The Text Book (Chulsoo & Younghee) by Oh Suk Kuhn, created between 2006 and 2008, revisits Korean childhood through a lens of unease and disruption, reinterpreting the sanitized, idealized imagery of mid-to-late 20th-century school textbooks.
Created amid Korea's broader reckoning with its authoritarian past and rapid economic development, the project examines how the national education system has shaped collective memory. Chulsoo and Younghee, the textbook characters at the heart of the series, once served as model images of virtue and conformity for generations of schoolchildren. By placing them in surreal and unsettling scenarios, Oh Suk Kuhn critiques the nationalistic and moralistic ideals that were embedded in the educational narratives of Korea's modernization period—ideals that prioritized obedience and conformity over individuality.
The series presents childhood not as an innocent or idyllic time, but as a fraught space marked by confusion, embarrassment, and unresolved emotion. These vignettes, drawn from personal and collective memory, function as a counter-history to the sanitized textbook version.
Visually, the photographs are unsettling and theatrical. The specific environments where the they were taken, such as industrial sites, polluted areas, or locations with barbed wire, were deliberately selected to create a stark contrast with the perfect, fairytale-like landscapes shown in the original elementary school textbooks featuring Chulsoo and Younghee. The prints, derived from scanned reversal film and darkened digitally, are matte, enhancing the sense of gloom and dampness. Despite the humor inherent in the oversized masks and absurd scenes, the tone remains somber, veering into the grotesque.
Exhibited from Seoul (MOCA’s Young Korean Artists, 2008) to Houston (Chaotic Harmony, 2009–10) and acquired by institutions including MFAH, the project earned recognition for its sharp critique of conformity and historical erasure.
