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The training program was in a studio on the third floor of a building two streets from the Mapo bus stop.
He had been to Mapo many times—the Barefoot Company building was in Mapo, the 분식집 below it, the elevator with the held button, the rehearsal room on the third floor. This building was different: shorter, the third floor accessible by stairs rather than elevator, the hallway narrower. The studio was at the end of the hall, marked by a handwritten sign: 아동 연극 훈련—김선희. (Children’s Theater Training—Kim Sunhee.)
He arrived at nine-forty for the ten o’clock start.
He had been early to the first day of every school year since the beginning. The habit applied here.
The studio: a single large room, wooden floor, mirrored wall on one side, the ceiling higher than a classroom. No chairs in the center—the chairs were along the walls, the center empty, the floor the workspace. He looked at the room and thought: not a rehearsal room. A training studio. The difference: a rehearsal room had tape on the floor indicating a specific production’s spatial grammar. A training studio had nothing on the floor except the floor. The space was not organized toward a particular production—it was organized toward the practice.
He sat in one of the wall chairs and waited.
The other students arrived in the minutes before ten. Six of them—with Woojin, seven total. The range his father had described: eight to twelve. He was the youngest by approximately one year—the others ranging from ten to twelve, the specific social age-difference of early elementary school still mattering in the way it mattered.
He observed them.
A boy of twelve, Park Jisung, who carried himself with the practiced ease of someone who had been in performance contexts before—probably school plays, possibly a local drama club. His body had the beginning of the performed-relaxedness of an amateur actor: the quality of someone who had learned that relaxation looked good on stage and was attempting to produce relaxation rather than feel it.
Two girls of eleven, Choi Areum and Lee Yeji—clearly friends, they had arrived together, and the arriving-together meant their attention was partly on each other rather than fully on the room. Not a problem, just a fact to note.
A boy of ten, Kim Minjun, who was looking at the mirrored wall with the specific absorption of someone encountering a full-length mirror in a performance context for the first time.
Two more children he had not yet assessed when the door opened and Kim Sunhee arrived.
Kim Sunhee was forty-seven.
He calibrated this from the face: the specific quality of a person who had been in theater for twenty-five years, the accumulated experience visible not as age but as a particular kind of settled precision. She was not old—she was the age of arrived knowledge rather than the age of ongoing accumulation. She had done the accumulating. She had arrived somewhere.
She came in without preamble and stood in the center of the studio.
\”서봐요.\” (Stand up.) She said it without warmth-performance—the direct instruction. Not unkind. Not warm. Specific.
The seven children stood.
She looked at each of them for approximately two seconds. He felt her look land on him—not the teacher’s surveillance but the actor’s assessment: what does this body know?
\”원으로 서요.\” (Stand in a circle.) She made a gesture indicating the formation. They assembled into a circle in the center of the studio.
She stood outside the circle, looking at it.
\”몸 먼저야. \” (Body first.) She said it as the statement of the program’s principle. \”텍스트는—나중이야. \” (Text is—later.) She looked at each of them in the circle. \”뭘 하고 싶은지—알겠어요? \” She was not asking if they understood—she was asking if they had the specific wanting that was necessary. \”하고 싶어야 해. \” (You have to want to do it.) Not the wanting of the child who wanted to be on stage. The wanting that was willing to spend the summer doing the physical work of the body before the text arrived.
He thought: I want to do it.
She said: \”시작해요. \” (Begin.)
The first exercise: walking.
Not walking toward a destination. Walking through the space with full attention to the walking—the specific quality of the foot’s contact with the floor, the weight transferring from heel to ball, the specific pressure of the wooden floor. She gave the instruction: \”발이—바닥을 어떻게 느끼는지. \” (How the foot feels the floor.) \”다른 건 없어요. \” (Nothing else.)
He walked.
He thought: I know how to walk. And then immediately: I know how to walk without attention. This is walking with attention. The difference was real and immediate—the moment he directed the attention to the foot’s contact with the floor, the walking produced information it had not produced before. The specific texture of the wood. The slight unevenness near the east wall. The way the heel-contact produced a different resonance when walking toward the mirror versus away from it.
He walked for five minutes. The other children: the range from the self-conscious (Kim Minjun, who was watching himself in the mirror) to the genuinely attending (Choi Areum, who had closed her eyes for the last minute—a choice Kim Sunhee had not corrected, which was its own instruction).
\”멈춰요. \” (Stop.) She said it. They stopped, each in whatever position the walking had left them. She looked at the circle they had dissolved into.
\”뭘 느꼈어요? \” (What did you feel?)
The responses: Park Jisung said the floor was uneven. Lee Yeji said her right foot was heavier than her left. Kim Minjun said he had noticed his posture in the mirror.
She looked at Kim Minjun. \”거울 안 봐도 돼. \” (You don’t need to look at the mirror.) Said without harshness. The mirror was for later—for the specific exercise where the mirror was the tool. In the walking exercise, the mirror was a distraction from the foot’s attention.
His turn. She looked at him.
He said: \”동쪽 벽 근처에서—울림이 달라요. \” (Near the east wall—the resonance is different.) He said it with the precise observation. \”바닥이 거기서 더 울려요. \” (The floor resonates more there.) He had felt this in the heel contact—the wood responding differently near the wall.
She looked at him for a moment.
\”맞아요. \” (That’s right.) She said it. \”거기—마루 아래가 비어있어. \” (There—under the floor is hollow.) She looked at him with the assessment quality. Not the boneun ge iss-eo-yo of Sooa or the Kim Jiyoung’s matter-of-fact assessment—her own version. The actor-teacher reading what was in the child. \”어떻게 느꼈어요? \” (How did you feel it?)
\”발이—울림이 있으면—반응해요. \” (The foot—when there’s resonance—responds.) He said it. \”들을 때랑 같아요. \” (Same as when listening.) Hearing through the foot rather than the ear. The floor speaking to the body directly.
She held this.
\”계속 해봐요. \” (Keep doing it.) She said it to the group—the second walk beginning—but he understood the instruction was also specific to him: continue doing what you’re doing.
The first week.
Three sessions. Each session two hours, beginning with the body-work and ending with the text-work, though the text-work in the first week was minimal—she was establishing the body’s vocabulary before adding the text’s demands.
The body work:
Walking, with progressive attention levels. By the third session he could feel the full floor’s texture map—the hollow section east, the solid section center, the slight slope toward the door that was not architectural but had been built into the floor by years of the door swinging open and pulling the floor’s grain in one direction.
Breathing. She spent twenty minutes on the third day on breathing—not the performer’s projected breathing but the natural breathing brought into full consciousness. \”숨이 어디서 오는지.\” (Where breath comes from.) He had been breathing for nine years. He had not been attending to where it came from. The attending revealed: the specific quality of breath that came from the chest (shorter, less full) versus the breath that arrived from below the chest (longer, the full breath that the voice needed). He had understood this intellectually from the theater book. In the exercise he felt it in his body for the first time.
Sound. Not words—sound. She had them make sounds without language, the body’s sounds, the sounds that arrived before words organized them. This was the strangest exercise for the older children, who had been making words for longer. For him it was also strange but differently strange: the words he was used to suppressing, the sounds that arrived before he organized them into his usual precision.
He made sounds.
The sounds were not comfortable. They were more than he expected—the body having things to say that his usual careful language did not accommodate. He noted this in the notebook later: the body’s sounds before language are rougher than language is. More direct. Not better than language—different. Language is the refined version. The sounds are the source.
Kim Sunhee, after the third session, at the end:
She had been sending the other children out one by one as their parents arrived in the hallway. He was last—his mother had not arrived yet, which meant he was alone in the studio with her while she organized her materials.
She was writing in her own notebook.
He sat in the wall chair.
He was not performing the waiting. He was waiting.
She looked up.
\”아버지가 Jung Dongshik이에요?\” (Your father is Jung Dongshik?) She said it as a confirmation—she had known this before he arrived, probably from the initial contact with his father.
\”네.\”
She looked at him. \”아버지 많이 봤어요? \” (Did you watch your father a lot?)
\”네.\”
\”공연에서? \” (In performances?)
\”그리고 연습에서도요. \” (And also in rehearsals.) He said it simply.
She held this. \”몇 번이나? \” (How many times?)
He thought. The folding chairs in October 2007. March 2008. February 2009. August 2009. The performances of 겨울새벽, 아버지의 목소리, the Hongdae production, 문 앞에서. The kitchen table. The 분식집. The years of watching.
\”많이요. \” (A lot.) He said it. He did not give the number. The number was not the point. \”3년 됐어요. \” (It’s been three years.)
She looked at him.
\”발표회에서도 했었죠? \” (You also performed at the 발표회?) She knew this too—the information had presumably come through the professional circle.
\”네. 4줄이었어요. \” (Yes. Four lines.) He said it with the accurate qualifier. Four lines in a school play.
\”그래요. \” She said it. She returned to her notebook. Then: \”이번 주에—잘 했어요. \” (This week—you did well.) She said it with the matter-of-fact quality. \”발이—듣는 방식이 있어요. \” (Your feet—have a way of listening.) The hollow-floor observation. The resonance-detection. \”대부분은—거기서—아무것도 안 느껴. \” (Most people—there—feel nothing.) She said it as the fact. \”왜 느꼈어요? \” (Why did you feel it?)
He thought about the accurate answer.
\”봐온 게—몸에 있어서요. \” (Because what I’ve watched—is in the body.) He said it. The watching accumulation not only in the head but in the body—the watching changing the body’s capacity to receive, the way the long-watcher’s eyes learned to see what the short-watcher missed. \”오래 봤으니까—몸이—더 들어요. \” (Because I watched long—the body—listens more.)
She looked at him.
\”그 말이—맞아요. \” (That’s right.) She said it quietly. \”그래서—시작점이 달라요. \” (That’s why—your starting point is different.) She said it not as praise—as information. The other children in the group were starting from a body with limited watching in it. He was starting from a body with three years of company-level watching accumulated. \”더 빨리 가진 않아요. \” (It doesn’t mean going faster.) She was careful with this. \”기반이 달라요. \” (The foundation is different.) Having the watching in the body meant the training had more to build on, but building still required the same work.
\”알아요. \” He said it. \”방법은 아직 몸에 없어요. \” (The method isn’t in the body yet.) The technique—the specific trained physical vocabulary—was not in him. The watching had given him the recognition but not the execution.
\”맞아요. \” She said it. She looked at him with the settled quality of someone who had assessed and arrived at a conclusion.
His mother appeared at the studio door.
He stood.
\”다음 주에 봐요. \” Kim Sunhee, not looking up.
\”네.\” He picked up his bag.
Walking home from Mapo.
He and his mother on the bus, the July afternoon outside the windows. She had been waiting in the hall for the last ten minutes—she had not come in. She had understood the studio was the studio’s space.
\”어땠어? \” (How was it?)
He thought about the accurate answer.
\”몸이—많아요. \” He said it. (The body—is a lot.) \”머리가 아는 거랑—다른 게 있어요. \” (There are things that are different from what the head knows.) The breathing. The sounds. The floor’s resonance that he had felt before he could explain it. \”배우는 게 많아요. \” (There is a lot to learn.)
\”무섭지 않아? \” (Aren’t you scared?) She asked it with the quality of the honest-asking—not performing the supportive-parent, checking something real.
\”아니요. \” (No.) He said it. \”재미있어요. \” (It’s interesting.) The interest was real—not the performed enthusiasm of a child trying to please. The genuine quality of something that had engaged the specific curiosity that had been watching for three years.
She looked at him. \”선생님은? \” (The teacher?)
\”좋아요. \” He said it. \”말이 적어요. \” (She doesn’t talk much.) The sparse instruction—the doing rather than the explaining. \”그런데—정확해요. \” (But—it’s precise.) When she spoke it was the specific word. Not the over-explained or the under-explained—the exact amount.
\”배우 출신이야. \” (She’s an actor background.) His mother, confirming what his father had said. \”그런 선생님이—좋아. \” (That kind of teacher—is good.) The former-actress’s assessment: the teacher who had been in the room rather than just studied it was more useful for the physical practice.
\”그래요. \” He agreed.
At his desk that evening.
He opened notebook seventeen.
July 5, 2010. First training session. Kim Sunhee. Third floor, Mapo.
He wrote:
Body first. Text is later. This is opposite to how I have been working. I have started from the text—the stage plans, the observation notebooks, the watching of how characters work. She starts from the body before the text.
He paused.
He wrote: Why? Because the body has to be ready for the text to arrive in it. If the text arrives in an unprepared body, it goes into the head instead and stays there. The body needs to be open first.
He thought about November fourteenth. The stranger’s four lines had landed in his body on the morning of the performance—the ginkgo walk, the both-at-once quality. But the stranger’s landing had been after six weeks of preparation. The preparation had been the body-opening. He had done it without knowing that was what he was doing.
\”그래서 됐구나, \” he thought. That’s why it worked. The accidental body-preparation—the ginkgo walk, the private rehearsals in his room—had done what structured training did on purpose.
\”이제는—일부러 한다, \” he added to the notebook. Now—deliberately.
He wrote: Kim Sunhee said: your starting point is different. The watching is in the body. The method isn’t. That’s what training gives.
He closed the notebook.
He thought about: seven children in a circle in a Mapo studio, walking with attention to their feet. The twelve-year-old performing relaxedness. The girl who had closed her eyes. Kim Minjun watching himself in the mirror.
And himself, feeling the resonance of a hollow section of floor through the heel.
All starting from the body, he thought. All different starting points.
He picked up the Korean theater book.
He turned to the training chapter.
He read it again—a third time—with the body-memory of the week’s sessions in him. The words that had been theoretical in February and April were now specific: he knew what \”breath arriving from below the chest\” meant because he had felt it on Thursday. He knew what \”walking with full attention\” produced because he had walked with it for two hours.
The book is different now, he thought. The same words, different reader.
He had been changed by the training. The book knew more because he knew more. The accumulation continuing—not from the watching this time but from the doing. The triangle’s third point becoming active.
He set the book down.
Outside: the July evening, the full-summer ginkgo in its maximum green. The city warm. The apartment holding the evening the way it held everything.
Sixteen more sessions this summer, he thought. Three times a week until August.
He turned off the light.
Gal su iss-eo.
Getting there.