South Korea Vacation 2015 - Part 5

 Of course, we had to drop in to visit Nan-Young and Metal Guy during our first visit in Suwon. I was setting up to take some classes with Nan-Young. We decided on three classes during the time we were visiting.

After we finished that, she and Metal Guy took us on a walk. We turned up at this little pottery shop where we met a pottery artist named Won Young-Duck.

We sat around a small table as he brought pieces of his work to show us. He is famous for clay sculptures where the subjects are in various posing as they poop. He had an especially gross one that he showed us where three or four animals were stacked on each other with their mouths open as the animal above them were pooing into their mouths. He was really proud of this sculpture but Rocketman and I were getting sick to our stomachs at this point.

 

He does do other sculptures, like busts of people and he also had some gorgeous sculptures of Korean castle turrets but the majority of his work was people squatting as they would do to poo in the old days, and some still do it that way, which is why you still find squat toilets.

 He insisted that I chose a sculpture as a gift and frankly I tried multiple times to thank him and that it was not necessary. But as you can see he insisted and he chose this one for me.

It's not as bad as a lot of the work he does and it's kinda growing on me. Pooping is very important to the Koreans for health reasons. Poo says a lot about your health and I do agree with the Koreans about that aspect. It's just all the children's books and artists' obsession with it that I could do without. I haven't posted on Kim Nan-Young, my chilbo teacher and her latest obsession which also includes poo.