The start of Choi Gi-young¡¯s life was far from comfortable. He was born in 1945 after Korea¡¯s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and five years later, the country was devastated by the Korean War. His father died when Choi was 5 and his family soon fell into abject poverty. He barely graduated from elementary school as he had to collect firewood from the mountains and cut grass on the fields every day. Choi, however, spared time to attend a seodang (Confucian academy) for basic education in Chinese classics ranging from The Cheonjamun (Thousand Character Classic), used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters, to The Book of Mencius, which helped him study traditional Korean architecture later. He decided to become a carpenter after learning that the son of his seodang teacher who pursued that trade had a stable occupation, thus valuing security more than anything else at the time.

¡°I had no lofty reason for wanting to become a carpenter. I wanted to gain the skills to survive. I learned carpentry to feed myself. While learning carpentry, I found myself a bit ahead of others in talent and worked hard. That made me what I am today. I¡¯ve experienced everything you can imagine in my life, but never considered quitting carpentry,¡± he said.

Passion-led Development

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  This is a tool that master Hanok carpenter Choi Gi-young has used for a long time.

  Choi said he has never slept more than four hours a day since childhood. Though he lucked out in meeting master carpenters Kim Deok-hee and Kim Chung-hee, his outstanding dexterity and sharp eyes were a testament to his extraordinary skills. His hands did exactly what he was shown or told, he said, and he quickly familiarized himself with any new tool. Korea at the time had no carpentry textbooks, let alone one-on-one training for vocational skill development. He watched his teachers working on their pieces, but his natural talent did not remain hidden for long. Choi later heard from his mother that not only his father but also his grandfather had been a carpenter. As the old saying goes, the apple doesn¡¯t fall far from the tree. With his mentors, Choi crisscrossed the country to work on major landmarks from Woljeongsa Temple in Pyeongchang-gun County, Gangwon-do Province, to Deoksugung Palace in Seoul. In the evening, his teachers drew architectural drawings on Hanji (traditional handmade Korean paper), a scene that captivated the young apprentice and eventually drove him to sneak out of bed and go over the fences of royal palaces at night many times. Pointing a flashlight at eaves and pillars, he memorized every detail of the structure he was to work on; when he had no flashlight, he drew every detail on scraps of paper under the moonlight.

  ¡°If you learn things the ordinary way, you¡¯ll become just an ordinary carpenter. When I began to learn carpentry, there were 50 of us, and just a few became master carpenters who worked while the others were sleeping. They kept thinking about their work, made numerous drawings, delved into structural factors and even dreamed about their work at night. A master carpenter considers the lifestyle of the owner of a potential building he or she will build, thus pays keen attention to every detail possible including the height and width of spaces in a given structure as well as the size of columns,¡± Choi said.

Achieving Fame