May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI) and so I though this was an appropriate time to write about something that is so important to me - my own Korean heritage and some changes coming to the shop reflecting this.
Now before you panic, I’m not ditching the puns or the cats (so many cats!!). There are plenty of kawaii designs brewing that will keep me busy for the next few years at least!
In February of this year, I did a post talking about the rebranding and reasons behind it. It touched on some of my Korean roots behind the logo. This time I want to talk about some of the designs I’ve got and am working on. During the pandemic shut down, when cons were cancelled, I used the time to work on developing some more designs for the shop. It’s been a bit ironic to me that my brand is named Kimchi Kawaii, but the only thing Korean for years was just me. I’d also walk around anime cons and see a ton of Japanese themed things (obviously) and even some Chinese themed things, but really not much Korean beyond a few kpop things or kdramas. Korea is so much more than the hallyu wave.
I started a series of designs as pins and stickers showing the traditional elements of Korean culture. I bought some books on music, art, clothing, architecture and food and read all of them to get ideas. It was also really interesting to go more in depth on my birth country. My parents wanted me to know about my culture, but let’s face it resources for Korean stuff weren’t that prevalent back then, especially in my town which wasn’t going to win any diversity awards. And as a kid, you don’t want to learn about history, you want to be playing outside! So it was really interesting for me to learn more about Korea. I love learning in general. I’m a big nerd.
My Korean tiger, Junghee performing a traditional sword dance called geomu.
The first set of designs cover mostly the performing arts as they were the most fun to draw. I also included two mythological creatures - the haetae and bonghwang (phoenix). I’ve been drawing them in my Kimchi style, but pulling in elements of Korean art as well. For the performing arts ones, I’ve used Junghee and Roary. The pins have done really well at cons and I’ve had fellow Koreans come up and say they really liked seeing some Korean stuff which is rare.
Cons started back up again as stuff related to the pandemic started to ease and I found my art time cut down. The Korean designs ground to a halt. But I’ve set a goal for 2023 to make at least three more with Roary and Junghee and I want to start a series celebrating Korean food - from traditional to street foods. I’ll probably end up craving tteokbokki and Korean fried chicken. Here are some initial sketches of the new designs.
Sketch of my Korean tigers, Junghee and Roary dressed in Korean hanbok and holding talchum masks - traditional Korean masked drama.