Korea Power

　　Currently one of the world's leading industrial nations, South Korea produces an enormous amount of consumer goods. Korea Power is the first comprehensive collection of contemporary Korean product and graphic design.

　　This book aims to document the "Korean identity" that has been formed as the country has become a modern state in the aftermath of the fall of the 　　Josean Dynasty, its occupation by the Japanese, and the Korean War. To this end, Korea Power includes images that the legendary Korean advertising photographer Kim Han-Yong shot in the years of reconstruction following the war.

　　South Korea's rapid rise to an economic superpower almost swept away all traces of a traditional lifestyle. Today, however, the cultural values of Korea's past are again becoming more influential. Many Korean designers now have a new sensibility for their culture's traditional definition of beauty. They are also defining an original, distinctly Korean elegance. This new development is represented in the book by work from the Culture Keepers, for example. Their designs for practical furniture and table settings are inspired by the aesthetics of the past, yet are ideally suited to meet the needs of our modern lives.

　　The official exhibition catalog for Design and Identity at Frankfurt's Museum of Applied Arts.

作者簡介

　　KLAUS KLEMP was director of Frankfurt's department of culture from 1988–2006 and served on the executive committee of the German Design Council from 1995 –2005. Since 1998, Klemp has lectured on design history, design theory, and public design around Germany. He became an honorary professor at Wiesbaden's RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in 2008. Klemp started working as director of exhibitions at Frankfurt's Museum Angewandte Kunst in 2006 and became the museum's deputy director and director of its design department in 2012. He has contributed to numerous publications on architecture, design, and visual art and became a member of the board of the Dieter and Ingeborg Rams Foundation in 2010.

　　HEHN-CHU AHN is both German and Korean and has visited South Korea regularly since her childhood. An art historian, she is currently working as a junior curator in the East Asian department of Frankfurt's Museum Angewandte Kunst.