Jukbaek Old House Project
Yoon Dong, Korea
Jukbaek Old House is a traditional Korean house that represents the 600-year history and heritage of the Suncheon Park (Pak) clan in Yoon dong, Kyungsang Province, Korea. It is also my grandfather’s house. This house has been the residence of the family heir for the past 600 years. Even though it was designated as a Provincial Cultural Heritage site in 2012, you can clearly see the forgotten life, as it’s been unoccupied since the late 90s.
Walking. Sharing food and conversation. Offering. Reading. Watching.
My work has long been concerned with what persists beneath an erased surface, as in the yellow paint beneath the white paint in the Invisible Transformation Project. The Lost Village Project extends this concern to the landscape itself. What does this village remember? I am less interested in reconstructing what happened than in finding a present-tense way to stand, walk, and gather in places history has emptied out. Read alongside Saidiya Hartman's concept of critical fabulation, this project resonates "with and against" an archive that registers only violence.
I’ve adapted various forms and formats as research methods for this project, such as gathering stories from archives (written and oral), walking, documenting, and hosting a picnic. This is a slow-process-based research project in which the visual works I’ve produced are not necessarily finished output but rather ever-growing studies of the villages and the memories they carry.
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Published by Jeju 4.3 Research Institute, 2020
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We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Convalescence by Han Kang (not specific to Jeju 4.3, but her descriptions of moments of healing resonated with me)
순이삼촌 by Hyun Ki-young
잃어버린 마을을 찾아서: 제주 4.3 유적지 기행
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Jiseul (2012), dir. Meul O
My Name (2026), dir. Jeong Ji-yeong
Voices (2024), documentary, dir. Kim Ok-young
Soup and Ideology (2021), documentary, dir. Yang Yong-hi
Until Stones Speak (2022), documentary, dir. Kim Kyungman