Mention Southeast Asia and most Koreans picture palm-lined resorts and manufacturing plants. The region has long been viewed as a market offering economic gains — abundant resources, relatively cheap labor and fast-growing consumer spending power. Even as K-pop and Korean dramas won enthusiastic followings there, Korean interest in the region's own culture remained thin. Southeast Asia has recently established itself as a vibrant site of contemporary artistic creation, but that too is still received here as somewhat unfamiliar news.
The Hansae Yes24 Foundation for Culture has spent more than a decade steadily cracking such stereotypes about Southeast Asia. Established in 2014, the foundation has introduced art and literature from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Malaysia to Korean audiences. Quietly and consistently, it has staged exhibitions, published books and invited writers, widening the points of contact where Korea and Southeast Asia can understand and resonate with each other's cultures.
Baek Soo-mi, chair of the Hansae Yes24 Foundation for Culture, met with The Seoul Economic Daily recently at the company's headquarters in Seoul's Yeouido district. "Before I began working in earnest at the foundation, I think I too regarded Southeast Asian culture as something like a 'peripheral culture,'" Baek said. That changed, she said, after traveling to the region and meeting numerous artists and their works. "There was far richer and more varied culture and art than I had imagined," she said. "Now I think of them as important cultural partners we can learn from and draw inspiration from."
The foundation's origins lie in a "sense of debt" felt by founder Kim Dong-nyung, chairman of Hansae Yes24 Holdings. Hansae Industries grew in global markets with most of its production subsidiaries located in Southeast Asia. "The founder always carried a sense of debt because the company was able to grow in global markets on the strength of Southeast Asian workers' labor," Baek said. "As he thought about ways to repay them, he turned his attention to cultural projects."
Culture was not the initial focus. Before the foundation was established, the emphasis was on aid — overseas volunteer programs for university students and scholarships for foreign graduate students. But one-way assistance alone had limits in building lasting relationships. Kim concluded that a broader and more durable relationship between Korea and Southeast Asia required mutual cultural exchange, and launched the foundation in 2014 to introduce Southeast Asian culture to Korea systematically. "The foundation's social responsibility expanded a step, from 'aid' to 'exchange,'" Baek said.
Art was the first medium of that exchange. Baek said she was drawn to the "powerful immediacy" of visual art. "Unlike genres such as literature that require a process of understanding text, art can convey an artist's thinking and a society's story intuitively the moment you see it," she said. "We also had in mind that the Southeast Asian art market is growing rapidly."
Since 2015, the foundation has held seven International Cultural Exchange Exhibitions, each selecting one country and presenting its artists and works in depth. Works ranging from established names to emerging talents from Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Malaysia have been shown in Korea. Selections defer to the judgment of outside experts, but Baek also visits the countries herself to view works. "In major Southeast Asian cities such as Bangkok, private galleries run varied exhibitions all year round, and the quality of the work is higher than expected," she said. "I came to realize that Southeast Asia already has many internationally recognized artists and high-caliber works — we simply didn't know because they were outside our field of interest."
Where early exhibitions leaned toward showing each country's traditions and history, the focus has recently broadened to contemporary art and younger artists. "There are many works so refined and sophisticated that it's hard to guess the artist's nationality," Baek said. "I feel most rewarded when I hear visitors say, 'I didn't know such art existed in Southeast Asia,' or 'I see that country in a new light.'"
Last year's Thailand exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center captured that shift. The run was extended to two weeks from about one, and the number of works expanded to more than 100. The genres widened beyond painting to sculpture, media art and installation, and the foundation added programs where artists met audiences directly along with hands-on spaces for children. For the first time since the program began, private collectors also purchased works. The foundation does not receive sales proceeds, but it was a meaningful change in that Southeast Asian artists were connected directly with Korean collectors.
One work that drew attention was Imhathai Suwatthanasilp's "Crescent Moon Monkey." The sculpture takes as its motif an ape confined for its entire life in a rooftop zoo at a Bangkok department store, spending its days as a spectacle for onlookers. (The work's Korean title, translated as "Crescent Moon Monkey," refers to the ape.) Using human hair and fish scales, it addresses human greed and environmental problems. "Revealing a critical, sharp gaze on modern civilization and environmental destruction without holding back is also a characteristic of Southeast Asian artists," Baek said.
If art intuitively breaks down preconceptions about an unfamiliar culture, literature is a passage that goes one step deeper into that society. That is why the foundation publishes its Southeast Asian Literature Series. So far it has released seven volumes of novels and plays by writers from four countries — Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. It is the work of steadily introducing Southeast Asian literature, still a niche in Korea's publishing market.
Judged on commercial terms alone, it is not a venture one enters lightly. From identifying works with local experts through translation, review and editing, it takes close to three years to produce a single book. Translation is the hardest part. Simply finding translators who can properly render languages such as Indonesian or Malay into Korean is difficult. "Translation and review cost a great deal, and we also pay attention to cover design and production quality, so we always run at a loss," Baek said. "But since this project began with the foundation's mission, we plan to keep it going."
The criteria for selecting works have also shifted somewhat since Baek took office. Where the first three volumes were weighty works representative of each country's literary history, the range later widened to include contemporary novels that younger readers can approach more easily. The aim is to broaden contact with Korean readers and to serve the purpose of contemporary cultural exchange. "No matter how important artistic merit is, I think it means nothing if it doesn't reach readers. I want people to know that many entertaining works are being written in Southeast Asia as well," she said.
A work Baek particularly enjoyed was "Love on the Second Read" by Filipino writer Mika de Leon, a novel set in a publishing house that follows two people who go from rivals to lovers. "I read it in one sitting," she said. "The banter between the two leads was so much fun that I thought it would make an entertaining drama." "Cigarette Girl," an Indonesian novel published recently, extends the same direction. It has already been made into a Netflix series and reached viewers worldwide. The next title, due out next year, is a Malaysian young adult novel — another notable choice.
What Baek discovered through the foundation's work is how much Korea and Southeast Asia have in common. They resemble each other in having lived through colonial rule and experienced rapid economic and social change over a short period. The individual and social questions that arose in that process naturally permeate the works. The differences lie elsewhere: religions such as Buddhism and Islam are woven deep into daily life, and mythic imagination is displayed openly. "Korean artists tend not to reveal indigenous or shamanic elements much, but in Southeast Asia religion and mythic imagination appear in works in vivid colors," Baek said.
Support for basic humanities research in Korea is another project the foundation sustains. The reasoning is that while interest and investment in science and technology grow, the research environment for basic humanities fields — philosophy, history, literature, linguistics and art history, where results are hard to produce quickly — remains difficult. "As support declines across society, competition for our foundation's programs is rising," Baek said. "Even as artificial intelligence and science and technology advance rapidly, the basic spirit of human society rests on the humanities, so we will keep at it."
Now in its 14th year, the foundation is looking beyond individual exhibitions and publications toward becoming a platform for cultural exchange linking Korea and Southeast Asia. It stays in touch with local galleries and artists after exhibitions close, trading news of new works and shows, and in publishing it works to maintain relationships with local writers and the publishing industry. Building on the network accumulated over more than a decade, the plan is to shift the center of gravity from one-off "introduction" to sustained "exchange."
"What we wanted when we started the foundation was, in the end, for perceptions of Southeast Asia to change. I think we are moving away from seeing it as a country to help or a market, toward being cultural partners who inspire each other," Baek said. "I will keep carrying out this role so that different cultures can understand each other and exchange."
