When Seoul Surprises: What We Learn From Namjoon’s Continuing Namjooning

The ginkgo and birch trees that line the streets of Seoul has always fascinated me. I can’t think of a better word to describe the mood and the vibe. Basta, they’re romantic. Trees are romantic.

So, I plucked a couple of leaves from a ginkgo tree in front of the middle school where Min Yoongi studied and, in Hongdae, leaves from a birch tree. I carefully tucked them inside my journal as precious keepsakes but also as subjects for my cyanotype prints.

A few days ago, I took advantage of the afternoon sun in our yard and began printing. We were on a very tight budget in South Korea, so I thought of crafting something that would journey from there to here and back again. The more I read about these trees, the more I understood why they quietly stayed with me.

The ginkgo is one of East Asia’s most enduring symbols.

Having survived for millions of years, it is often called a “living fossil.” Across Korea, China, and Japan, it represents resilience, longevity, hope, and quiet endurance. Ginkgo trees stand beside temples, schools, and palaces, witnessing generations come and go. They remind us that strength is not always loud. Sometimes, it simply means remaining rooted while the seasons change around us.

The birch tells a different story.

Its pale bark has long symbolized renewal, new beginnings, and simplicity. Even after long winters, birches are among the first trees to suggest that spring is coming. There is something quietly optimistic about them.

Together, these two trees seemed to tell the story of our journey at Festa 2026. One reminds me to endure. The other reminds me to begin again. That is why I could not simply leave their leaves behind on the streets of Seoul. Instead, they came home with me.

Under the Philippine sun, they became cyanotype prints. In a few days, I will frame them as pasalubong for my ARMY friends and Kdrama Titas. These are my souvenirs made from leaves, sunlight, water, paper, and time. Perhaps that is what the best pasalubong has always been. It is not the price tag, but the thought that someone traveled through a place, remembered you, and returned carrying a story worth sharing.

As I looked at each finished print, I realized they were no longer simply  leaves from Korea. They had become conversations between Seoul and home. Between Namjoon’s way of noticing the world and my own.

For the longest time, Namjooning for the fandom meant visiting museums, bookstores, parks, and cafés because Namjoon had once been there. I think it means something much more.

It is learning to notice. To slow down enough for ordinary things to reveal themselves. To understand that beauty is not something we consume but something we learn to pay attention to.

A fallen leaf. A neighborhood tree. An afternoon walk. The warmth of the sun while making a cyanotype print. A simple gift made by hand.

Namjooning is not about collecting places. It is about allowing places to reshape the way we see ourselves and the world. As a librarian, I have always believed that stories live inside books.

But I also believe that stories live inside leaves, trees, sunlight, and the hands that choose to create. That is why Namjooning never really ends.

Allow a place to tell its story and listen with intention. Bring its story with you and let it inspire you to create something new. Apobangpo. Purple and true. 💜

When Seoul Surprises: Wait… Picasso is a Potter too?!

 

A week ago, at about this time, my grown-up children and I were wandering around Gyeongnam Art Museum in Changwon. It was there that Kuya found “Arirang” by Park Chan Gap. It was there, too, that we discovered another surprise: Picasso was not only a painter but also a potter. His ceramics were on display: playful, curious, and wonderfully human.

The universe truly conspired. I discovered this not in Spain or France, but in Changwon, a port city in the Gyeongsang Province of South Korea.

Looking back now, I realize that this was my kind of BTS encounter.

There is the concert stadium or through VIP access, of course, but there exist the quiet places that nurture artists: museums, sculptures, clay, mountains, streams and conversations that linger long after the galleries have closed.

This is what Namjooning has come to mean for me. To seek not only the music BTS creates, but also the art, culture, and ways of seeing that continue to shape our OT7.

And then Picasso humorously surprised me.

His ceramics are not simply vessels. They are drawings transformed into clay, printmaker’s lines becoming texture and form. He carried what he already knew from painting into a new medium and allowed it to become something entirely different.

I left the gallery thinking about my own pottery.

I found myself imagining plates that could become prints, bowls etched with stories, and clay carrying the same curiosity that first brought me to museums and books.

This is one of the greatest gift of this Bangtan pilgrimage. I am reaping memories to keep, but also opening my heart to new work waiting to be made. And maybe that is why this Festa 2026 journey still feels unfinished.

Because art, much like BTS, keeps inviting us to look again, make again, and begin again.

Apobangpo! Purple and true!

#Namjooning #travelog_southkorea #festa2026 #bangtanpilgrimage2026 #BTS_ARIRANG

When Seoul Surprises a.k.a May SEPANX pa kami 😂💜😂

It was Kuya who found Arirang, a sculpture by Park Chan Gap in the courtyard of the Gyeongnam Art Museum.

Pauwi na kami noon, pero ang ganda kasi ng sunset kaya nagtagal kami. Gyeongnam Art Museum sits on top of a hill, with a mountain rising behind it. Emerald green in broad daylight, it had turned a deep blue in the fading light.

ARMY Daughter and I were seated beneath pine trees beside a bed of daisies when Kuya returned from wandering around the museum grounds.

“May nakita akong Arirang,” he said.

Curious, I asked him to take me there. At ayun na nga.

Rendered in black and white granite, the sculpture stood before us like a memorial to love lost and grief that refuses to leave. Yet it was never defeated by sorrow. It remained dignified, austere, and quietly resolute.

At its center, the white granite seemed to cradle something I could not quite name. A bell. A hill. A mountain. An absence.

Tinitigan ko lang ang sculpture na may pagkamangha. I did not dare touch it to find out. To do so felt almost sacrilegious. So Kuya and I simply stood there.

In that silence, I thought of Ouie and Mama, who had both passed on, and of Papa, whose dementia has slowly carried him to a place where he no longer remembers who I am. I thought, too, of friendships that quietly faded and communities I once believed would endure. May kirot pa din ng slight, but, somewhere beneath those memories, a song of resolve began to hum.

Perhaps that is why I lingered before Arirang longer than I expected.

The sculpture did not ask me to explain grief or overcome it. It simply held space for contradictions: black and white, weight and openness, permanence and emptiness.

Standing beside my eldest child, I remembered the many times we had stood together as seasons changed.

What do we carry from one season into the next? What do we leave behind?

Memory, I realized, is a curious inheritance. Some memories are taken from us against our will. Others return unexpectedly, summoned by stone, by silence, or by the simple act of standing still with someone we love.

I have spent much of the past few years caring for endings and tending the wounds of missing years.

Yet there I was in Changwon, South Korea, during FESTA 2026. While thousands gathered in Busan to celebrate music and joy, I found myself listening to another kind of song beside my eldest—the music teacher in our family.

Perhaps Arirang is not only about longing or separation. Perhaps it is also about remaining. Remaining faithful to memory, open to beauty, present for those who still walk beside us, even as we grieve those who no longer can.

We left the museum without touching the granite. But somehow, Arirang had already touched me.

#heartandseoul2026 #BTS_ARIRANG #Festa2026 #bangtanpilgrimage2026 #travelog_southkorea #Namjooning

Namjooning at the Ayala Museum

I was in Makati for a follow up checkup yesterday and there was a window of opportunity to swing by the Ayala Museum for a few hours of #Namjooning. I got a 50% discount using my faculty ID so, I took my time enjoying the Ceramic exhibit.

As a hobbyist potter, I swelled with pride to find myself engaged in a centuries old tradition and way of life. Modern pottery has changed tremendously nonetheless, I see some aspects of the technology being practiced to this day. Moving on to the weaving and indigenous textile exhibit, spurned my growing interest in local and indigenous clothing.

The real reason I willed myself to go to The Ayala Museum was the Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan exhibit. It is a yearly event that INKies stage and execute during National Children's Book season. Amazing! It is still up until July 28, 2024 so, head on to the museum. This is free so, have a look at the current crop of artists designing and illustrating books for children.

The guards and invigilators are so friendly, they are willing to take your photos. I had my photo taken beside Onyok, Ang Mahiyaing Manok and the Ang INK Exhibit banner. This one is for you, Totet!

Happy National Children’s Book Day!

Namkook 22: When Art is a Conversation

 

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Namjooning at the National Museum of Fine Arts

 

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