Brass Bell 'Woryang' Serves as Talisman for Peace on the Korean Peninsula

"Just as the woryang once protected cattle, I hope this exhibition will serve as a spiritual talisman guarding peace on the Korean Peninsula — and as an opportunity to rediscover lost values in things that have been discarded."

Lee Young-hwa, director of Bium Museum, made the remarks in an interview on the 2nd ahead of the opening of the special exhibition "Korean Peninsula Peace — Woryang Sound" at Gyeongin Museum of Fine Arts in Insadong, Seoul. "Above all else, peace must come first — only then do the environment and material prosperity have any meaning," she stressed.

The exhibition was selected for the "2026 K-뮤지엄 Regional Tour Exhibition and Tour Support Project," organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean Museum Association. It runs from June 10 through July 12 at Gyeongin Museum of Fine Arts in Insadong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.

Bium Museum is a private folk museum in Gwangju that opened in 2016. Lee has spent more than 50 years assembling a collection of roughly 30,000 artifacts documenting Korean life from the modern and contemporary eras — spanning the full arc of human experience from birth culture to funeral rites.

This exhibition draws from that collection to showcase folk artifacts reflecting agrarian culture and the lives of ordinary people. The show includes more than 100 woryang bells, around 50 peony embroidery works and folding screens, and approximately 100 everyday objects from farming life.

At the center of the exhibition is the woryang — a brass bell hung around a cow's neck. Farmers of the past crafted the bells from brass, a metal snakes dislike, as a way to protect their cattle, which were their most prized possessions.

The sound of the bell and the scent of the brass as the cow moved were enough to drive snakes away, warding off danger without harming any other creature. It was, in essence, a talisman born of ancestral wisdom. The exhibition draws a direct line between this traditional respect for life and the cause of peace on the Korean Peninsula today.

"The most important value on the Korean Peninsula right now is not wealth or glory — it is peace," Lee said. "I organized this exhibition because, just as the woryang protected cattle without harming other living things, we need a spiritual talisman to protect peace on the peninsula."

The exhibition also invites reflection on the human and ecological values that have faded amid material prosperity. Long-used everyday artifacts are presented not merely as old objects but as records carrying the ethics and values of their time and community. The show also grapples with the environmental destruction, breakdown of community, and spiritual impoverishment that deepened through rapid industrialization and the pursuit of Western-centered material culture.

"In the agrarian age, even people who could not read taught their children first about human decency, the awe of heaven, and the meaning of shame," Lee said. "Today, with everyone chasing success and material gain, people who feel no shame are everywhere."

Bium Museum's jogakbo — patchwork textiles sewn from fabric scraps left over after making clothes — will also be featured in the exhibition. Once purely utilitarian, the works have been reappraised as art after drawing high praise from European artists. Last year, they were invited to a French book concert event introducing the culture of Gwangju, the hometown of novelist Han Kang, and were exhibited there for two months. The episode speaks to the artistic depth and contemporary relevance hidden within everyday heritage passed down by ancestors.

"European artists who visited Bium Museum for the Gwangju Biennale saw the jogakbo and said it was as artistic as a Mondrian painting," Lee said. "I was amazed that a handicraft made for survival had come to be recognized as art in the modern age."

The exhibition will also present 49 works created in collaboration with artists from the Gwangju region — an attempt to reinterpret traditional wisdom through the language of contemporary art, offering visitors a chance to experience folk artifacts and installation works side by side.

Beyond introducing folk artifacts, the exhibition traces the spiritual roots being lost in a material-driven society and seeks to restore the cultural continuity severed by industrialization and connect it to future generations.

"It is dispiriting to realize that artifacts valued as art abroad are ones we ourselves barely glance at," Lee said. "I hope the exhibition becomes a moment for us to ask what we have lost and what we have held onto."