GANGNAM STYLE

Over the past decade, a wide community of violin and bow makers has grown up in the Seocho district of Seoul. Luthier Hagit Gili Gluska speaks to colleagues young and old, both local and from overseas, who have made this area their home

The vast majority of Seoul's luthiers reside in the Seocho district of Gangnam

MAIN PHOTO EYAL BEN-DROR. MIN SUH PARK PHOTO KEVIN MARCH

In the wide avenues of the big metropolitan city of Seoul, among the shiny skyscrapers of the famous Gangnam area, all is hot, humid and noisy – from the buses to the deafening sound of cicadas. But turn into a small neighbourhood and suddenly everything is quiet. Between the three-storey buildings made of red building blocks and green mountains on the horizon, the only sounds are the sweet piano and violin music emanating from the shops. Around every corner you see violins. This is the Seocho district, home to more than a hundred violin and bow makers who have been trained all over the world – from Korea to Italy, the UK, Germany, France and the US. There are also hundreds of other music-related businesses: rehearsal rooms, conservatoires, private schools and equipment stores for musicians, all in the shadow of the Seoul Arts Center, Korea’s best-known concert hall. The first time I came here I stood in the heart of the main neighbourhood feeling like a child in a candy store. Here is a microcosm of the violin making industry with a Korean scent.

As South Korea was only founded as a republic in 1948, it lacks the centuries-long traditions of violin and bow making that European countries have. In the 1980s Jun Suh Park, today the head of the Maestro Violin Makers Association of Korea (MVAK), returned to the Seocho district after studying violin making in Chicago with his uncle Tschu Ho Lee, a well-known luthier who immigrated to the United States and helped co-found the Chicago School of Violin Making (CSVM). ‘There was nothing here in Seocho back then – just two or three violin makers,’ Park recalls. His workshop, located in one of the buildings in the northern part of Seocho, is actually a residence apartment in a five-storey building where he lives with the rest of his family, mostly all luthiers. The building also houses his sister Min Suh Park, regarded as the first female violin maker in South Korea, and her husband Kevin March, an American maker.

Unlike the romantic stories of many luthiers regarding their decision to pursue this art, Park is modest about his first steps in the trade. ‘I was young, a member of a family of violin makers, so I learnt the profession,’ he shrugs. When he returned from his studies in the US as a young maker in the 1980s, the environment was very different as he remembers: ‘In those days, musicians mainly came from the wealthy part of the population, people who went to study in Europe or the United States, and purchased expensive antique musical instruments there. Whenever they needed a repair or sound adjustment, they had to fly to get it taken care of in Europe, or settle for an unprofessional repair job here in Korea.’ When he returned to South Korea he found a lot of work repairing violins. ‘We worked from morning till night and customers kept coming, so I didn’t have to look for work,’ he laughs. ‘Work was looking for me!’

With the construction of the Seoul Arts Center in 1988, more and more violin makers gathered in the area, but there was still plenty of repair work for everyone. The main chang came in the late 1990s when many Koreans who had been trained as violin makers abroad returned to their homeland and the competition for the share of restoration and repair work increased significantly. ‘It might be that some musicians, parents of students and teachers saw us, the first generation of violin makers here in South Korea in the 1980s, and came to the conclusion that this is a very profitable business – at least more than playing music,’ says Kevin March. ‘So more and more Koreans went to study violin making abroad, and when they came back to Korea, the competition for restoration and repair work was rising.’

Min Suh Park: possibly Korea's first female luthier

Left–right Luthiers Jun Suh Park, Kevin March and Min Suh Park, with assistant Min Soo Kim

KEVIN MARCH

Little by little, many violin makers had less repair work to do, and more free time to fulfil the dream that many violin makers have – building new instruments. This was the start of a new industry in Korea of hand-crafted bowed stringed instruments. Before that time, the trade in South Korea and China had been synonymous with cheap factory-made instruments. It was not an easy start for the new generation of makers: Korean customers still preferred European instruments, and therefore selling Korean work at a profitable price was challenging.

But over the past 20 years, the craftsmanship of new bowed growing number of winners in international lutherie stringed instruments in South Korea progressed significantly. A competitions are Korean. Their increasing participation in these contests could be attributed to a few factors – first, an outcome of the natural desire of Korean makers to expand beyond the relatively small and increasingly competitive local market. ‘Students who graduate today from violin making schools abroad and want to return to South Korea will have a very hard time surviving here economically,’ says Min Suh Park. ‘Many of them decide not to return to Korea at all. When we started, we were lucky; there were no violin makers here and it was very easy to make a living. But now I am so sad for the new violin makers; some of whom cannot return. At the same time the number of musicians is getting smaller, as making a living as a musician is becoming harder and fewer parents hope their children will become professional musicians.’

‘STUDENTS WHO GRADUATE FROM VIOLIN MAKING SCHOOLS ABROAD WILL HAVE A VERY HARD TIME SURVIVING HERE ECONOMICALLY’

Yongje Song attended CSVM about 20 years ago, returned to Seocho and worked as a restorer for several years. He then became a bow maker and won a gold medal at the 2018 VSA Competition, to which he credits hi success in Korea: ‘If I hadn’t won gold, I could not have started a new independent business here. Thanks to that, I can receive orders from all over the world and I do not have to rely only on the local market. Most of my sales are from overseas.’

It seems that winning prizes at competitions is a good way to enable the younger generation to integrate into the global markets while also marking themselves out and creating a unique brand within the local market, despite the fact that it is already quite saturated.

At the same time, many of the veteran makers in Seocho tell me that winning competitions is not a very important thing for them, and in the past, it was not a common ambition for the local luthiers. ‘As a violin maker, I did not aspire to win medals at the start of my career,’ says Tae Seok Kim, a veteran who studied and taught at CSVM, returning to Korea during the 1990s. ‘I wanted to wake up in the morning and do the best job I could. My goal was to learn and work hard. I never thought about medals.’

Many of the violin makers I spoke to told me of their simple ambition at the beginning: ‘I wanted to work hard.’ This remark reflects the values of a notably industrious people, once an agrarian society struggling with the mountainous countryside of Korea. It is a country where the government cuts off the electricity in public offices at the end of each working day and sends messages to remind employees not to work too hard. Violin makers in Korea are a part of an entire culture of hard work. Nevertheless, other Korean violin makers, including the award winners, believe that today, the key to success in the local market is maintain good personal relationships with teachers and musicians. Therefore, medals are not the most important component for success in Korea, except maybe for new makers who would like to build a name for themselves.

Another important factor is what young musicians are looking for when buying an instrument. Since renting is not a very common practice in Korea, their preferences have a significant influence on the market. Yongje Song tells about his experience with local customers: ‘Although Italian is still considered the best, if a Korean maker has won awards o achieved a good reputation, they will buy from him. The younger generation are much more open to this option and one reason is that the prices of old instruments and bows have gone up significantly in recent years. In some cases, the prices have doubled and many clients still want a good hand-made instrument, not a factory-made one. This is why the market for local hand-made instruments in Korea has had some positive trends recently.’

Tae Seok Kim has witnessed a rising demand for Korean-made violins

SONG PHOTO YONGJE SONG. KIM PHOTO TAE SEOK KIM

‘ONLINE GROUPS ARE SO POWERFUL THAT STUDENTS SOMETIMES RELY ON THEIR ADVICE TO BUY INSTRUMENTS WITHOUT TRYING THEM’

For bow maker Yongje Song, a prize at an international competition was key to setting up in Seoul

As the younger generation became more open to buy local hand-made instruments, their ways of finding information about new instruments also developed, especially in the days of Covid-19. Internet groups followed by thousands of professional players, students, parents and teachers share information about makers, instruments and their quality every day. ‘These groups are so powerful that students sometimes rely on the advice they get there to buy instruments without even trying them,’ says Eun Ah Kim, a veteran violin maker who lives in Seoul. ‘If a well-known musician or a teacher writes that an instrument made by a specific maker is good, they might trust his or her opinion, especially if they are not professionals.’

Whereas a decade ago, buying new Korean instruments was seen as a compromise for local musicians, today we may be witnessing a change. ‘In recent years, I receive more and more requests from Korean musicians to purchase my instruments,’ says Tae Seok Kim. ‘This fills my heart with pride.’ He recalls reading an article about violin making when he was 15, and being surprised to learn how they were originally built by artisans, not in factories. From that day forward he dreamt of becoming a violin maker, and is now part of the big change that the industry in Korea is going through. He is dedicating all of his time exclusively to making new hand-made Korean instruments and selling them in the local market.

However, Korean instruments are still far from being the first preference of an average Korean musician. Despite much progress in their quality and reputation, many students and musicians still prefer to purchase antique or contemporary European instruments, especially those made in Italy. Local violin makers and restorers in Seocho say they are sometimes surprised to see young high school and university students who own the most expensive musical instruments in the world. ‘I have seen students come to ask for a repair on their Guadagnini and Gagliano,’ says Tae Seok Kim. ‘Since in Korea the learning method involves many tests and auditions, the students seek to improve their chances of success, and sometimes they think that an impressive historic instrument will help them do that.’

One of the most interesting things about violin makers in Korea is their ability to share professional information from all over the world. Many of them are members of MVAK, conceived to promote the violin making profession in South Korea. One of their defined main goals is to share information and teach each other. ‘If a certain maker finds himself with a very special instrument, usually an old Italian instrument that he had to open for repair, we sit together, show it to each other and learn from it together,’ says MVAK head Jun Suh Park.

Eun Ah Kim has seen online forums become increasingly influential

KIM PHOTO COURTESY EUN AH KIM. FAIR PHOTO TAE SEOK KIM

An exhibition of Koreanmade instruments, held in Seocho in early 2022

‘We have an advantage because here everyone comes from a different professional background, and sometimes we studied things a little differently, so we can teach each other,’ says Tae Seok Kim. ‘Some of us came from Chicago, some from Cremona and some from Newark, so everyone has different ideas in mind and we enjoy sharing different methods and different points of view.’ With the rising demand for Korean violins, the association’s members believe the time is ripe to open a joint store in the district, selling only hand-made Korean instruments.

Our world changes rapidly. A few years ago, none of my acquaintances knew anything about Korea. Today, with K-Pop and Squid Game breaking popularity records, Korea seems to attract more and more attention. When I first came here three years ago I didn’t know what to expect, but soon I found out that apart from the professional musical world, many children and adults in Korea play classical instruments, mainly piano and strings, as a hobby. Many parents send their children to study violin, cello or piano with a strong belief in the educational and personal merit of being able to play a classical instrument. Some schools require musical education, and many people keep playing musical instruments as adults in a non-professional manner.

I have discovered an ambitious, hard-working and perfectionist society that has accomplished a lot economically in a very short time. This fast progress is also reflected in the violin making industry in Korea – from a country with almost no violin makers at all in the 1980s to winners in many international competitions today. And I wonder how the pages of history will reflect the seismic changes of the past few decades. Will K-Violins become a global brand?