Pitta KKM would like to be like Takashi Murakami.
A South Korean tattoo artist, Pitta KKM has big dreams of turning his designs inspired by dancheong (traditional Korean woodwork painting techniques) into a brand as iconic as that of Murakami, the Japanese contemporary artist known for his collaborations with high-end brands like Louis Vuitton and celebrities like Pharrell Williams.
Pitta KKM, 30, whose real name is Jung-hyun Kim, has more than 800,000 followers on Instagram, and said that, over his 10-year career, he has left his mark on around 3,000 people in his eye-catching, mandala-like designs.
Pitta KKM is part of a different kind of hallyu, or Korean wave that has swept across the world in recent years. He is one of a sizable number of talented tattoo artists who have chosen to leave and continue their craft overseas, with demand for tattoos low in their home country and tattooing without a medical license technically illegal — though that law has rarely been enforced in recent years.
Despite the ban, the South Korean government’s recent estimates put the local tattooist population somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000. As is the trend globally, tattoos have become less taboo in Korea, and are gaining acceptance as a form of self-expression. Even the country’s beloved K-pop idols, including Jungkook of BTS and G-Dragon of BigBang, have recently flaunted their ink, despite the entertainment industry’s once-strict dictate to cover tattoos.
On the legal front, there are signs that the industry may be moving into the right side of the law. A landmark bill that would legalize tattooing by people outside the medical profession cleared an initial legislative hurdle in August, though it faces several more votes at the National Assembly.
“I don’t know what kind of environment is in Korea, maybe because it’s kind of still outlawed, or whatever, it breeds better talent,” said Jean Valerio, 44, a Florida-based cybersecurity engineer who had full-sleeve tattoos on both arms done by Pitta KKM at his Seoul studio, Mizangwon.
Valerio found Pitta KKM through Instagram, which has become a major connection point between tattoo artists and their clients. There are more than 88 million posts featuring the hashtag #tattoos, and some clients are more than willing to travel to be inked by their favorite artists.
These days, Valerio, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New York, said he scoured Instagram for talented tattoo artists in places where he planned to go on vacation. “Because what better kind of souvenir is there than a piece of art from someone who’s, you know, that’s part of there?” he said in a video interview.
Pitta KKM traveled extensively early in his career, like so many Korean tattoo artists. He spent weeks in the United States and Europe adding clients in cities like London, Milan, New York, Los Angeles and San Diego, he said.
He spends most of his time in Los Angeles at Nonfromseoul, a studio opened last year by the artist Q (whose real name is Dong-kyu Lee), which has 10 South Korean artists on its roster. Pitta KKM spends only a few months a year at his Seoul studio.
Los Angeles, with its extensive Koreatown, has become a haven for these artists. A handful of new studios specializing in Korean tattoo talent have opened in the past few years, said Sion Kwak, 30, who moved to the city three years ago to join a studio called VISM, which she has since left for one called Ink Garden.
“People want to be able to tattoo more freely,” Kwak said of Korean tattoo artists. They “want to be seen as legitimate and recognized and respected for the work they do, so they want to go overseas.”
Those who have reached the United States have “all obtained a visa that’s tough to get,” Kwak said. “So, there’s really only talented people here, with their own unique style and a certain amount of name recognition.”
Kwak’s mother is also a tattoo artist, and Kwak said she witnessed the ups and downs of her career in Korea. “I saw my parents struggle,” she said. “There were fewer people who would accept it.”
When Kwak was growing up in the late ’90s and early ’00s, tattoo parlors were very much hidden, and had to move frequently to avoid drawing attention. Practitioners were thought of as misfits and outcasts. “As I grew up and started this work, people’s attitudes have really changed,” she said, “and because of that, the style of tattoos has become really diverse.”
The tattoos are often prettier and more artistic, less reliant on the strong, aggressive imagery of dragons, tigers, demons and the like. The latter had, in the past, been linked with criminals, especially after Korean gangs adopted the signifiers of the Japanese yakuza, or gangsters, during Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910-1945.
Kwak’s own designs incorporate the norigae, a Korean knotted pendant that is typically worn with a hanbok, or traditional Korean dress. The norigae can also be a good-luck charm.
“I have a lot of clients of Korean heritage, and many of them say they struggled with their identity, went through tough stages, and grew up with a lot of internal conflict,” Kwak said. “So, they sought me out as part of their journey in figuring out who they were. They’d request designs that blend motifs related to Korean culture and heritage and things from their own lives.”
Pitta KKM says that the proliferation of talented South Korean tattoo artists began about a decade ago, when art school graduates decided to put down the brush and pick up the tattoo pen, despite the official government ban.
“The news spread that they were making good money,” he said in a video interview. “People who graduate with fine art degrees don’t usually have a way to make money right away.” He himself is a graduate of University of Seoul’s sculpture program who describes his own tattoo work as “pretty.”
While the prices of tattoos vary depending on size, difficulty, skin condition and other factors, popular artists can earn thousands if not tens of thousands of U.S. dollars, particularly for large, elaborate designs. Even lesser-known artists have been known to charge $200-$300 for an hour’s work.
These days, said Pitta KKM, clients are willing to pay more, as they think of getting tattoos as commissioning valuable works of art — albeit with their own bodies as canvases.
In years past, the Korean artists who came from art school backgrounds often specialized in micro-realism, a style of highly detailed, small-scale tattoos that use fine lines and subtle shading to make the images look realistic. The techniques used to create this finely detailed work are drilled into young artists at Korea’s art academies, said Pitta KKM, noting that micro-realistic tattoos are often a giveaway that the artist might be Korean — although today, different styles are emerging.
Cho Hye-eun 35, a tattoo artist who graduated from Kookmin University’s interior design program and goes by the tattooist name Hen, agrees.
She works out of Moon Blue Ink Studio in the Yeongdeungpo district of Seoul and creates tattoos that blend micro-realism techniques with bright, cartoonlike Kandinsky-inspired designs. Her style brings together geometric shapes with illustrations of animals and other living things.
“Reinterpreting famous artworks or pieces by other artists through tattoos is also one of my favorite and most enjoyable types of work,” Hen said in an email interview.
Nadi, her mentor and the founder of Moon Blue Ink Studio (whose real name is Park Ji-sun), borrows from the fluid, dynamic brushstrokes of classical Asian ink paintings, and Rain, another artist at the studio (a.k.a. Min Si-woo), makes colorful creations that mix a touch of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele with the shapes and lines of Korean folk art.
When Hen first looked into getting herself inked and browsed for ideas on Google, she saw only dull, old-fashioned designs. But then she discovered a whole new world on Instagram.
“Each artist had their own strong identity and unique style, and I was shocked to realize that so many amazing artists were already active in Korea,” she recalled. Once she decided that she herself wanted to become a tattooist, she reached out to the artist she admired the most — Nadi. “That was the beginning of everything.”
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