Master carpenter, daughter mixing innovation, tradition in door, window making

Sim Yong-sik, left, a master in traditional wood craft, poses with his daughter Sim Jana in his Chung Won Academy in Bukchon, Jongno, Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

By Kim Ji-soo

Sim Yong-sik, 64, has spent 47 years working in Korea’s traditional carpentry industry. He started out working in the neighborhood carpenter’s shop in Yesan, South Chungcheong Province in 1969 as a teen. He worked a full day and sometimes more — until 2 a.m. — and took only the Lunar New Year and Korean Thanksgiving Chuseok holidays off.

“My house was nearby, but I didn’t go home. I wanted to and had to learn,” said Yong-sik, Seoul (City Government’s) Intangible Heritage No. 26, wood craftwork (somok) specializing in traditional Korean doors and windows. He liked the smell of the woods. There are largely two broad specialties in Korean traditional wood working — “daemokjang,” the master artisan of carpentry in charge of the whole process of constructing a building; and somokjang, the wooden crafting required to make doors, windows and wooden furniture. Sim belongs to the somokjang where he focuses on making doors and windows according to traditional Korean style, but with more of his color. Sim is actually one of only several such cultural assets focusing on “changho” or doors and windows in carpentry nationwide.

The “sesalmun” is a basic and frequently-used design in traditional Korean houses. / Courtesy of Chung Won

He got hit every time he asked a question at by his teacher; however, now that he himself is a teacher, he doesn’t use corporal punishment on his students.

Sim Jana, 34, is his daughter and apprentice, but he doesn’t want the same hours he had as a student for her or for any other students he teaches. Although the process of traditional carpentry has remained largely the same, a manual process using the saw, plane and chisel, some parts can now be done more easily by the new generation, such as using computer programs to draft the design for a door or window. Thus, he believes there are new, simpler ways for the younger generation to become a master traditional Korean carpenter.

The elder Sim is part of a small but slowly growing number of traditional artisans who are passing on their craft to the next generation in the family. As carpentry is a grueling process, traditional artisans nor their children have not wholeheartedly embraced the passing on of the craft to their children.

“I always worked with my hands, and I knew I liked making something with my hands. But I strongly felt a need to identify with something mine, something our own (Korean),” his daughter said.

The “nungopjaegi” door / Courtesy of Chung Won

After studying oil painting as an undergraduate in Seoul, Jana went to the United States first to study painting and then as a book artist. Her time in the United States, oddly enough, invoked childhood memories of her father working with wood, and consequently, the need to retrace her roots. Thus, in 2012, she returned to her father’s workshop in Bukchon, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Her studies were intermittently interrupted as she cared for her two children. But, she sees herself taking the test to become a legitimate apprentice under her father three years from now.

“It’s scary and burdensome to think that I have to not only learn but surpass my father in this craftsmanship,” she said.

At the Chung Won Korean Traditional Carpentry Academy, the father and daughter worked together seamlessly, showing the visiting reporters the basic tools, the wood and the different window and door designs they’ve created under the glaring light required for carpentry. The smell of wood was strong and calming; the elder Sim said most of the wood used for making windows and doors comes from Anmyeon Island in the West Coast.

“I love working with wood, especially cutting it open and letting the wood tell you its history, such as whether there has been a drought or a lot of rain. You can see life through wood,” Yong-sik said.

When he was young and just starting out, he performed every phase of the work — drying the wood for two to three years, cutting it, and sawing, planing and chiseling it. Now that he has come far in his field, he can have dried wood delivered to his workshop by a large firm outside of Seoul. He has a lifetime’s supply of wood for his work, he said. Ask how much that wood that would be, he answered, “I believe we could build dozens of traditional Korean hanok with it.”

To Yong-sik, designing and handcrafting a window or door means recreating the heart of its inhabitant through the composition of the wood.

His most fundamental job is crafting the pieces of wood that would be used for a window or door into a frame or rib, and “weaving” them into a design that reflects the inhabitant’s heart. Traditional Korean carpentry does not use metal nails, only wooden nails, if absolutely necessary.

The basic design that we can see on the windows or doors of the “hanok,” or traditional house, is the “sesalmun” or the “woven” wooden ribs. There are various other designs, such as the turtle-shell shaped designs that are used for rooms of elderly people to wish them a long life and the bee-hive design for young couples to wish them a busy (and therefore prosperous) life.

“It is very mathematical work, yet it is very delicate in that each client wants a different width of the wooden ribs or of the (window or door) frames,” the Sims almost simultaneously said.

Designated in 2006 by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the elder Sim is a veteran carpenter who has participated in the restoration of various palaces and temples, such as parts of Changdeok Palace, Changgyeong Palace and some 500 temples including Bulguk and Songgwang Temples. In addition to running the workshop in Seoul, he also teaches at Korea National University of Cultural Heritage in Buyeo in South Chuncheong Province, because he saw that his teachers, who were wary of sharing their mastery and taking in apprentices, ended up lonely in their old age.

“I want to share what I know widely,” Yong-sik, said. At the same time, he hopes that students and future apprentices such as his daughter may be in a better position to innovate and sustainably carry on the traditional art in this day and era.

The elder Sim has spent the past 10 years traveling through India, Nepal and other places to study various door patterns. He said he has repeatedly visited a region in Kashmir just to study its door patterns.

“This exposure prompted me to think more about traditional Korean carpentry,” has adding that they enabled him to dig deeper and wider. Yong-sik said that it was only several years ago that he fully understood what his craftmanship is about .

“Admittedly, that is our biggest concern, how to give it innovation and to make this artisanship sustainable in the years to come,” Jana said.

Yong-sik said he is grateful, however, for the renewed interest in traditional arts and the attempts to imbue traditional craftsmanship into other products in modern Korean life.