Moniqa just got back to Texas from South Korea and, while she had intended to mail this card from there, apparently there was no time — so this card arrived in an envelope, with some bonus uncanceled South Korean postage stamps attached.

This is a K-pop group called 2NE1. Most of their music is just what you would expect it to be: over-synthed and AutoTuned. But they actually are very talented singers. Who’s your vote for cutest? Mine is for Dara.

Might as well jump! Doulton passed along this souvenir of her travels in South Korea. “Neolttwigi is the most active (game) conducted by big children early in January. People lay a two- or three-meters long, thick wooden board across… a sheaf of straw. When one jumps and comes down, the other bends her knees with her heels raised on (the) very end of the board. The sight of lively girls clad in beautiful Korean clothes playing it gaily by fluttering the hem of their skirts in the breeze is really beautiful.”

Doulton says that people in traditional or even Medieval dress, enacting traditional customs, are a frequent sight in South Korea. I almost missed the gentleman in the back; he’s clothed as a “Confucian Scholar.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this card when it arrived from Natalie in Columbus, Ohio: “I don’t live in Korea but I like this card. I got it at an art gallery in Seoul in 2005.”  I think we both assumed that this was the work of a still-living artist but, following some research, I believe that it is the work of Lee Joong Seop (1916-1956).  Mr. Lee lived and worked on Jeju Island, some 80 miles south of the Korean Peninsula.  His home there is something of a local landmark, and the street on which he lived has been renamed in his honor.

Natalie says, in so many words, that the concept of the show she attended celebrated postage stamps and, in fact, each artwork featured on this postcard is in fact a sticker that one may peel off.  (Don’t you dare!)  If you click on the postcard, you can examine it in more detail.  The dates on each work show that all of them were produced from 1941 to 1951.

As evidenced in at least three of the works shown, Mr. Lee certainly had a unique view of the female form.