.MaryNorrisTNY recounts a summer visit to Seoul, where she visited a library that was like “a cross between the Morgan Library, in Manhattan, and the Center for Fiction, in Brooklyn, combining a priceless rare-book collection and a hipster sensibility.”
Before flying to Korea , I had received an e-mail from Yumi Hwangbo, the director of Sojeonseolim, a private library in Seoul, telling me that she had acquired a set of bound volumes ofand inviting me to visit. Apart from dining in Koreatown and attempting to learn the Korean alphabet on Duolingo, I was not overprepared for Seoul, which is a huge city.
An exhibition devoted to Cervantes was up: rare editions of “Don Quixote” lay open on a counter, each tantalizing volume accompanied by a pair of gloves so that a visitor might turn the pages without leaving a smudge. A new exhibit opens in the fall to celebrate the centenary of Joyce’s “Ulysses.
In a courtyard were two swing sets. “Even something for the kids!” I said. “No,” Yumi corrected me. “That’s for.” It turns out that swinging has been popular in Korea for centuries, as a form of light exercise, especially for women. Then Yumi opened a door to an inner room devoted to a purely adult pleasure, very popular in Korea: an exquisite small bar, with high-end whiskeys, brandies, and liqueurs arranged on the shelves behind it.
When the library opened, in February of 2020, Yumi said, it received some criticism as a large expenditure for something that catered to only a privileged few. She shrugged as if this were inevitable. The library was financed through a humanities foundation started by Wonil Kim, the inventor of an apparatus that improved the game of virtual golf.
While the library is a direct beneficiary of virtual golf, it can also be seen as a late flowering of a cultural heritage: Koreans have historically regarded reading as a luxury. Before leaving Seoul, I visited the Secret Garden at the Changdeokgung Palace, where I admired the King’s reading room: a beautifully preserved centuries-old pavilion with a view of juniper trees and a lily pond. I’m sure I could make good progress on my Duolingo there.
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