Wa Na
Me and Me and Me and Me and Me
I would rather leave it to the other person to decide what I am. I find it interesting when a title I had not imagined emerges, and my attitude toward that person changes accordingly. Depending on whom I am with, I might thus become not only an editor but a writer, a teacher, or even a husband or lover.
At some point, I came to be surrounded by four main space-times: home, the company, New Order, and Min Guhong Manufacturing. Each defines me a little, then exerts a little influence on the self it surrounds. Like a state of superposition in quantum mechanics, I exist in each space-time at once while being observed differently in each. These are not simply physical places, but fields of different temporalities and identities. Each time I cross their boundaries, my frequency is subtly adjusted and an inner dial turns in a slightly different direction. They are not entirely separate. Indeed, they cannot be. Sometimes they permeate one another, sometimes collide, sometimes resonate. Experience at the company flows into home; products of Min Guhong Manufacturing seep into New Order. Amid these flows and circulations, I am continually reconstructed. Min Guhong is formed not as a fixed entity, but as the result of a moiré produced by these four space-times.
How Would You Describe Each Space-Time?
Home is in Yeonnam-dong; my company, Ahn Graphics, is in Hapjeong-dong; New Order is in Yeonnam-dong and on the web; Min Guhong Manufacturing is somewhere among the web, home, the company, and New Order. Ahn Graphics is where I first began working. I joined in 2011, left in 2016, and returned in 2022. Before returning, I worked at Workroom for seven years. Ahn Graphics was founded in 1985, the year I was born. It is difficult to describe growing older while working at a company the same age as oneself. New Order is a kind of educational performance that grew from an informal workshop I began at Workroom. It started in earnest in 2019 with PIE, run by young artists, and takes place every Friday. It is also a question directed at the existing education system. Min Guhong Manufacturing is a one-person company founded in 2015 that lives parasitically on my workplace as its host. Using writing and the web as conveyor belts, it produces products large and small within and beyond art and design. It is also a question directed at the companies I have experienced. Each space-time, which summons a different aspect of me, also has its own temporality: the company’s urgency, moving in minutes and seconds; New Order’s medium-length time of semesters and curricula; Min Guhong Manufacturing’s irregular time, different for every product; and home’s most primal, biological time. Moving among them is like balancing on four wheels turning at different speeds.
Min Guhong’s favorite tag is <a>, which creates hyperlinks connecting content to content. The a stands for “anchor.” The <a> tag distinguishes websites from printed matter. Content that had been mere footnotes, marginal notes, and endnotes in print acquired a new status on the web through <a>. Just as Min Guhong is divided and integrated across several space-times, we apply the <a> tag to him. When we click from one of his space-times to another, we are, in effect, dropping anchor there and moving elsewhere.
Space-Time 1: Home
My ideal way of living is to wake, eat, exercise, and sleep at appropriate times. To spend an appropriate amount of energy securing that appropriateness. Once or twice a month is enough for making up for lost sleep with coffee, energy drinks, or clumsy self-hypnosis.
If There Were a Whole Self Belonging to None of These Space-Times, What Would Be Added and Removed Here?
Defenselessness is added; tension and responsibility are removed. The moment I take off my shoes at the entrance, only the self that need not meet anyone’s expectations remains. A sense of liberation arrives, as if I were floating on a cloud. Yet this defenselessness is double-edged. The freedom to do nothing can sometimes feel like a heavy burden. Having no expectations is, in a sense, like weightlessness. As a formula: “Min Guhong at home = Min Guhong in his original form − social persona + vulnerability squared”? Mathematically absurd, perhaps, but emotionally quite accurate.
If This Space-Time Were a Body Part?
Skin. Skin is the boundary between outside and inside and the largest sensory organ connecting me to the world. Home likewise protects me from the outside world while providing a means to feel it. As skin responds to a warm touch, home responds to someone’s visit. As skin bears traces of age, home retains traces of passing time. And like skin, home needs proper care and attention.
If This Space-Time Were a Text? How Readable Would It Be?
A blank page. The moment we see a blank page as something to be filled, it becomes a duty. But if we can discover something in the blankness itself, it becomes complete in its own right. Home, too, is a space-time where I can escape the obligation to do something and enjoy simply being as I am. A blank page contains infinite possibilities, every story not yet written. In terms of readability, it is both the easiest and the hardest text to read. There is nothing to misunderstand, yet so much lies latent that one cannot decide where to begin. At home, I become like a blank page: full of possibility, but free of the need to realize any of it.
If This Space-Time Were a Punctuation Mark?
An ellipsis. Outside home, I am surrounded by every kind of letter and symbol: Hangeul, Latin letters, kana, periods, exclamation marks, question marks, even commas. Perhaps that is why I naturally distance myself from them at home. I avoid checking my phone or turning on the computer if possible. If I have a pleasure, it is simply sitting or reclining in my favorite chair, watching television with a contented smile. And suddenly trading inconclusive jokes with my wife. An ellipsis suggests something that might follow while allowing the ease of not specifying it. At home, I am much the same. There is much I could do, but I need not do it all. It is fine not to be a complete sentence; I can sleep comfortably without bringing my thoughts to a conclusion.
Your favorite TV program? (…) That seems a little too personal. I will tell you when we know each other better.
If This Space-Time Were a Color?
Whitesmoke (#F5F5F5). Close to off-white, it is a color suited to embracing everything. It is also the actual color of our wallpaper. Whitesmoke is not pure white; it contains a trace of gray. In place of pure white’s coldness and perfectionism, it holds warmth and a sense of life being lived. Home is like that, too. Rather than a perfectly ordered showroom, it accumulates traces of daily life and layers of time. Whitesmoke is particularly meaningful as a background: instead of drawing attention to itself, it brings out what is placed upon it. Home likewise becomes the background of my life. A canvas holding my experiences, emotions, and relationships without needing to be dazzling or intense itself. Whitesmoke responds sensitively to changing light, its mood shifting subtly with morning sun, afternoon shadows, and evening lamps, just as home shows different faces with the hours and seasons.
If This Space-Time Were a File Extension?
JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). JPG is an image-file format using lossy compression. Each save loses a little of the original information. Memories at home are similar. Every evening I return, the day’s experiences and emotions are compressed a little, and unnecessary detail disappears. Waking in the morning brings another compression. Over time, increasingly only the essence remains. Yet, as with a JPG, even when fine detail is lost, the overall impression and emotion remain intact. That is both the beauty and the limitation of home as a space-time.
If This Space-Time Were Calories?
About 2,000 kilocalories, similar to a human basal metabolic rate. A balanced state, neither overexerting nor overconsuming. These calories are burned slowly and steadily, creating a natural rhythm. Like the body that continues consuming energy during sleep, even when I seem to be doing nothing at home, important exchanges of energy are taking place for inner recovery and regeneration.
About the Company Lists Thirty-Seven Things Min Guhong Manufacturing Does Not Do, in English and Korean Alphabetical Order. What Do You Not Do Here?
At home, I do not fall in love with my wife. We first met in high school, began dating at university, and have been together for nearly twenty years. I feel that there are relationships difficult to describe with the word “love.” Deeper than love? Or higher? In that sense, I do not fall in love with my wife at home. Until I find a suitable replacement for “love,” however, I can only love her. Focusing on “fall,” falling into something suggests a temporary state, an unforeseen situation. But my relationship with my wife is no longer a matter of “falling”; it is one of “being.” Just as fish do not fall into water but are in it, at home we are less a subject and object feeling love toward each other than a single ecosystem breathing together. In that sense, I do not fall in love with my wife at home. I am simply in love.
Who Are the Others Who Define You Here?
My wife and our cat, Jojo. In their eyes I am a husband and a cat’s caretaker. To my wife, I am simply someone with whom care and frequent thoughts are shared. It is the same for Jojo. What I do or what kind of person I am matters little, or not at all. All that matters is that we are together, and that I replenish food and water at the proper times. The security of these simple relationships runs deeper than any social recognition. Paradoxically, I can reveal my most complex self to those who see me most simply.
How Does Your Self in This Space-Time Deal with a Mess?
At home, I accept a mess as it is. Sometimes a mess is the most comfortable state. It is fine not to make the bed in the morning, or to leave yesterday’s traces on the desk. In a home like a blank page, mess is a natural pattern: evidence of being alive. Like small scars or wrinkles on skin, it helps make me who I really am. Complete rest sometimes arrives more readily in imperfection than perfection. Rather than trying to control the chaos, I find patterns in it and wait for it to settle naturally.
What Would You Like to Tell Yourself Here, or Hear Here?
May you accept your vulnerability as it is. May you more often give yourself permission to do nothing. May you recognize the value of a blank page. Remember that the slight joy on waking in bed, the ordinary conversations with your wife, and the moments of connection with Jojo are in fact life’s most essential parts. Have the courage to know that simply existing is enough, regardless of productivity or achievement. Remember that home is as warm and embracing as whitesmoke because you can lay down all your other identities there. Notice that sometimes the time spent simply looking out the window, thinking of nothing, holds deeper meaning than the busy activity of other space-times.
Space-Time 2: The Company
AG Lab is a sprout, a spore, or a side branch of Ahn Graphics. At AG Lab, we aim to (1) use the legacy Ahn Graphics has built in Korean design over some thirty-five years as material to plan and carry out projects, large and small, offering inspiration and courage to people within and beyond the company—its members and potential clients; (2) explore through these projects different ways of producing and handling content online and offline…
If There Were a Whole Self Belonging to None of These Space-Times, What Would Be Added and Removed Here?
Social responsibility is added; personal feeling is removed. In terms of distance, this is furthest from my whole self. Out of social responsibility, I play the role of a director or executive at a design agency. This is less like putting on a mask than wearing a particular lens. My essence does not change, but the way I see and receive things does. Here, the role of “director of Ahn Graphics Lab” precedes the individual “Min Guhong.” To perform it, I need to suspend personal tastes and feelings. The feelings do not disappear entirely; I merely control them so they do not surface. Like the large part of an iceberg hidden underwater, they remain present but unseen. This control and balance are tiring, but essential to professionalism.
If This Space-Time Were a Body Part?
The spine. The spine is the body’s structural axis, the pillar supporting the entire system. A company, too, can be shaken throughout without firm principles and systems. The spine is not a single bone but a complex structure of organically connected bones. A problem in one segment affects the whole. A company is likewise a system of connected departments, teams, and individuals. The spine demonstrates a delicate balance of flexibility and solidity: too rigid and it breaks; too flexible and it loses support. At a company, the balance between adapting to change and holding firm to core values is similarly important. Unexpected problems such as a slipped disc arise from prolonged poor posture or excessive pressure. If a company fixates on short-term results or subjects its members to unsustainable pressure, the entire system eventually collapses.
If This Space-Time Were a Text? How Readable Would It Be?
An academic paper. Every project at the company requires a clear subject, purpose, method, results, and conclusion. Above all, it must be objective. Judgment must rest on data and logic, not subjective impressions or intuition. Form matters in an academic paper: indentation, paragraph structure, citation style, references, and other details determine its overall credibility. Company projects are no different. However good the content, it is difficult to gain trust without proper form. In terms of readability, a paper is not a text meant to be read easily, but to be understood accurately and consulted later. Communication at the company likewise prioritizes accurate information and records over momentary empathy or enjoyment.
If This Space-Time Were a Punctuation Mark?
A period. Vagueness is almost an enemy at the company. A period permits no ambiguity. It clearly marks the end of one thought and the beginning of another. Work is similar: one project must definitively end before the next can begin; one stage must be fully completed before proceeding. Writing without periods is confusing and difficult to read. A company, too, loses efficiency without clear boundaries and reference points. Periods also provide rhythm, dividing long sentences appropriately to make room to breathe. Schedules and deadlines create such rhythms: not constant tension, but an appropriate alternation of tension and release, concentration and rest. A period symbolizes finality. Once placed, it is difficult to take back. Decisions at the company are similar. Since decisions put into practice are difficult to reverse, one becomes all the more careful.
If This Space-Time Were a Color?
Black (#000000) or white (#FFFFFF). These two extremes have neither hue nor saturation; only their brightness differs. The company requires this extreme clarity: clarity over ambiguity, simplicity over complexity. Sometimes I must leave every possibility open like white; sometimes I must decide coolly like black. An infinite spectrum of gray lies between them, but a company finds it difficult to acknowledge that middle ground. It is fundamentally a binary space-time: success and failure, profit and loss, efficiency and inefficiency, arriving at work and leaving.
If This Space-Time Were a File Extension?
PDF (Portable Document Format). PDF symbolizes completeness and stability. Designed as a final output, its form is fixed to appear the same on any device or system. Decisions and projects at the company are similar: once finalized, they must retain their form. Changes entail time and cost. Just as a PDF differs from an editable source such as a Word document or InDesign file, the process and the final output are clearly distinguished. The process allows experiments and revisions; the final output permits only limited changes. Much work here moves toward this immutability: draft to final version, idea to product, plan to execution. More and more elements become fixed until they reach a final form as difficult to change as a PDF. This immutability can sometimes feel stifling, yet it offers the other values of consistency and stability.
If This Space-Time Were Calories?
About 3,500 kilocalories—the energy expended during high-intensity exercise. It requires conscious effort and concentration; maintaining it continually inevitably leads to exhaustion. Proper rest and recharging are therefore needed. This energy is spent primarily on mental activity and social interaction. Maintaining relationships consumes more calories than one might think.
About the Company Lists Thirty-Seven Things Min Guhong Manufacturing Does Not Do, in English and Korean Alphabetical Order. What Do You Not Do Here?
At the company, I do not fall in love with the company. Many people around me fall in love with their companies until work and life become one. Ahn Sangsoo, under whom I studied in my twenties, said something similar: “Work must become life.” That, too, is beautiful and valuable, but at the company I want to distinguish work and life strictly. The moment I leave, the company disappears from my life. This is not indifference; it is distance maintained for a healthy relationship. As love needs distance, professional passion needs appropriate distance too. Without it, objectivity is inevitably lost, helping neither the company nor myself. Forgetting the company when I leave is like rebooting the mind. It lets me see the work—and the company—with fresh eyes the next day.
Who Are the Others Who Define You Here?
Colleagues and clients. Their expectations and demands continually define what I should be at work. Interestingly, colleagues focus mainly on my abilities and expertise, while clients focus on the outcome. I thus become Min Guhong as process before colleagues, and Min Guhong as result before clients. Finding a balance between these gazes is the central task here. Sometimes they conflict: the value colleagues recognize in a process does not always align with the quality clients demand of the outcome. At such times, I become a kind of translator, carrying the value of the process into the result and reinterpreting the requirements of the result as a process. Ultimately, I am defined here through this translation.
How Does Your Self in This Space-Time Deal with a Mess?
At the company, I try to give a mess structure. Like a spine, I establish a center first and identify the essential problem. Even in disorder, I set clear priorities and tidy things up by placing one period at a time. Sometimes this involves sharing responsibility with colleagues. A mess at work often provides an unexpected opportunity: when an existing system collapses, the possibility of a more efficient structure opens. It is a moment when something fixed like a PDF can be reopened for editing. Even during this restructuring, however, I try to minimize emotional agitation, focusing on calmly analyzing the situation and finding logical solutions.
What Would You Like to Tell Yourself Here, or Hear Here?
Keep your spine straight, but know how to bend flexibly at times. Do not strive to put a perfect period on every decision; allow commas and question marks sometimes. Do not become too absorbed in the role of director or executive; remember Min Guhong beyond that role. Accept that the company’s success or failure is not entirely your responsibility, and learn to share it with colleagues. Have the courage to revise boldly when necessary, even when a decision seems as difficult to change as a PDF. Strictly separating work and life is wise, but discover how, at their boundary, the meaning of work and the richness of life can sometimes reinforce each other. Humbly accept the influence your decisions and actions have here, and do not fear that responsibility.
Space-Time 3: New Order
When you like something, and eventually come to love it, you naturally want to share that beautiful feeling with those around you.
If There Were a Whole Self Belonging to None of These Space-Times, What Would Be Added and Removed Here?
Questions are added; certainty is removed. As I talk about something, a kind of fear comes over me and I feel the weight of my words. Some say New Order resembles a small school or a new religion. But its distinctions between teacher and student, leader and believer, are not clear. Everyone is simply a friend, as at Black Mountain College or among Quakers. Here, all the certainties I thought I knew become question marks. This is not an admission of ignorance, but an awareness of knowledge’s relativity: the paradox that the more one knows, the more one does not know. At New Order I both teach and learn. The moment I ask a question, it returns to me; the answer I offer also returns as a question. In this endless circulation of questions and answers, like the “prepared environment” valued in Montessori education, my role is simply to create an environment where questions can grow like plants.
If This Space-Time Were a Body Part?
The tongue. One of our most multifunctional body parts, it speaks, tastes, swallows, and even cleans. New Order likewise performs several roles at once: a space-time for conveying knowledge, tasting new ideas, and digesting useful information. The tongue is a tool of sensation and expression. It perceives taste and expresses the sensation in language. This cycle matters at New Order too: experiencing the medium of the web and putting that experience into words. The tongue continually moves and changes, altering its shape to suit the situation and working with other parts. New Order is similarly fluid, changing with its friends and context rather than keeping a fixed form. The tongue is an organ at a boundary: between inside and outside, thought and expression, self and others. New Order also inhabits such boundaries, moving between school and society, the virtual and the real, technology and the humanities.
If This Space-Time Were a Text? How Readable Would It Be?
A list. New Order has a structure that is systematic yet open. A list clearly distinguishes its entries while leaving their relationships and importance to the reader. One reader may focus on a particular entry; another may scan the whole. Education at New Order is similar. There is a list called a curriculum, but what matters is the process of each person finding what they need within it. In terms of readability, a list permits both linear and nonlinear reading: from beginning to end, or only selected parts. In that sense, it is a prototype of hypertext, each entry independent yet connected to the whole. New Order pursues such an open structure.
If This Space-Time Were a Punctuation Mark?
A question mark. New Order is fundamentally a space-time for questioning. A question mark can turn a statement into a question, certainty into possibility. It makes us reconsider what we thought we knew. It creates an open space-time. Where a period closes discourse, a question mark leaves it open, expanding the possibilities of dialogue and inquiry. New Order likewise values open questions over closed answers: stepping beyond established patterns to look at a problem with fresh eyes. Learning here is a succession of these shifts, questioning what has been taken for granted and opening new horizons of understanding through those questions. A question mark is also an invitation, an open gesture requesting others’ thoughts and opinions. New Order seeks shared inquiry rather than one-way transmission, inviting every friend to take part in the conversation.
If This Space-Time Were a Color?
Snow (#FFFAFA), the color of snow as defined on the web. It differs from white: a tiny trace of pink is mixed in. After all, asking questions is also a way of leaving footprints, sometimes shallow and sometimes deep, in snow never walked on before. Snow is not pure white; it contains a subtle tint. The nuance is not immediately visible, emerging only with careful observation. New Order is similar. On the surface, it may seem like coding or design instruction, but subtle literary, philosophical, and aesthetic nuances are dissolved within it. Snow also grows deeper as it accumulates, resembling New Order’s journey from shallow questions into deeper inquiry. Leaving footprints is a shared activity: one person’s tracks become another’s path, which leads to further exploration. Here, too, individual questions and discoveries are shared, forming a landscape of collective knowledge.
If This Space-Time Were a File Extension?
HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML is a file format, but also a language and a structure. It has a systematic structure beginning and ending with tags, and the flexibility for infinite expression within it. New Order is much the same. There is a structure called a curriculum, but within it people explore different paths according to their interests and pace. HTML is a language of connection. Through hyperlinks, it connects to other pages and resources; it is not complete in itself. New Order likewise aims to be an open community connected to the wider web ecosystem, rather than an isolated educational program. Just as HTML becomes visually realized through a browser, New Order’s knowledge and questions are interpreted and realized differently in its friends’ minds. In this sense, HTML is a language of potential, and New Order a space-time of potential.
If This Space-Time Were Calories?
About 2,500 kilocalories, a moderate amount of energy for intellectual inquiry. It is sustainable over long periods and sufficient to produce meaningful results. This energy tends to replenish itself as it is spent. Questioning and teaching generate new energy, creating a virtuous cycle.
About the Company Lists Thirty-Seven Things Min Guhong Manufacturing Does Not Do, in English and Korean Alphabetical Order. What Do You Not Do Here?
At New Order, I do not fall in love with certainty. Since questions matter above all, even what we have believed to be correct becomes open to questioning. Not falling in love with certainty means guarding against dogmatic belief and blind enthusiasm. However excellent an idea or method appears, the moment it is accepted as absolute truth, thought stops. Everything at New Order is provisional. Today’s answer may become tomorrow’s question; today’s best approach may later reveal its limits. Accepting this uncertainty is its core. In short, maintaining healthy skepticism is the path to deeper understanding. Doubt matters more than certainty here, and curiosity more than love.
Who Are the Others Who Define You Here?
Friends who love the web, or will love it a little more than before. They have different backgrounds and interests, but are connected by a shared interest in the web. Before them, I am both the individual Min Guhong and a member of New Order. In this dual identity, I am sometimes a guide and sometimes a companion. Their questions and curiosity continually redefine who I am. As they understand the web more deeply, I come to see it anew. A kind of mirror effect: I reflect the web to them, and they reflect it to me. Through this mutual reflection, we grow together. Ultimately, I become a catalyst for collective growth in this space-time.
How Does Your Self in This Space-Time Deal with a Mess?
At New Order, I use a mess as an opportunity to ask questions. I try to discover new patterns and relationships in the chaos, exploring what produced it and what we can learn. A mess here has educational value. Together with friends, I analyze the chaos, share the process of addressing it, and turn it into collective learning. As the tongue distinguishes tastes, I try to distinguish elements within the mess and understand their relationships. Sometimes the process itself becomes the goal. Understanding and questioning a mess matters more here than resolving it.
What Would You Like to Tell Yourself Here, or Hear Here?
Know how to be shaken by your own question marks as much as how to pose them. Continue feeling how blurred the boundary between teaching and learning is on this journey with friends. Remember that footprints in the snowfield of the web can become someone’s path, not merely traces. Treasure the cycle of tasting new ideas as with a tongue, then expressing them in words. Deeply recognize the meaning of connecting people through code and the web. The resolve not to fall into certainty or love matters, but admit that unexpected passion can sometimes lead to discovery. Trust that questions carrying nuances as subtle as the color of snow can sometimes produce the clearest insight.
In my experience, falling in love with something one cannot understand is sometimes worth attempting. Simply surrendering body and mind to the flow, even while sensing that everything will become a mess.
Space-Time 4: Min Guhong Manufacturing
Min Guhong Manufacturing may be the result of Min Guhong—who holds many titles besides editor—editing himself solely for his own happiness, or the editorial guidelines for arriving at that result.
If There Were a Whole Self Belonging to None of These Space-Times, What Would Be Added and Removed Here?
Spontaneity is added; order is removed. Try something first, then make a reason to fit it. Unlike a company whose system—its form—is already set, here I make a form for myself. In a sense, Min Guhong Manufacturing is closer to a laboratory, where I can try what is impossible or difficult elsewhere. Spontaneity here is not mere impulse but a response combining intuition and experience. As a jazz musician improvises freely within a given chord progression, I move about through writing and the web. Removing order does not mean disorder. It means following an order organically generated by the product itself, rather than imposed from outside. This approach may sometimes look inefficient, but it leads to unexpected discoveries. Ultimately, this is a space-time for exploring what it means to be Min Guhong. Other space-times always require compromise and adjustment; here alone, I can follow my senses and judgment entirely.
If This Space-Time Were a Body Part?
Hands and head. However far artificial intelligence advances today, without hands one cannot have an honest conversation with it. And what moves those hands is ultimately the head. Their combination symbolizes a balance of creation and execution: the head conceives an idea, the hands give it form. Min Guhong Manufacturing likewise values the close connection between concept and execution. Hands make direct contact with the world, feeling textures, weighing objects, and performing precise work through fine movements. This tactile knowledge remains important in the digital age: experience of direct exchange with matter, beyond abstract information on a screen. The head recognizes patterns and gives meaning, turning data into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. This process of making meaning is the company’s core: thinking beyond code or design to what it means in a particular context. The connection of hands and head symbolizes the integration of theory and practice, thought and action. However good the head’s ideas, they mean nothing if the hands cannot realize them; however diligently the hands move, meaningful results are difficult without direction from the head.
If This Space-Time Were a Text? How Readable Would It Be?
A poem or novel. Min Guhong Manufacturing values emotional consistency over logical consistency. Sometimes it pursues concise, suggestive expression like poetry; sometimes it accommodates varied perspectives and voices like fiction. What matters is finding a form suited to the content, rather than following a predetermined form. Poetry and fiction assume active interaction with the reader. They do not explain everything explicitly, leaving room for imagination and interpretation. The company similarly pursues open work that users or viewers can interpret and experience in their own ways, rather than fully prescribed products. In terms of readability, poetry and fiction allow primary and secondary meanings, explicit and implicit content, to coexist: varied layers in which a first reading and a rereading reveal different meanings.
Late last summer, Min Guhong Manufacturing was surrounded by suspicious figures who appeared without warning, and eventually kidnapped.
If This Space-Time Were a Punctuation Mark?
An exclamation mark. The moment I think it would be good to try something, an exclamation mark appears somewhere in my head and is placed. It symbolizes sudden realization and enthusiasm, appearing unexpectedly in a calmly unfolding sentence to lend strong feeling and urgency. Everything at Min Guhong Manufacturing begins like this: something suddenly flashing within the ordinary flow of thought. An exclamation mark calls for action. It can turn a simple statement into a command or recommendation. The moment it is placed, an abstract possibility becomes a concrete product: a moment of resolve to move beyond thought into action. It has its own rhythm, interrupting the usual flow and calling attention. Such changes of rhythm are essential to the working process: unexpected breaks and leaps that leave familiar patterns and encounter a new perspective.
If This Space-Time Were a Color?
Blue (#0000ff), the color of the hyperlink. It seems fitting for a company that uses writing and the web as conveyor belts. Blue connects the digital and physical worlds. When text on a screen turns blue, it becomes more than information: an entrance to another space-time. The company likewise seeks to be a space-time of connection, an intersection of different thoughts, fields, and people. Blue symbolizes depth and infinity. The color of sea and sky, it suggests limitless space-time to explore. The company also contains infinite possibilities: an open structure capable of continuing to expand and develop without fixed boundaries. Blue is also a color of trust and stability, which is why many companies use it in their logos. Such trust matters here too: keeping a promise of fundamental quality and sincerity while taking an experimental approach.
If This Space-Time Were a File Extension?
TXT. Ultimately, the company’s essence lies in simplicity and a return to fundamentals. A TXT file is the most basic, pure form of digital document, consisting solely of text without special formatting or decoration. Paradoxically, this simplicity holds infinite possibility, because it is the fundamental form underlying every complex digital format. Min Guhong Manufacturing pursues these fundamental values, focusing on essential ideas and content rather than elaborate technology or complicated methods. TXT files offer universal compatibility, readable on almost any computer system: independence from particular software or platforms. The company seeks this universality that crosses—or bends—boundaries, moving among design, technology, literature, and other fields without being confined to one. A TXT file leaves transformation open. As the most basic format, it is a starting point that can develop in any direction. The company itself, as well as its products, holds this open potential: a structure allowing continuous development and transformation rather than a definite conclusion or finished form.
If This Space-Time Were Calories?
Irregular. Sometimes expenditure is as light as 100 kilocalories, then suddenly a moment requires 5,000. This irregularity characterizes the space-time. The unpredictable pattern of energy use reflects the essence of producing products: a rhythm moving between the explosive energy of an idea and the dormant intervals between. Paradoxically, this irregularity makes sustained work possible.
About the Company Lists Thirty-Seven Things Min Guhong Manufacturing Does Not Do, in English and Korean Alphabetical Order. What Do You Not Do Here?
At Min Guhong Manufacturing, I do not fall in love with products. I always remember the words of my admired senior colleague Kim Hyungjin at Workroom: “The moment you finish a work, you must get out of it at once.” Ultimately, not falling in love with products means not becoming too attached to finished results. Work is, in the end, an act of letting go. However much time and effort went into it, eventually it must be sent into the world so one can move to the next work. This psychological separation is emotionally difficult, but essential for growth. Excessive love for a product obscures its limits and possible improvements, and makes it easy to miss new possibilities. The company therefore loves the process of making products more than the products: giving greater meaning to process than result, to journey than arrival. That is how one keeps the energy and curiosity for the next journey.
At times, your company’s ego trip verges on the revolting.
Who Are the Others Who Define You Here?
Baek Changin (https://www.baekchangin.com), who unexpectedly became the fifth intern in winter 2024. My relationship with him makes me reflect on myself. Explaining something to him reveals assumptions I have taken for granted. Answering questions such as “Why is that?” leads me to reexamine how the company works. In this sense, he is both mirror and catalyst. The relationship also has temporal continuity: a conversation between my past self, my present self, and a future intern. Within this connection through time, I become both transmitter and learner, conveying expertise and experience while learning new perspectives and methods. Ultimately, I am defined here through this ongoing conversation and learning.
How Does Your Self in This Space-Time Deal with a Mess?
At Min Guhong Manufacturing, I use a mess as an opportunity to create. Chaos can catalyze new ideas and approaches. Sometimes I deliberately make a mess to find hyperlinks and possibilities that an orderly state would not reveal. Using hands and head together, I approach problems intuitively and seek solutions by moving between logic and feeling. A mess here requires flexible responses: sometimes accepting it, sometimes transforming it, sometimes reconstructing it as something entirely new.
What Would You Like to Tell Yourself Here, or Hear Here?
Treasure the exclamation-mark moment, but remember the persistence needed to realize that intuition. Accept that the work made by your hands and head leaves your hands the moment it enters the world, and let that separation make room for new creation. Know that, in suggestive and layered work like poetry or fiction, ambiguity can sometimes be the clearest message. May your work hold depths beyond its surface finish, like blue’s infinite depth. Trust the power of a simple, fundamental form like a TXT file. Through being both transmitter and learner in your relationship with an intern, find opportunities to understand your own methods anew. Above all, when spontaneity leads you, follow it without doubt. Remember that spontaneous choices accumulate into results that are most your own.
The switch between Min Guhong and Min Guhong Manufacturing operates countless times without my knowing. But I think the imperfection of being unable to edit everything perfectly and neatly makes editing all the more valuable.
If There Were Switches for Moving Between These Space-Times?
The moment my smartphone alarm rings at 7 a.m. on a weekday, the switch from home to company activates. The sound is more than a signal: it is a ritual announcing a change of identity. Alongside the biological change of waking, I move mentally from the private to the public. In the brief moment I open my eyes, I picture the day’s schedule and decide which Min Guhong to become. Sometimes the transition is not smooth, and the feeling of home follows me to work. The transition from company to Min Guhong Manufacturing occurs by closing one folder and opening another: a digital ritual. Physically I remain in the same place, yet move into an entirely different world beyond the screen. As one folder closes, its projects, responsibilities, and roles fold away; opening another unfolds a different world. Sometimes, of course, I feel this boundary growing more blurred. Moving from Min Guhong Manufacturing to New Order requires only switching a browser tab: the most frequent and most subtle switch. A single click takes me to an entirely different context and identity. Because it is so easy and immediate, the boundary sometimes disappears. The company’s working methods influence New Order’s teaching, while New Order’s questions inspire the company’s products. Perhaps the naturalness of these transitions is evidence of recognizing that I have multiple identities. Over time, I attend less to the transition itself than to its quality: how smoothly, completely, and meaningfully I move between space-times. Ultimately, these switches become essential elements of how I exist, rather than functional devices.
Which Space-Time Are You Most Attached To?
Home, of course, and particularly the bed: a space of a little over three square meters solely for sleep. Sleep matters more than anything to me. I give it eight of each day’s twenty-four hours. Of the remaining sixteen, eight go to living and eight to work. A fair formula. For me, a day begins not in the morning but in the sleep fully enjoyed the night before. Every night, through sleep, we experience a small death, and are born again in the morning. In this sense, the bed is an anchor point maintaining the continuity of my identity. Even as I move between four space-times and live differently in each, the primal experience of sleep invariably makes me myself. As humans, we tend to focus on waking hours and link wakefulness to productivity. To me, however, sleep is not passive rest but active creation. In the unconscious workshop of dreams, hyperlinks form that I could not imagine by day. Sometimes something appears most clearly when I am half-asleep in bed. In that sense, the bed may be the most productive of the four space-times. If the others are external expressions of identity, the bed is a sanctuary protecting the inner identity from which all those expressions arise. The final refuge that holds me unchanged in a ceaselessly changing world.
Which Space-Time Requires the Most Effort?
The company. For me, “effort” generally accompanies situations I would rather not face. The company demands effort because its goals and values do not fully align with mine. As a member of an organization, I sometimes must do things I do not consider important, or follow methods less efficient than my own. Reconciling these discrepancies is ultimately effort. Effort is also a conversion of energy: turning externally assigned tasks into inner motivation. When this goes smoothly, effort moves a little further from pain. When it is difficult, nearly impossible, or impossible, effort leads to exhaustion and alienation. In this sense, effort at work is a continual process of self-adjustment and finding meaning. Because it requires these complex psychological processes, the company demands the most effort. This is also the fate of most modern people who must switch themselves into another self with a smartphone alarm each day.
Do You Have a Strategy for Yourself in Each Space-Time?
Each has a radius within which I can move comfortably. To achieve that, I have no choice but to edit myself. At home, for example, I choose a strategy of “emptying,” leaving schedules and obligations to follow a natural rhythm. At the company, “structuring” is necessary: defining tasks clearly, setting priorities, and managing time efficiently. At New Order, I use “curiosity,” questioning everything and finding new connections. At Min Guhong Manufacturing, I pursue “experimentation,” trying various things without the burden of results. These strategies sometimes conflict. The company’s strategy may clash with Min Guhong Manufacturing’s, while home’s may be in tension with New Order’s. Yet the conflicts themselves become a source of energy. Friction between different strategies awakens something. Ultimately, perhaps my strategy is to find balance among them and develop the ability to switch flexibly as needed.
What Is Editing to You?
Editing is like sculpture as described by Michelangelo Buonarroti: “Every block of stone already contains a statue. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” In other words, discovering something already present within something already present. Sometimes subtracting, sometimes adding. In the process, something new—or seemingly new—is made. In that sense, editing is no different from creating. Editing is also a kind of conversation: with the original text, with the reader, and ultimately with another self within me. In the act of editing, I sometimes experience being completely separated from myself and becoming someone else. When it ends, I return to my original self. In that sense, editing is close to a spiritual practice.
Beneath every act of production lies a desire to introduce something, and ultimately oneself.
We Ask About You Without Asking About You. Is There a Form That Speaks of You Without Talking About You?
A hyperlink, perhaps? Popularized with the web, a hyperlink is a technology connecting one thing to another. Rather than explaining at length, it speaks through the act of connection itself. Its appeal lies in indirectness: it says nothing directly, yet conveys context and meaning through connections. As someone’s bookmarks or browsing history can reveal much about them, every website I make and every hyperlink I create is an implicit statement about me. They reveal what I value, what interests me, and my aesthetic tastes. Hyperlinks enable nonlinear narratives. Without a fixed order or hierarchy, readers can make their own paths. This openness touches contemporary identity: not a fixed, singular self, but a fluid one differently composed according to context. Perhaps, like hyperlinks, we are beings defined through our relationships with other things.
Which Space-Time Surrounds the Min Guhong We Are Speaking with Now?
Perhaps the Min Guhong encompassing them all? Sometimes vulnerable, sometimes clear, sometimes spontaneous, sometimes wanting only to ask rather than answer. In that sense, this interview may be creating a fifth space-time: one that briefly leaves everyday flow to objectify and reflect on oneself. Here, the Min Guhongs of the other four coexist. A complex self mixing home’s vulnerability, the company’s clarity, New Order’s questions, and Min Guhong Manufacturing’s spontaneity. Through the act of observation called an interview, a particular Min Guhong takes form. Yet the boundaries remain fluid. Different aspects emerge or recede depending on the question and the moment. Perhaps this fifth space-time is closest to the real Min Guhong. Ultimately, is not the process in which all these aspects become visible, collide, and harmonize itself the essence of “me”?
While Reading Frequently Asked Questions (https://minguhongmfg.com/faq) on the Min Guhong Manufacturing Website, We Lost Our Bearings When We Enlarged the Window. Before We Knew It, We Were Reading the Same Sentence Again. Listening to Another Person’s Story Is Rather Like That. Coordinates Slip Away, Stories Repeat, and We Cannot Find Our Place. Is There Something We May Have Missed That Must Be Said?
Every space-time, including home, requires physical and mental energy, in large or small amounts. The natural lifespan of the human animal is said to be thirty-eight years. I have already lived those thirty-eight and two more. The life remaining is simply extra—a bonus stage. Misunderstanding it that way puts my mind at ease. Whether something good or bad happens: “So it goes…” In that sense, no words give me more energy. They let me acknowledge everything as it is, rather than divide possibilities into good and bad, sorrow and joy—not resignation or indifference. That is also a way of eliminating karma, as Buddhism describes it. Perhaps this discussion of four space-times is ultimately a way of responding to life’s finitude: dividing time and space, experimenting with different selves within them, and returning to the beginning when the experiment ends. As every journey is ultimately for coming home, every separation is for integration. For Min Guhong, moving among four or more space-times, is ultimately one in this universe.
Who Am I—“Min Guhong”?
By chance I was born to Korean parents on March 5, 1985, given the name Min Guhong, and have been called by it for nearly forty years. Around five, I received formal Montessori education. Around seven, I first encountered a computer; around eleven, I made my first website for a beloved friend. I studied literature and linguistics at Chung-Ang University and poetic computation at the School for Poetic Computation (SFPC) in the United States. While working as an editor, designer, programmer, and more at Ahn Graphics and Workroom, I have run the one-person company Min Guhong Manufacturing, with its scent of Rainbow Sherbet, working within and beyond art and design. At New Order, a self-described “liberal arts course for modern people,” I discuss and teach coding from the perspective of “practical and conceptual writing.” I wrote New Order and translated A New Program for Graphic Design; Forget all the rules you ever learned about graphic design. Including the ones in this book.; What Colour is Your World?; Dogs Are Just Like Us; The Concert; The Present; and others. Since 2022, I have worked as director of Ahn Graphics Lab, collaborating with Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Korean Air, and others. In 2024, as a friend of DRDR Artist Company, I also collaborated with HYUKOH, Sunset Rollercoaster, and Chang Kiha. On weekends, I immerse myself in composing and translating as hobbies.
https://minguhong.fyi
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