Paper Day

There's a paper art museum in Seoul. There are two, actually. There is an art museum that was constructed using massive cardboard tubes and another, smaller museum on Subway line 3 that displays art made from paper. I went to the latter. The museum was a long ways from Suwon, and the question loomed during the journey: "Is it worth it?"

A sign for the museum is conveniently placed right outside the train exit. The modest museum space is located adjacent to a giant church with copper siding that looks like Frank Gehrig designed it. The museum itself takes up the bottom two floors of a stubby brick office building. A security guard sitting behind a desk in the tiny lobby greets visitors absently since the museum is free.

Paper Elephant: Scarier in 3D

The first floor is the only floor that allows visitors to take photographs. It's more annoying than it sounds, since most of the good stuff is on the second floor. The first floor houses some work done by students who attend the paper art academy on the third floor. Sure, the student work is good. But, is it worth an hour and half spent sweating in overheated buses and crowded subway cars?


The student work mostly consists of collages of compressed nature scenes nature scenes that are mounted on the walls. One thing the photography floor does have going  for it is  a 1:5 scale paper jungle scene standing in on corner of the which included a monkey climbing a palm tree and an elephant folded out of what appeared to be a single enormous sheet of gray construction paper. Additionally, there is a painted plywood cutout of Santa and and elf presumably left over from Christmas. The head of both characters have been extracted, leaving two ellipses for people to awkwardly shove their heads into for photos.

This is a paper motorbike and this is the photo
that made the Korean attendant confront me!

The second floor had much more going for it. There was a glass display protecting a pair of shoes and some baskets that looked like they were woven from hemp along with a life-sized turtle that looked like it was carved out of stone. After she reprimanded me for photographing the displays the attendant told me that, indeed, everything on display was made of paper. Once upon a time, people wore paper shoes here! Who knew?!  There were some swell paper statues, too, which had been made by modern Korean artists. There were also some killer paper airplanes. On the side of a matching pair was written "Japan Areospace Program: Please Contact with Serial Number if Found." I wondered if these two planes, which were shaped like space shuttles and looked as space-worthy as a paper plane can, had been dropped from the edge of the atmosphere and then landed in Korea. There was no way for me to tell since the information plaque was in Korean. But, there were no serial numbers on the planes, even though there was a clearly marked space of the wings on which "SERIAL NUMBER:" was written.

So, in the end, was it worth the trouble? I spent half an hour in the joint tops. It doesn't help that all the information is written in Korea. Was it worth the trouble? Did I experience a happiness profit? Who knows? I am not a robot economist. I was curious about the place, though, and now I'm not, after having scratched my paper itch.