NYCB Zoom

2022.08.26 22:21

33 Keys to Understanding the Korean Wave #8 Bojagi, Bottari & Bossam

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33 Keys to Understanding the Korean Wave, Hallyu #8 Bojagi, Bottari & Bossam

We'll wrap you with good luck

*Note to Readers

The columns published in the Zoom section of NYCultureBeat contain selected excerpts—typically the opening paragraphs—from each chapter of the book 33 Keys to Understanding the Korean Wave: Beyond BTS, Parasite, and Squid Game (2025). These previews are meant to introduce the book’s themes and tone.

The complete book—featuring 33 updated chapters and new cultural insights—is available in both paperback and hardcover editions:

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7HYLVCL

Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7HZ34Y3

Unidentified Artist Korean, Patchwork wrapping cloth (jogakbo), ca. 1950–80, Silk, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (from left)/ Wrapping cloth (Bojagi), 1950-1960, Silk, Collection of Asian Art Museum, San Francisco/ Unknown (Korean), Patchwork Bojagi (Wrapping Cloth), 20th century, silk, cloth, Detroit Institute of Arts

Today, Koreans carry various types of bags, such as tote bags, shoulder bags, cross-body bags, backpacks, briefcases, and immigration bags. Long before Western-style bags were adopted, our ancestors wrapped, covered, or packed and transported things with a square cloth, Bojagi. When a square-plane cloth, Bojagi, is tied in a knot while wrapping an object, it is transformed into a three-dimensional bundle, Bottari. During the Korean War, refugees fled with Bottari, the packages of luggage. Now artworks using Bojagi and Bottari as motifs are attracting worldwide attention.

Korean Bojagi, which was once a craftwork of a Gyubang (boudoir), has been recognized for its artistry as a textile painting and has entered the collections of museums, one after another. Korean traditional patchwork, Jogakbo, and modern reinterpretation of Bojagi are being introduced at the prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Detroit Institute of Art, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Victoria & Albert Museum in London, to name a few.

"Our unique cultural heritage includes Mondrian and Paul Klee. It reveals a modern sense of form that far surpasses Europe, yet its expression remains calm, as serene as our autumn sky. This is because it is freed from the constraints of individual self-consciousness; it embodies the ease of anonymity. It reflects the artistic sensibility and emotional life of the Korean people. Within it, we find geometric compositions and lines, collage techniques, and surrealist juxtapositions of the most distant elements. And yet, it remains highly functional and practical. Indeed, it stands as the most refined form of Minimal Art."
— Kim Chunsu (1922–2004), Praise for the Bojagi (보자기 찬)

Ian Robertson, A stream of Korean refugees trudges along a dusty road away from the war. The refugees, mainly women and children, are carrying their possessions on their backs or in bundles on their heads. Korea, c. 1950-10. Australian War Memorial Collection