” Walking on Jong-ro with Mr. Gubo” was started based on “A day of a novelist Mr. Gubo” written by a novelist Park, Taewon in 1934 and rewritten by Choi, InHun in 1969 and again by Ju, InSeok in 1990 in the background of those each time.
I was interested in the fact that the same background was used for three novels and paying attention to places within the novel and changes of emotion. This project is comprised of the total 25books including 20books that contain the changes of places and 5books about the changes of Gubo’s emotion.

As time goes, modern society is changing more rapidly. Various places of the whole world are changing rapidly and silently as people just take it for granted. Especially, the reality of Seoul in Korea is that new buildings are constructed on the site where old ones were demolished as high-rise buildings are built everywhere competitively. Even though there is Seoul in the center of Korea that has accomplished the quickest industrialization, the history of it is buried down under the high-rise buildings. And people have no idea about it as considering it as one of daily life. Most of the citizens in Seoul does not know that there used to be Hwashin Department Store(the first department store in Korea) on the site where now Jongro Tower(owned by Samsung, the best Korean company) is located, and does not know either that there used to be Nakrang Parlour(the first coffee shop in Korea) in which young novelists often gathered together on the site of Plaza Hotel now. Now, you can find Starbucks there. Under the harmful effect of high-speed modernization in Korea, various fields of Korean modern history were fading into the mists of history. I could not simply ignore the miserable feeling about the fact that the story of Seoul is vanishing due to paying attention too much on only superficial development of Seoul.
As a student who learns design, I started this project to let people know about such pitiable condition.

Modern people are careless of many things. They easily make a judgment through something visible and also pass it easily, rather than deeply thinking about someone’s condition, situation or past. I wanted to tell them that the place they pass unconsciously has stories, history and people who used to live there. As a designer, I wanted to talk about this by using the method of design. They will not be able to pass any place easily any more if they get to know that the buildings and hotels they used to pass consciously contain our people’s pain and sorrow or happiness, or someone’s memory. Simply, this book could be a gathering of history of places in each time. However, I hope that this could be a story of the past and a story for us who will continuously live in the future, rather than just simple delivery of objective fact.
I hope that the people who read this book consider what stories they could tell their descendents in the future as a main agent of the present, 2012. And I wanted to show the story about the reality we face and the story about us who live in the era through a portrait of Mr. Gubo.

One day of 2010 winter, I was passing Jongro Tower and heard from my friend that a huge Hwashin Department Store was on the site of the current Jongro Tower. After that, I decided to show the story of changing places based on design. Meanwhile, I read a novel ‘A day of novelist Mr. Gubo’ by chance in the biggest bookstore in Seoul and decided to take Mr. Gubo as a main character of my project after realizing that this book was rewritten several times. This novel is composed of that a novelist Gubo is walking on Seoul Jong-ro street in the background of 1930s which was the Japanese colonial era.
First, I meticulously read the whole original work in 1934 and other novels written in 1969 and 1990. It was an essential process to clearly understand the changes of places and Mr. Gubo, and reflect these to the project. After selecting 20 places in which the biggest changes occurred, I fully started research on the places. It was not that easy to look for the image of the places or the relevant texts suitable for the year of 1934, 1969 and 1990. On top of online research, I worked hard to collect data from The National Library of Korea, Jongno Public Library and Seoul City of Reference Center.
I also tried hard to record the feelings of the sites and times through photographing, taking video/vocal memo and writing down while walking on the paths. Even though Gubo was a character of imagination, I tried to be a main actor of the present and to deliver the feelings now.
It was pretty tough when visiting the sites because of the cold weather in winter time. When repeating five times of the paths of Mr. Gubo in cold weather, I finally seemed to be able to understand the places and feel the feelings. I truly felt that true design is not the one just from a head, but the one from sincere heart. Based on every database through research and actual visiting, the 25 books were created by combining my story in the present of 2010.

During a week of displaying my project, there was one thing common in people’s behavior. People who just looked at my project from a distance just passed it without any interest. However, people who approached it with interest realized that it was not just a paper with big letters, but a book, and turned the pages as staying there for long time, which was showing a common behavior of people about certain places. Through an astonishing medium of design that could not only show a side of our society, but also change people’s thinking, people started having interest in, approaching and paying attention to certain places. Even though they are not a lot, it is certain that they started rethinking about something familiar through my design, which is significant.