[Namsan Stroll] Why Is the World Paying Attention to Hanji?

Traditional Materials as the Starting Point of the Cultural Creative Industry
Encountering Tradition and Contemporaneity on Hanji

Recently, global interest in Korean traditional culture has been spreading rapidly. What is noteworthy is the nature of this interest. Korean culture is no longer regarded as a subject of exotic curiosity or superficial appreciation. We are now at a clear turning point, as experts from the world’s leading museums-especially curators and conservation researchers with academic authority-have begun to seriously study and respect Korea’s traditional materials and aesthetics.

I recently witnessed this change firsthand while curating a photography exhibition featuring Xavier Salmon, Head of the Graphic Arts Department at the Louvre Museum in France. As the person in charge of the drawings and prints collection at the Louvre in Paris, he calls himself an “ambassador of Hanji” due to his deep affection for Hanji, Korea’s traditional paper.

His encounter with Hanji did not originate from aesthetic preferences. It began when he came across Hanji as a conservation material while working on restoration projects at the Louvre Museum. He says he was deeply impressed by Hanji’s texture and its remarkable preservation qualities. Afterwards, he closely studied the structural characteristics of Hanji by comparing it with Western rag paper and Japanese washi, which the Louvre’s restoration department had used, and even confirmed its practical applicability in Western art restoration. He was particularly captivated by the strength and resilience of Hanji’s fibers and the way it interacts with light. Today, he is responsible for incorporating Hanji into the restoration work at the Louvre.

The reason for Salmon’s fascination with Hanji is clear. Hanji is a material that combines practicality with a poetic sensibility. It is both a substance for creating and preserving art, and a medium that embodies time and emotion. After photographing major sites in Seoul, Haeinsa, and Bulguksa, he paired 12 photographs from Korea with 12 heritage sites from Paris to create a visual dialogue. Every work was printed on Hanji made by Korean artisans and presented in the exhibition.

His decision to print photographs on Hanji was not a simple experiment. It was an act of respect for Korean culture and the result of scholarly understanding of the material. In his photographs, the landscapes of Korea and Paris gain new vitality on Hanji. The lines of tiled roofs and Hanok houses, the structures of temples, and the gray roofs and stone architecture of Paris quietly converse within the fibers of Hanji, sharing their sense of time and aesthetics. Light is not absorbed but gently diffused by Hanji, and the photographs transform from mere records into organic entities that interact with the material itself. This exhibition clearly demonstrated a new aesthetic made possible by the encounter of Eastern materials and Western perspectives.

Xavier Salmon, Head of the Graphic Arts Department at the Louvre Museum in France, is responding to a photo shoot at the exhibition "Spirit of Korea, Spirit of Paris: The Curator’s Eye" held at Artcube 2R2 Gallery in Seoul. Artcube 2R2

This experience raises important questions about how we view the cultural creative industry. The success or failure of the cultural creative industry does not lie in technology itself. While cutting-edge technologies such as AI, AR, and the metaverse are changing the ways culture is created and distributed, technology remains only a means. True competitiveness comes from the depth of unique culture. The reason the world is paying attention to Korean culture lies in Korea’s distinctive aesthetics and materials, and the accumulated time and narratives within them.

Hanji, which has supported Korea’s record-keeping culture and artistic practices for centuries, is not simply a traditional paper. It is a cultural language that encapsulates the Korean way of thinking and attitude toward nature. In an age flooded with digital images, people increasingly long for the tactile sensation of materials and the depth of time layered within them. At this point, Hanji is not a relic of the past, but a contemporary medium that the world now needs.

For the cultural creative industry to be sustainable, it must nurture both traditional materials and artists who can translate them into a global language. Korean artists who have built their own worlds on Hanji, such as Chun Kyungja with her narrative colors, Lee Ungno and Bang Hyeja who insisted on using Hanji even while working in France, and Chun Kwangyoung who expanded Hanji into sculptural units and gained international recognition, are all cases that deserve close attention. These artists did not confine tradition to the past but propelled it into the future.

What the Korean cultural creative industry needs now is not more content, but strategic focus on representative materials and narratives. Globalizing a single artist or tradition does not erase other values. On the contrary, when a symbolic brand is established, the entire cultural ecosystem grows together.

Xavier Salmon’s Hanji exhibition was no coincidence. It was a signal that the world is already prepared to understand Korea’s traditional materials both academically and aesthetically. The remaining question is how we will articulate that value and expand it into an industry. Culture does not become an industry on its own. But when the direction is clear, culture becomes the most powerful industry. Hanji now stands at that starting line.

Hong Jisook, CEO of Art Token and Convergent Content Planner