Strolling Through Korean Gardens

The Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK), in partnership with the Korea Heritage Service, is pleased to announce Strolling Through Korean Gardens, a new exhibition that reimagines Korea’s rich garden heritage through a contemporary lens. Opening on 11 September 2025, the exhibition offers UK audiences a rare opportunity to encounter the philosophy, beauty, and poetic sensibility of traditional Korean gardens through digital technologies, sensory environments, and interdisciplinary storytelling.

Strolling Through Korean Gardens transforms the Korean Cultural Centre UK into a meditative space of quiet movement and reflection. Visitors begin their journey in the Foyer Project, where digital imagery introduces a variety of Korean gardens. This introductory space evokes the historical association of gardens with literati life, inviting visitors to slow down, both physically and mentally, as they enter the atmospheric world of the exhibition. 

Moving further, the exhibition presents expansive projections of celebrated historical gardens such as Soswaewon, Bokildo Yun Seon-do Garden, and the Secret Garden of Changdeokgung Palace. These works are based on high-resolution digital surveying data collected and preserved by the Korea Heritage Service since 2021. Visitors can experience the seasonal rhythms and architectural elegance of these gardens as they were historically enjoyed by scholars and kings alike, brought to life through Projection Mapping and newly commissioned soundscapes directed by renowned composer Jang Young-gyu. Subtle 2 atmospheric effects such as morning mist, birdsong, and moonlit stillness, enhance the multisensory experience, allowing visitors to immerse themselves fully in the aesthetics of Korean landscape design. 

Another central feature of the exhibition is its focus on Chakyung, or “borrowed scenery,” a key concept in Korean garden aesthetics. A gallery space recreates the experience of sitting inside a jeongja, or open pavilion, offering a carefully framed view of nature beyond, a fleeting moment held still. This gesture captures the essence of Korean garden design as an act of perception as much as of cultivation, where space and view are composed like poetry. 

The final section, Between Two Gardens, invites reflection on how gardens function as spaces of ritual, memory, and imagination. It brings together contemporary video works, literary reflections, and translated texts such as Korean Tea Classics by Brother Anthony of Taizé. Featured works include Planetarians by Ellie Kyungran Heo and A Letter from a Million Years Ago by Jihae Hwang, which explore the interwoven relationship between humans and nature, drawing on encounters with city parks as well as Jiri Mountain's distinctive terrain and its medicinal plants. Collectively, the works in this section position the Korean garden not merely as a historical form but as a site of global resonance, an artistic and philosophical space where ideas of beauty, ecology, and life itself are continually reimagined. 

Dr Seunghye Sun, FRSA, Director of the Korean Cultural Centre UK, said: "A garden is a powerful symbol that connects nature, humanity and culture. In the nation of gardens, it is a joy to present the beauty of Korean traditional gardens through cutting-edge digital technology. The emotions we share through gardens embody a future aesthetics of coevolution between nature, humanity and technology, and I am deeply grateful to the Korea Heritage Service for making this exhibition possible." 

For further press information and a selection of press images about the exhibition, please contact pr@kccuk.org.uk.