The Place

What kind of place is Pajubookcity? Where is it? How and why was it made? Pajubookcity is a 1,600,000m2 national industrial cluster, located 30km from the center of Seoul, 10km from the DMZ. It houses a 51,300m2 distribution center, 130 publishing companies, 57 printers and binders, and 160 units of housing. It is the landscape; it is the history; it is the people. Pajubookcity is culturescape. It is also here in Venice, in the Korean Pavilion, in images and words. Pajubookcity produces media and is produced by media. Stringing together twenty-one 50" PDP monitors, the video installation presents the complex history of Pajubookcity, the spectacular nature that sustains it, and the different concepts that define it as a place.

Production Supervisors: Moongyu Choi, Hyungmin Pai

Installation Design: Moongyu Choi, Deagon Koh, Woon Park

Production Manager: Jae Jun Lee

Video Director: Jong Suk Lee

Assistant Director: Hae Won Byun

Editors: Hyungmin Pai, Moongyu Choi, Woon Park, So Young Nam

Photography: Kyoung Tae Kang

Video and Sound Effects: J-graphy

Effects Assistant: Hun Que Kim

PDP monitors provided courtesy of LG Electronics.

Permission to use commercial images provided by Nike, Samsung Electronics

Photographs courtesy of Bookcity Culture Foundation, Jong Oh Kim, and Tae Ju Heo. Permission also given by Se Kweon Ahn, Chul Rin Bang, Florian Beigel, Seong Hyeop Gwon, hANd, Il Min Kang, Jae Kyeong Kim, Jong Kyu Kim, Young Joon Kim, Jeong Lok Lee, Jung Hoon Lee, Ki Heon Lee, Sung Kwan Lee, Hyun-Sik Min, Jeong Sik Moon, Sun Namgoong, Chi Won Park, Young Chae Park, Wan Soon Park, Philip Christou, H-Sang Seung, Kyung Kook Woo


The Books

Has the book killed the building? Has mass media killed the book? Pajubookcity brings forth the critical debate on the relation between architecture and media, taking advantage of, and celebrating, their inevitable entanglement. The room of books celebrates the space of the words and images produced by and for Pajubookcity. Together with 1,000 sample books, five individual displays are presented by representatives of the different groups who made Pajubookcity possible: Yi Ki-ung (chairman, Bookcity Culture Foundation), as one of the publisher's cooperative; Florian Beigel (professor, London Metropolitan University), as one of the planners and the architects; Kim Young Joon (principal, yo2 architects), as one of the architectural coodinators; Hong Ji Woong (president, The Open Books), as one of the architectural clients; and Park Ki Tae (director, KDA Group), as one of the environmental and landscape designers. As much as it was built in concrete and steel, Pajubookcity was created from the words and images of these letters, diaries, sketches, and drawings.

Installation Design: Moongyu Choi, Deagon Koh, Woon Park

Books provided by the publishers of Pajubookcity and its Corporate Cooperative


The Voices

Who are these people? Based on 50 hours of interviews with the architects, publishers, editors, printers, managers, and residents of Pajubookcity - the people who built the city and the people who work and live in the city - this room of voices presents the kaleidescope of ideas and emotions that is Pajubookcity. The 30-minute video installation consists of twenty 20" LCD monitors synchronized according to the following themes formulated from the interviews.

Is This a City?
Publishers Meet Architects
Who are These People?
Pajubookcity as Landscape
The Design Guideline
The Method
Ideal and Reality
The Place
Communality and the Public

All interviews conducted by Hyungmin Pai

Installation Design: Moongyu Choi, Deagon Koh, Woon Park, KDA Group

Production Coordinator: So Young Nam

Video Director: Jong Suk Lee

Editors: Hyungmin Pai, Da Woon Jung

Photography: So Young Nam, Da Woon Jung, Jong Shin Kim

Video and Sound Effects: J-graphy