Over the past year, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of joining some of the Korean Art Classes offered at the Daegu YMCA. They offer a variety of Korean Art Classes (free and paid) to help foreigners learn the Korean language and culture, including cooking, music, dance, art and language courses.
I’ve taken two cooking classes (kimchi and mandu) and two art classes (painting and bookbinding). The cooking classes were completely free and both were, to a degree, hands-on.
In September of this year, I joined my second art class at the Daegu YMCA. My first class was Minhwa (traditional painting) and the second was a Hanji (traditional paper) bookbinding class. Here are my finished products!
Korean Bookbinding
The Hanji bookbinding class took four weeks and the only fee was for the supplies (35k won)-well worth it! Each week we made a different book, each with unique paper and binding techniques, all with the help of our lovely teacher. I absolutely loved this class and am looking forward to the next art class I take!
Here is a step-by-step look at one of the methods!
The Daegu YMCA does a fantastic job offering language and culture classes for foreigners and members of the public. If you’re looking for something out-of-the-ordinary to do, and want to learn a little Korean culture, check out one of their classes!
To learn more about the classes offered, follow them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/142604626843/ or email them at [email protected]
Thanks for this, it reminds me of the 7 years i spent in Gwangju
Thanks so much! I haven’t made it to Gwangju yet, but am planning to over the next 18mos 🙂
Very nice! I had a chance to make one during the one of the many festivals downtown. Mine was a simplier version since we were able to complete it in less than half an hour. The pages of the book was already bound and we just had to put it together. I used it as a travel journal/scrapbook. Looks like a fun class.
It was a really fun class and a good chance to get to know the teacher and other students better! Hopefully you can find fun opportunities like that while you’re in Japan ^^
I loved this post. I want to do local classes at the YMCA too. I love how Korea is so open to sharing their culture. I never got that in Japan. We always had to hunt to find things and then we had to pay too.
Thanks for reading!! I’m really thankful our YMCA is so good at offering these classes! Hopefully yours does too? It’s such a warm and inviting environment and has really added to my experience ^^