Working Woman Jang Yoon-ju
Vogue Korea's August 2017 issue celebrates 20 years of modeling with an interview with Jang Yoon-ju.
Jang Yoon-ju is a renowned South Korean singer-songwriter, actress, and television personality who rose to fame as one of Korea's top fashion models, starting her career in 1997 at just 17 and dominating the industry for nearly two decades.
I've been a fan of hers since childhood, and I'm sharing an editorial I clipped from a magazine article that epitomizes the quintessential Korean beauty.
A guitar bag protruding from the top of his 5:5 combed hair makes for an unusual picture.
It's not the back alley of Hapjeong-dong, but the videophone display of my home at the top of Gyeongridan.
It was probably the first time that a work colleague I hadn't let down my guard with, a fellow actor I'd met countless times but never shared a cup of coffee with, rang my doorbell. With a guitar bag on her back, daily forms in one hand, and a gift box in the other, she crossed the boundary of my home. I spent four hours with her. We prayed, ate, talked, played guitar, sang, went out into the garden, she said she missed the flavors, smoked a generous cigarette, and then she left.
At the table where I sat with Jang Yoon-ju, the illustrator Nanan's “Long Long Time Flower,” a gift from her, and my memories of Jang Yoon-ju as a person, sit side by side. I met her a few years ago when we worked together on a movie, and she is one of South Korea's best-known fashion models and a musician who has released two albums. She was also active in broadcasting.
She made a name for herself with her loud mouth and fearless slapstick on popular entertainment programs, and her TV show launched many new models who went on to become top models.
She also hosted the show for five years, two of which were spent hosting a midnight radio program.
A morning person from a curtain-less rooftop room in Pungnap-dong, Jang Yoon-ju juggled her many jobs, and she worked. And accomplished.
She knew that questions are the only answers.
And that the most beautiful form of a question is a challenge. Every challenge she faced, with equal parts fear and excitement, and ultimately answered the latter, was a great accomplishment in itself, beyond the shallow measures of a world obsessed with results and numbers.
“When you keep doing something, especially something new, you're constantly at a crossroads: do it, or don't do it. I didn't do all that work willingly because I was grateful for every moment of choice. I did it because I was able to pour my soul into it, through physical and mental pain, because there was something to enjoy about it. I'm going for that moment of happiness, that fleeting moment.“
Summer 2016. Jang Yoon-Ju put aside the work she had willingly and graciously endured for the past 20 years and entered a forced chipper.
In her words, absolute time forced her to accomplish an unprecedented feat: pregnancy and childbirth.
A body with a child. Jang Yoon-ju defined the year or so she didn't work as absolute time. After the time of no work, the time of absolute chores that allow no choice but to fully accept, she regains her body and turns to the outside world, to others.
If there is no absolute reason, she will never stop as long as she is alive.
Candor and hilarity are her powerful weapons, filling in the awkward gaps in her rambling, off-the-cuff remarks and breaking up the seriousness of her interlocutors.
I asked her if she ever wanted to quit her job.
“I think in the 20 years I've been modeling, I've been thinking about quitting for about 10 years. It's hard to keep wrapping the person I am. It's my job to wrap myself in luxury and compete to showcase it better, but I don't have that luxury life, I'm just from a rooftop room in a pungnapdong, and I don't have the confidence that comes with having to pretend all the time, and I'm not like Stella Tennant, the aristocratic model, who's got a big smile on her face when she stands still, I'm not like that. I feel self-conscious.“
The spotlight that followed her for 20 years could not illuminate her soul. No luxury items, no applause, no recognition, could fatten her soul. “Body is not everything!” ‘You shouldn't be judged only by your body!’ Jang Yoon-ju repeated these words countless times throughout our conversation.
For her, who was judged and loved by it, it was a limitation and a shackle.
In 2008, at the age of twenty-nine, she released her first album, 'Dream,' in which she sang about her soul, not her body.
She began to directly reveal her inner world, which had been relatively marginalized in the spotlight on her body.
It was the result of five years of hard work, and Yoon Jong-shin's advice played a big role in that. “There is a right time for everything. I don't know if I'll be able to do well technologically when I'm in my 40s, but when I talk about my 20s, my hands and feet get cold. Do what you can do now. No one is ready.”
A few months before our interview, while still cleaning up the after giving birth, she asked me for my thoughts on her comeback. We talked about money, swelling, rest, anxiety, and the public, and she said she was going back to her roots and thinking about her dreams and vision. I told her to focus on the present, that she had come so far with such a hard life, how and why should she go back to the beginning?
She has expanded the scope of modeling in every way possible.
And she has come to the present moment with an expanded model that she and the public have grown together. A model's job is to present a product, but the role is played by a person.
The deficiency of those who expose themselves and yet perform the task of introducing products that are not theirs inevitably touches on the desire for self-expression.
As the market grew and diversified, fashion markets around the world, including Seoul, poured out countless models of various kinds, and the public went crazy for them. The influence of the so-called “celebrity culture” has expanded beyond the entertainment industry, and models have been hailed as idol celebrities, attracting countless young people into the world.
I asked Jang Yoon-ju, who represents the role of a model in Korea, what she thinks the role of a model is in Korea today, and what she thinks are its limitations, solutions, and directions.
“In my 20s, I always introduced myself as Jang Yoon-ju, a fashion model, but I realized that I could literally be a model of many things.
There are common but good words like role models, there are model houses, and we can all be models of something to others, like the form of music, the form of painting, the form of architecture, the form of being a person, the form of life.
I think I'm more of a model that exists in the world as a person, Jang Yoon-Ju, and if so, I hope I am. A model who is not afraid of challenges, who lives enterprisingly, and who has goodness. That can be a vision and a positive influence for others, and maybe someone can dream through me.
It's not like I'm going to be Audrey Hepburn or anything, but I feel like I have a mission.”
She said she wanted to be a comforter.
On the 20th anniversary of her debut, model Jang Yoon-ju's reflections on her work and the impact it has on her life are as beautiful as the great designers she has worn
“What I want to do through my work is to live a life with a message, and I want to be a comfort in some way. Through my life. Like you felt today.”
Shot by Photographer Erwin Olaf
Interview by Gukhwa Hong
Jang Yoon-ju instagram
Listen to her self-titled song, Letters to Paris!