of who is allowed to own this precious stuff and is there really a ban on it leaving the country. He nods. My memory of the translation of what transpired goes as follows;

There is a ban on selling porcelain stone for export. It isn’t supposed to leave the country. There is some sensitivity about Korean resources being plundered in the past. As Mr Manager understands it. It is a commercial thing. The sort of thing that involves tonnes of stone. He sees no problem with a small sample like this being given to an academic for artistic/research purposes. Shouldn’t be any problem. He smiles a big broad smile…..

But it’s perhaps best if you don’t mention my name. He adds! so, I don’t.

Anyway, I already have a legitimate sample from the clay manufacturing plant.

Mr Manager and Mrs Vice-President are a lovely couple. I feel really welcomed and secure in their under-floor heated donger office. This is honest, generous council. I appreciate it.

I really appreciate it!

We all go outside into the cold and drizzle. I’d really like to go down to the quarry face for a look, but it is a quarter-mile away, and down a precipitous, wet, seeping, slope. We climb up onto the stack of bulker bags to get a look down onto the working face. It is only just visible through the trees. I’d rather not walk down there in this weather.  I pass.

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There is still one more place to go up North here. Way up North! Right on the DMZ. We have made enquiries. At least my amazing Miss Kang has. She has it all sorted on my behalf. I was told last week at a potters meeting back in Yeo Ju, that the place up North is quite isolated. It is the place where all the Royal Patronage Porcelain was made from the 1400’s onwards. Quite unlike the southern site that only made peasant/farmer domestic wares.

I was told that the regime there is even more strict than that down South. I’m told that nothing can leave the premises. Let alone the country. If we are allowed in to look, and If we learn any of their secrets, then they will probably have to kill us!

Nobody in the meeting has actually been there. Certainly nobody has ever returned, it has a huge and scary reputation. I can’t say that I wasn’t told this time! I’m in the NO!

We have experienced the Southern Humiliations, we have survived the fire-swamp and I don’t believe in Rodents of Unusual Size. What’s keeping us? We can drive up there to the North from here in a few hours. We can call in, have a look, They can say NO! And then we can leave. They can only say No! So many times, I’m getting used to it. We will still have time to drive back home again to Yeo Ju by midnight.

We have enough fuel. Lets give it a try!

We say our good-byes and so many thank-yous. They wave and we leave, with our ultra-white sample of single-stone contraband. Mr. Jaeyong has other business to attend to locally, so won’t be coming with us. He really wants to, but will follow if he can, only after he can complete his pressing business.

Into the unkNOwn!

Best wishes from Steve in Korea

The Kim Chi Chronicles – Part 3

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I am in Korea, searching for ancient sites where porcelain stone has and/or still is being mined for the creation of porcelain in the old-fashioned way.

We set off in the late afternoon having wasted quite a bit of time unnecessarily here. We drive into the evening and on into the night. We have a way to go up the East Coast to the hight range of mountains that will be near where the home of the next Winter Olympics will be held. It’s a cool damp place this night.

On the way, Mr Jaeyong gets us to stop off at this grandmothers house, where he has to collect something. It’s a beautiful old traditional Korean farm-house. His grandmother appears to be quite elderly, but still quite energetic and vital. She still tends the large vegetable garden in the front area of her land along the driveway coming in. It’s really beautifully picturesque, and a real credit to her and her tenacity and ability for hard work. I love it! Mr Jaeyong had invited me to stay here while I worked in the porcelain Centre, had I stayed on and he would have taken over as my interpreter, but that hasn’t eventuated. Pity, I would have loved it here. I’d have done a bit of weeding to earn my keep.

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While Miss Kang drives, we talk about our experiences of the last two days. What was going on there? We are both at a bit of a loss to come to some sort of clear idea, but as we discuss it, our ideas clarify. My best bet is the we have encountered a corporate ‘yes’ man who just wants a simple, uncomplicated life, and I have come along against all warnings and blundered in an asked him to do something, that although he is paid to do it. He doesn’t want to have to. He wants the wage, he doesn’t want the work. Simply because it is just too hard and a lot of unnecessary bother. I made his life hard for him. I’m the problem. There might also be a bit of a parochial attitude mixed in there too?

Of course, he could have just said. “Here take this pack of clay, no-one will ever know. But please don’t tell.” It could have been so easy. I would have honoured that and exhibited a pot of Korean Stone, but not directly identified to his site.

I will eventually write to him, but I won’t be rushing to do it. Maybe after we get back, I’ll drop him a thank you email note? I really did want to exhibit a pot made from this southern single-stone clay in my show at Watters next year. It would have made the exhibition really comprehensive, but that isn’t going to happen now. I have work that I have made in all 5 countries where singe-stone porcelain has originated, and in several workshops in each of  these places, using differing local versions of their single-stone clay. Also obtaining various selected batches of the local bodies made in different clay making workshops and factories. I also have work that I have made and fired at home in my own kiln, made from all these same single-stone bodies that I have shipped home over the years to continue the research, by making and firing these same clays in my own wood fired kiln.

We move on to more interesting and uplifting conversations about life, pottery, organic gardening. Whatever crops up as we travel. It’s a long drive.

We find Mr Jaeyong’s place without too much trouble, as Miss king has the location plotted in the maps app in her phone. I feel for this young lady, having to drive such long distances. Especially when it is dark and rainy like this. Mr Jaeyong’s place is perched halfway up a mountain, in a clearing on the edge of a precipitous drop into a forested valley. We don’t know this when we arrive in the dark and misty rain. Mr. Jaeyong has driven fast and arrived before us. The lights are on and he is there to guide us into a little parking space between two buildings. There are several little buildings clustered around an open grassy clearing. There are gardens and loads of pots decorating the spaces between the  various pavilions. My first impression of the set up in the dark and rain is that it is very pretty. I can’t wait till morning to get a better look in day light.

We each have a different building to sleep in, each with it’s own on-suit. I’m very impressed. Apparently the place’s owner is currently studying wine making in Australia. At least that is what I think I was told.

Jaeyong welcomes us into his kitchen/dining room building. It’s warm and dry and very cosy. We even have WiFi internet. Jaeyong cooks us a very nice meal. It transpires during our conversation through this cooking process, that this place is snowed under for 3 to 4 months of the year and is not habitable. My Jaeyong decamps to somewhere warmer during this time. Like his grandmothers farm-house down south, or somewhere overseas to study pottery making around the world. He rattles off quite a list of countries that he has visited to study ceramics. He hasn’t been to Australia yet, so I welcome him, should he make it to Oz. I will return his hospitality.

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We dine on a very nice traditional Korean meal of rice with soup and a host of other small vegetable and pickle dishes. It’s all extremely warm and welcoming and satisfying to be accepted into someones home like this. So openly and graciously, just as Jun Beom and his family have done in Yeo Ju.

Eventually our conversation return to our difficulties of the morning. Mr Jaeyong offers the opinion that the Manager and Master Initiator is just doing his job, the way he has decided to interpret it. We should feel sorry for him, stuck in his life the way that he is. We eat our beautiful meal, we talk, drink a beer and then some wine with the meal. It’s all so well presented. Mr Jaeyong has gone to some trouble. These two wonderful people talk in Korean in short bursts, but then stop and one or the other interprets for me, sometime the discussion continues in English for my benefit.

Mr Jaeyong had to work with people like that when he worked in a public service job years ago. They suffer from ‘bureaucratic brain syndrome’. It’s all a bit tragic really. They need our sympathy. I take this onboard. I consider my reactions and attitudes. Mr Jaeyong is very generous and open-minded. I look deep into my self and reflect on my own stance, perspectives, predudices and viewpoints. I should have some sympathy for this guy.

But I don’t!

I look harder and quiz myself more deeply. No, there is nothing there for him. Just a blank. I fail this simple test of humanity and compassion. But I am who I am, and I try to be the best person that I can be. I’m just flawed, but in a manageable way. I wish no ill on any other person. I guess that I just don’t have the energy to send out anymore good will out into a void. I haven’t been sleeping well with the jet lag and everynight in a different bed. I’ll put my failings down to that. It’s an easy excuse.

Mr Jaeyong makes us a bowl of green tea to cap off a delightful meal. This is very much in the Japanese style. He has spent quite a bit of time in Japan I gather, working with potters over there to broaden his understanding and training and to enrich his skill base.

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In the morning I awake to a bright sunny day, cool crisp air in the lingering mist up here on this mountain. I wander around the garden and take it all in. It a sort of remnant, Hippy commune style cluster of hand-made buildings, none of which would get building approval from my local council back home. It is beautiful in its sprawling ramshackle way. I love all the clusters of big, dark, ‘ongi’ jars scattered in clumps all around the garden.

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I walk around the site, the view is great. The atmosphere is terrific. His kiln is almost finished. I wish him luck with it. I’m certainly glad that I don’t have to be here right up until the show closes off the road and the place sits idle for 3 to 4 months.

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We set off early, as we are all on a mission to explore deep into these remote mountains to locate the ancient single-stone porcelain site and try to recover a small sample of the stone for my collection. I already have a small sample courtesy of the clay processing factory in Yeo Ju.

I just need to see it in-situ and be able to compare if there are any differences. Perhaps there are more choices, different veins, whiter grades?

Best wishes from Steve in Korea.

The Kim Chee Chronicles. Vol 2.

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I have been in Korea. It has been my first trip to Korea and it was amazing, such lovely, friendly and helpful people. 

I eventually visited 3 sites where single stone porcelain is currently being mined and used and a 4th ancient site that is now abandoned by the industry, but still worked by the odd individual potter. As an ‘odd’ individual myself, I know what they are looking for. I am lucky to have a fabulous driver/translator to help me get everything done. Thank you Miss Jane, Mr Lee and Miss Kang, I would have no chance of doing any of this on my own here without the necessary language skills and local knowledge that you provided. I am very grateful to all the Koreans that I met who gave me so much assistance and warm friendship along the way on this trip.

I had been in dialogue with the manager of one old porcelain site in the south that is reputed to be a single-stone porcelain site. The Manager was very dismissive and not really interested in my research project. I wrote politely from Australia, asking for samples and to be able to make a visit. He told me that there is a Korean Government blanket rule that bans the release for export of porcelain clay and/or porcelain stone from leaving the country! He even seemed to be claiming that this ban included porcelain pottery made at the site by outsiders like me. 

I’m amazed. Is this really true? Am I being sold a pup? Apparently there is some basis in truth in this, others corroborate it. This stone is a National Cultural Property or Asset of cultural Significance.

So, I can’t have a small sample for my collection. Not even a golf ball sized piece. It’s forbidden. I can’t have any clay made from it either. Not a skerrick. Verboten. Eventually, I get an email via my beautiful and ever so helpful Korean friend in Sydney, Miss Jane. Explaining to me that she has finally had a response to my letter, but only after following it up with a phone call. The email said that I can visit the porcelain centre and look, but only as a tourist. I cannot keep any of it in any form. The reply reads as follows;

This is an edited, English translation of the reply that I received.

“Hello Harrison,

I am writing to reply your enquiry.

You are able to use single stone as a trial only but you cannot stay in the Porcelain Centre to cure in Kiln or fire, that means you cannot have a complete piece of ceramic. 

This year we have many exhibitions in the Porcelain Centre and we are very busy at the moment. 

We don’t have any residency program to accept candidates who want to learn the Porcelain.”

 

So, that was pretty comprehensive. I can come and look. I can touch the stuff, but I can’t keep any of it in any form.

I ask my Australian/Korean friend what she thinks this means, and am told that I shouldn’t expect anything at all from this guy. She has rung him for clarification and spoken with him directly. In her opinion this man is not going to be helpful to me at any time in the future, He is just not interested.

I interpret that this means that I shouldn’t expect any help at all in any way. If I go there and visit the site. I do decide to go to Korea anyway. It’s worth a try. My Australian friend’s brother knows a local potter who is currently under-employed, so will be happy to work as my interpreter, guide and driver for a reasonable set fee per day + costs  I agree willingly. What a fantastic opportunity.

I arrange to get two rooms booked for us on the first night and then a couple of nights for me in a single, so that I can stay on and work.  My interpreter will return to her work. I’m confident that once I meet the director of this ancient porcelain making site, he will soften and will let me stay and work with their clay. Once he sees my dedication, enthusiasm and my long term commitment to this noble cause. As you may have guessed. I’m somewhat naive!

We set off on our road trip early, and drive all morning, with only one brief rest stop. We arrive about 11.30. We introduce ourselves. Yes, they are expecting us. We are booked in at the Cultural Centre/Museum’s replica country house accomodation facility.

It is actually quite lovely, even though it is a totally fake replica building. It has lots of natural timber. It is very basic, but I don’t mind that. I hope that my guide doesn’t mind. I give her the choice of the larger room. There are a few thatched buildings in the rear courtyard and a climbing chambered kiln. None of which are used. It is some sort of historical display.
 
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We are first introduced to the senior man in the front office. He can’t tell us anything positive. He has to ring his supervisor. Eventually the supervisor arrives down from up-stairs. He can’t tell us anything either. He’ll need to consult. He goes outside to call on his mobile. Eventually the Cultural Centres special person whose job it is to stall me arrives and begins his work. He tells me that he has rung the pottery workshop site, but can’t get through. No one is answering. It’s 12.00 o’clock now, so probably at lunch? We are taken on a tour of the facilities.

We are shown through the Museum of local single-stone white porcelain material collected from nearby archaeological sites. Then there is a sudden jump to some few items of turn of the century peasant wares, but the majority of the museum collection is comprised of Japanese Satsuma ware porcelain that they have recently purchased from Japan. Apparently, one of the Korean potters that the War Lord Hideyoshi kidnapped and took back to Japan during his ill fated invasion of Korea in the late 1500’s was captured from around here. The bold claim made by the Museum Curator is that it is the Korean genetic heritage in this person (whatever small that percentage is after 15 generations abroad) it is this Korean heritage that has made him great. So they are claiming him as their own and this Japanese work is somehow now Korean! This is a very strange experience! But no more strange than Australians claiming famous New Zealanders as being Aussies! Read Russell Crowe, Our Nicole, etc. So, fair enough!

Eventually at 2.00pm they are back from lunch at the pottery and someone answers the phone. We will be able to go out to the pottery site, up the mountain, about 10 kms away. They are expecting us this afternoon.  

 I thank them warmly for their ‘help’ in the office at the Cultural Centre before we leave. 

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Eventually, we are allowed to go up the mountain, to the pottery. We get to meet the Manager. We get there and he is just as disinterested my requests in person as he was to my Korean friends emails and phone calls from Australia.
My translator makes a passionate case for my interests, but it makes no difference. He is not responding positively to any suggestion that I make through my interpreter.
 
I ask my translator to put the point that I have been negotiating with them for 7 months now, surely they are aware of my visit here. Their web site states that a visitor can have a ceramic ‘experience’ for 10,000 Korean Wan. I want to get to feel the substance of the stuff to get an idea of its ‘nature’. 
I don’t know how my very diplomatic translator conveys this, but ….
 
He relents. Through my interpreter, he tells me that I can ‘experience’ their unique single stone porcelain. 
That’s great! There is a potters wheel over there in the corner of this spotlessly clean show room, and a pug mill. Can I have a go now? 
No! It is actually not that simple. I will have to wait until tomorrow. I will be able to try the clay tomorrow at 10.00am. back at the Cultural Centre/Museum. It takes time to organise these things.
 
We are given our leave to wander around the so-called pottery workshop, but nobody seems to be working here. There are no work racks, no work in progress. No ware boards. All the buildings are spotless and very new looking. The white stone seam opposite the pottery building hasn’t been worked for years. There are no clean faces. No workings. No access track to get to the face. It all looks abandoned and over-grown.
 
I do actually get to meet old Mr Go. He is the old potter, now in his 80’s, who once worked here in his youth. He sees us off the premises. All the way down to the gate and I’m not allowed to take even a very small piece of the stone!
 
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Before we leave, I seem to be being told to make a written ‘proposal’ to them tomorrow? Even though I already have done this from Australia before I left. I’m a bit confused!
 
Miss Kang and I eat out in the local village a few kms away, down by the river. We choose the equivalent of a tasting plate, or plates. Perhaps a degustation? Except that it all comes at once. We get a small bowl of rice, a pot of soup to share and then 20 small dishes of pickles and vegetables to go along with it.
 
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It’s a wonderful local Korean dining experience. The equivalent of Au$35 for the two of us. We retire to our old fashioned style, but new, farmers house. It’s actually quite cosy inside my room. It turns out that it has a heated floor, which I find to be too hot, so I fiddle with the controls for a while to figure out which buttons do what in Korean. I eventually set it for a more comfortable 22oC, down from 26.
 
We have been told to meet at the museum in town at 10am the next day and we do. A young man turns up with a plastic carry bag with a couple of pugs of clay in it. I’m shown to the pottery room attached to the museum. He leaves me there to try the clay on the wheel. 
 
I go behind a partition to change into my clay work-clothes. I find a gas kiln in there for firing the porcelain and a clay box almost full of similar pugs of white clay.  There is a heap of it here in the clay box.
 
I make a few pots and put them out in the sun to speed dry. I am only allowed this one day to have access to the wheel to make and turn my work. 
 
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It’s a hot day and I rotate my work every few minutes to get it dry enough to trim without drying too much on one side and then warping out of shape. No matter what I do the stuff curls up and warps in the intense heat and wind. It’s 30oC out there today. After an hour I bring in the first piece and attempt to turn it almost bone dry on the rim, while still being damp down at the foot where it is thicker.
 
It doesn’t show the normal tearing and chipping that I ‘m accustomed to when turning single stone bodies that are a bit damp. Chipping and tearing is a very common trait of single-stone porcelains in all the other countries where I have done this. It didn’t have any real resistance and lack of plasticity that is also so very common with all the other single-stone materials in the world. 
 
I turn the two pieces that are the least warped and abandon the third. I get the ‘feel’ of the stuff. It doesn’t feel at all like any milled-stone body that I’ve experienced before. Not to throw and not during turning.
 
When I’m finished trimming, I clean up my wheel and sweep up all my turnings and put them in a plastic basin that I find in the room and place them on the wheel head. I leave my 3 pots on a work board on the table. Just in case someone turns up to weigh all my turnings and 3 pots to account for all the clay that has been issued to me. No one turns up!  It must be so very boring for my interpreter to sit and wait all day while I work.
 
 
We are joined in the afternoon by a friend, of a friend, of a friend, from Australia, Mr Jaeyong is a potter who is just starting out on his career and wants to know a little about my project. I go to the office and say my goodbyes and thank them all for their help.
 
We go to our cars to drive up the coast to visit another pottery stone site. Perhaps we can find somewhere more obliging. While I was working Miss Kang has been working hard tracking down the next site and making contact. She has been busy all day on her phone. Not wasting time on facebook, but busy working for me in my interests, chasing up leads. Mr Jaeyong is very interested to come along too.
 
There is a quarry up the East coast. An ancient site where pottery stone has been mined for eons. There is no functioning pottery on the site, but the single-stone material is used extensively all over Korea for glazes and clay bodies. Mr Jaeyong lives not too far from there and doesn’t know of this porcelain stone site. He is offering for us all to stay at his house over night and to go to the site together tomorrow. I ask my translator,  Miss Kang if she has the time?  She makes a phone call. Yes, she can spare me another day. It’s all arranged.
 
 
I’ll just leave this southern site out of my exhibition. I can always use the Yeo Ju porcelain work that I have already made to represent Korea in my show. Plus, I still have another 3 places to investigate yet. 
 
So we get in our cars and drive off.
 
I can’t say that I’m not disappointed, I am. But I was warned!  Still, it could have been better.
 
Such is life. Lets get going!
 
Best wishes from Steve in Korea