Entrepreneur seeks to spread Korean culture to world
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Moon Hyun-woo, head of Arirang School / Courtesy of Moon Hyun-woo
By Kim Hyo-jin
Moon Hyun-woo, head of Arirang School, calls himself a “Korean culture planner.”
He runs classes and performances to introduce traditional music and arts to the public.
At his school, an Indonesian student plays a gayageum, a Korean zither with 12 strings, and a Japanese student sings pansori, the traditional Korean vocal performance.
On Hangeul Day, he introduced a project of decorating rusty walls with Korean letters and had school artists perform a calligraphy show. At the end of last year, he staged a traditional music street performance downtown in front of the Salvation Army’s charity pots.
Arirang School is a three-year-old social venture Moon established to promote Korea’s culture to the public.
It has grown into a leading culture platform providing performance opportunities for majors in traditional Korean arts and learning opportunities for ordinary people who want to experience Korean culture.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur says he dreams of launching second and third Arirang Schools overseas.
“Now, Arirang School might be a small venture inside the country. But I hope that it will soon become an outpost for spreading Korean culture all around the world,” Moon said during an interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday.
Moon made a name for himself in 2013 with an Arirang-themed culture project.
Then a university student, he travelled around 29 cities in 15 countries for about 10 months, performing Arirang, the representative Korean folk song, with five other performers.
The group visited and performed for veterans who fought in the 1950-1953 Korean War in the Netherlands and Korean nurses dispatched to Germany in the 1960s and 70s. Also, they busked at popular tourist places, introducing the tune.
The project that drew much domestic and international attention brought Moon the President Award in 2013.
Introducing himself as an all-time fan of the folk song, Moon said he had to step up when he heard that China was attempting to designate Arirang as its own cultural asset belonging to ethnic Koreans living in China.
“I started it with purpose and affection for the song. It was not out of a desire for fame or money at all,” he said. “If I dare to say, I think I only leaned on my pioneering spirit.”
Buoyed by the support and excitement over Arirang he experienced overseas, Moon devised Arirang School to further popularize Korea’s traditional culture. He won first prize in the government’s competition for creative tourism projects in 2014, and launched the school with the prize money.
“I believe a social venture has a role to do what the government and companies fail to cover,” he said. “Bearing in mind its possibility, I was able to create the cultural outpost to publicize our precious culture to more people.”