Seoul’s own winter wonderland

Following is part of a series exploring unique museums, collections and the passionate collectors behind them. ― Ed.


For 20 years, Oh Ran-hee has dedicated her life to one thing ― ice. As an ice sculptor and general manager of the Ice Gallery in Seoul, Oh has made it her mission to offer people an opportunity to enjoy ice more than just one week out of the year.

“It used to be if you wanted to see ice sculptures, you would have to go abroad, really far away,” she said. “But now, you can see ice sculptures on display all year.”

The Ice Gallery can be thought of as a giant underground freezer ― ironically located below a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlet ― that houses a wide array of ice sculptures and carvings. It is the world’s first indoor ice sculpture gallery that is open all year.

Most of the ice sculptures on display take an entire day to create; although the gallery is quaint, carving out the contents took several months. The exhibit is kept at minus 5 degrees Celsius, but parkas are made available for visitors stopping by unprepared. 

The sculptures at this gallery have a wide range of themes ― from historical and traditional, to modern and chic. Among some of the cultural exhibitions of frozen art are carvings of a traditional Korean village ― with detailed depictions of villagers and hanok, stone pagodas located next to a cutout of a large Buddha statue and even a scaled-down recreation of Sungnyemun, one of the eight fortress gates of Seoul.

“You can experience the exhibits firsthand. You can touch, feel and enjoy the ice,” Oh said.

On the more modern side, the gallery houses an ice sculpture of a piano, a refrigerator with actual goods frozen inside and a large aquarium wall with painted ice fish. There is even an entire room sculpted of ice, equipped with a bed, TV and a computer with a frozen monitor and keyboard. Some of the other crowd favorites include a bathroom with a life-size tub, toilet and sink, and an ice bar with frozen bottles of Smirnoff on display. For the kids, there is also an igloo that they can go inside, and even an ice slide.

“It’s so unfortunate that ice sculptures tend to be on display only one week a year during the wintertime,” she said. “But for these kinds of outdoor displays, we would have to work and carve pieces for about two weeks to prepare. Then they would all just melt away shortly after and it was very disappointing.”

Oh described the ice’s aesthetic and artistic appeal as well. “It’s clear, it glistens. Ice sculptures blend well with everything,” she said. “Even by adding ice sculptures somewhere, because there’s no color, you can still capture the beauty of its surroundings.”

The gallery also offers visitors the opportunity to try out their ice sculpting skills first hand. At the entrance to the gallery are rows of tables, equipped with gloves and small sculpting knives where people can participate in a class on how to carve a drinking mug out of a block of ice.

“As you can imagine, it is not easy finding a class on ice sculpting,” she laughed. “There are no ice sculpting academies, so if you want to learn this trade, you have to find a job in the business.”

The gallery visitors have a rare opportunity to learn about ice from the experts. Oh showed that with ice, unlike other materials such as metal or wood, a mistake or a slip of the wrist can quickly be fixed and turned into yet another work of art.

During a carving tutorial, she chiseled away at a block of ice until it resembled a beer mug, then purposely broke off the handle, which many first-timers tend to do, and hacked away until it turned into a decorative wine glass.

“Unlike wood, ice can be carved a lot quicker. You can create something beautiful in no time,” she said. Even for the novice ice sculptors, it takes as little as 30 minutes to make a cup out of ice.

“We get a lot of foreign visitors who come from countries where there’s no winter, some who have never seen this much ice before,” Oh said. “But the funny thing is, they are always the ones who do the best in the sculpting classes.”

The Ice Gallery is located in Hwa-dong across from the Jeongdok Library and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is 7,000 won and an additional 5,000 won (1,000 won for children) for those who wish to participate in the sculpting tutorials.

By Julie Jackson (juliejackson@heraldcorp.com)