A craft tradition kept alive across three generations is precious indeed, and that’s exactly what Lee Jiho helps to do as he carries forth the mantle of yugi-making knowhow passed down from his grandfather and father, who are both nationally certified as intangible cultural heritage. Yugi is Korean traditional bronzeware, comprised of two types: 1) bangjja yugi – hammered and beaten into shape when a copper-tin alloy is heated – and 2) jumul yugi – formed by pouring liquid alloy into a mold. Lee’s grandfather comes from Napcheong, the town in North Pyeongan province (located in today’s North Korea) renowned for bangjja yugi since Joseon times. Migrating down south, he continued this tradition and was later joined by his son, Lee’s father. The story of how Lee himself joined Napcheong Yugi – the family enterprise that keeps alive a heritage of national importance – was exceedingly interesting and instructive to me, and I’d like to share it with you here. I myself have translated my interview with artisan Lee and parphrased certain parts as needed. My own clarifications or additions are provided in brackets like these: []
ABOUT ARTISAN LEE JIHO
I’m honored that a master craftsman like you would agree to share your insights.
Thank you, but I don’t yet feel I have the age or experience to be called a master craftsman. All of the craftspeople who work with us here in the workshop are in their late 50s and into their 60s. It takes that long to truly master this craft and deserve the title you mention. In that sense, we are a little different from many other workplaces, where people of such age are either in very senior positions or nearing retirement. At our workshop, artisans at these ages are our lifeblood.
To your point, your grandfather and father have been doing bangjja yugi work for a long time, since you were young. May I ask how much of the work you were exposed to growing up? Did you actually try your hand at the craft?
I have young children of my own now, and I think it’s not dissimilar to how they view my work. When I was a kid, I didn’t really have much idea of the magnitude of the tradition my grandfather and father were carrying on, since I had little frame of reference. Of course, people in my environment would always praise them – my grandfather for being recognized by the nation as intangible cultural heritage and my father for following in his footsteps. But it wasn’t until I was in college that I truly understood the weight of the paths they were on.
So when I was little, I never felt pressure or a sense of mission to do yugi work myself. My parents didn’t want to get in the way of my discovering my own path, whether that be focusing on academics or something else. Even once I enrolled in university, they never asked me to commit to working for them or learning the trade. The one thing they asked was to come to our yearly event – where we show the public the traditional process of fabricating yugi – and to observe, first, and then to give certain procedures a try.
Your first job out of college, I read, was at a bank, where you worked for four years. What led you to that decision?
In the Korean job market, it was kind of inevitable. What I mean is that, even by the time I graduated, the job market was quite skewed in favor of candidates with STEM backgrounds, especially IT. I had double majored in French language and Management, and the best options in terms of pay and social status for those of us in the humanities or social sciences were in finance and trade. I also wanted a job that would support a globetrotting lifestyle. So I applied to companies involved in international trade and, in finance, just one organization: Korea Exchange Bank, [which had the largest ovreseas presence because it specialized in foreign exchange and international trade finance.] At a time when I didn’t know how well-suited I would be to bank work, I wanted to join one where I would have the highest prospects of being dispatched abroad at some point. That’s how I started working at Korea Exchange Bank.
What led you to transition into yugi work after four years at Korea Exchange Bank? I heard you were thirty at the time and had already started a family. Were there any fears and, if yes, what helped you to overcome them?
I definitely felt anxious about the transition. I was, after all, in a stable and respected position in finance. But at a certain point I started to wonder: at the end of the day, what lasting benefit am I left with from all my work at the bank? When I looked at my grandfather and father, they truly enjoyed their work. They were working all the time on weekdays, and on weekends, when I would join them for family gatherings, they would still be talking about work. As they discussed new ideas for wares or different approaches to fabrication, they had this childlike smile on their faces. Of course, the work definitely had its challenges too, but I was attracted to this sense of wonder that yugi-making seemed to fuel in them.
Then, there was also the fact that, around that time, my father was especially busy preparing for the evaluations that would certify him as intangible cultural heritage. He was getting up at the crack of dawn to travel between Anyang, where his workshop was at the time, to Munkyeong, where the evaluations were to take place. My mother, for her part, was going back and forth between Anyang and our Seoul home to look after both workshop and household affairs. During those days, I would get off my work at the bank around 10 PM and call my parents, and they would still be working. This made me wonder: wouldn’t it be much easier for them if I helped out? Why should all of us be working so hard, each on our own end? Why not join forces and work hard together?
As for the fears, it was really family that helped me overcome them, including my wife and, of course, my grandfather and father. If preceding generations of my family had worked so hard to establish such a firm foundation, my joining the team could only make that foundation stronger. I would really have to mess up royally for that foundation to crumble. I felt confident that, if I put in the effort, I could help further deepen the roots of our enterprise.
Was it challenging at all to adjust from using mostly your brain to also using your hands and body to produce physical objects?
When doing a physical craft, you need to repeat a given action infinitely until it finally becomes second nature to your body. Only then can you get that one stroke of the hammer right. What’s difficult is there is no telling when that is going to be, or for how much longer you need to keep up the repetition. That’s what makes it different from studying or mental labor: in my case, with studying, I could plan and predict in my head how much effort I would need to put in to get a certain amount of progress at a certain pace. With physical craftsmanship, it may be 100 days, a year, or even a decade, and your body may still refuse to let the skill sink in. It’s also not something that can be magically transferred or downloaded onto you by an amazing instructor, which I had in my father.
Did you ever think, “It’s in my blood”?
Not at all. I was the type of kid who even had trouble with those toys that you assemble. I never could remember which way to turn a part to screw it on and which way to screw it off! My father would teasingly ask, “Can you even screw on a lightbulb?” What I did have was this faith that if I worked hard at something, I could make anything work. And if not, I would get there by working harder. Another thing that helped with the transition into my family enterprise was that a lot of the systems were analog, so I could make myself useful digitizing them while learning the actual craft of yugi-making.
I know that, once you made the transition to yugi-making, you also enrolled in and completed a graduate program in metal arts. Could you tell me about that experience?
About three years into learning the ropes at my family’s workshop, my father suggested I pursue further education that would allow me to see our traditional yugi-work from the perspective of contemporary metal arts and also to explore ways of incorporating more contemporary approaches or techniques into our work. So I completed a masters degree in Metal Arts in the Design Department at Seoul National University. What I was exposed to in this program was very different from the yugi-work I was used to, in terms of both technique and materials. At first, I kind of felt at a loss as to what direction I should take with my studies. Thankfully, I had help from generous professors and classmates. Working and conversing with them left me with a resolve to interpret the yugi craft in more contemporary ways and create wares that are more relevant to contemporary lifestyles. That’s around the time Napcheong Yugi as a brand started participating a lot in exhibitions relating to contemporary craft and design. Before that, we mostly only did cultural heritage-related exhibitions. For my graduation project, I designed and produced around ten objects using the bangjja yugi technique that would suit a contemporary lifestyle, from lighting fixtures to side tables.
ABOUT BANGJJA YUGI
Could you explain what bangjja yugi means? Yugi means bronzeware, but what about bangjja?
There are various theories about this, but according to my grandfather, in the North Pyeongan province where yugi was made using the hammering technique, when an object came out well, the character “bang” was imprinted on it as a mark of quality. That character is the second half of the word “gongbang” which means workshop. So bangjja yugi literally means “bronzeware bearing the character bang.” By contrast, in the south, where jumul yugi was produced by pouring liquid alloys into molds, the imprint of quality was the name of the particular workshop where the ware was produced.
What is yugi made of, and how is bangjja yugi produced?
Yugi is made of an alloy of 78% copper and 22% tin. This alloy initially takes the form of ingots. These ingots are then heated and hammered into shape. The objects are then rapid-cooled with cold water to give them durability and resistance against breakage. Once the form is set, the burnt crust is removed to reveal the color that yugi is known for.
When in Korean history did bangjja yugi make its first appearance?
Although there is some written evidence that suggests its appearance during, variously, the Shilla or Koryo Dynasties, such origins have been difficult to ascertain because bronze is a non-ferrous metal that is difficult to date using the physicality of the object itself. The reason we at Napcheong Yugi are quite certain that the origins of bangjja yugi lie in Shilla times is because, one time, the Shoso-in in Japan, the treasure house of the Todaiji Temple, contacted my father and grandfather about a Korean artifact they had. They estimated it was from Shilla times but wanted confirmation from experts. My father and grandfather flew to Japan and, with special permission, went into their carefully guarded archive, where they were shown the bronzeware with the original paper wrapping intact. That paper wrapping bore a specific Chinese character that was unique to or very closely associated with Shilla times. That’s how we are reasonably certain that bangjja yugi was used at least since Shilla times in Korea.
Which classes or groups of people have mostly used yugi throughout Korean history?
Since the material is expensive (and the fabrication process a little bit longer than, for example, that for ceramicware), we estimate that it was mostly used by the upper classes – for example in the royal court (along with silver) or by the yangban [civil servants and military officers who formed the aristocracy]. Some factors that might have discouraged ownership and use of yugi by people of lower classes include price, of course, but also weight. In wartime, the commoners would have been the first to be displaced, so it would have been impractical to own heavy ware. Bronze is also a valuable metal and would have been a target for looting and plunder by the conquering powers. For these reasons, it is thought that commoners mostly used wooden or ceramicware.
However, starting in the late Joseon period, bangjja yugi became much more widespread, as a custom emerged of brides bringing with them as a kind of dowry the washbasin and chamber pot they would use in the form of bangjja yugi. Apparently, the custom was so well-established that it was said you could not get married without bringing these items. This contributed to a huge demand for bangjja yugi and led to the craft thriving in North Pyeongan province.
Then, after the Korean War that ended in 1953, that demand for bangjja yugi washbasins and chamber pots met a sharp decline with the widespread modernization of bathrooms. Thankfully, however, in the 1970s and 1980s, demand rose for Korean traditional instruments such as the jing [a kind of gong] and kkwaenggwari [smaller gong] in the form of bangjja yugi. This was a time when there were a lot of protests and demonstrations, as well as a revival of peasant-style traditional music performances. Both of these activities make use of bangjja yugi instruments. According to my grandfather and father, this kept our workshop afloat during that time.
Then, as the demand for musical instruments died down, you had renewed interest in yugi tableware thanks to TV dramas like Daejanggeum [English title: Jewel in the Palace – an early 2000s hit TV series depicting the life of a female cook and physician in the Joseon court.]
Now, the situation is mixed. On the one hand we have a surge of global interest in Korean food and culture, but there is also oversupply because a lot of factories that produce bronzeware using machines have cropped up. So we’re always thinking about the next step – what we can do to maximize the appeal and strength of our handcrafted wares.
TO BE CONTINUED
