Nana Youngrong Kim is one of Korea’s most recognized drag artists today. Kim studied theater and film in university to pursue a career as an actor but felt limited by conventional acting, which is dominated by fixed gender roles and romance stories between men and women. After stumbling upon The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Hedwig and The Angry Inch, which shed light on drag artists, he was fascinated by the colorful costumes and props of the drag artists in the films and immediately fell in love with drag culture. In the 18 years since then, he has continued to play a role in breaking down the prejudices about drag as a queer culture by venturing beyond the traditional club stage and into various genres of arts and culture. Over that same time, he has collaborated with a wide array of K-pop artists, including Brown Eyed Girls, Mamamoo, Park Hyo Shin, and U-Know Yunho. He has also been approached by luxury brands such as Versace, Moschino, Loewe, and Louis Vuitton. HERA, a Korean cosmetics brand, chose him as a campaign model and released several collaborative products. Most recently, he has continued to prove the expansiveness of drag culture by producing a personal documentary on the subject of drag, NA, NA, and holding a photo exhibition, which was unprecedented for a Korean drag artist.

“Drag” refers to a culture where people are free to look and act the way they want to, without being bound by socially imposed definitions. In fact, it actually has a much longer history than most people assume. To explain the etymology of drag dates all the way back to Shakespeare’s time, when he was writing plays. At a time when women weren’t allowed on stage, men played the roles of women in his plays, and it’s believed that the hems of the huge dresses they wore dragged and became the source of the word “drag.” Since the 1930s, drag has become intertwined with LGBTQ+ culture, with cisgender gay men leading the way while they show themselves off as drag queens by emphasizing their “femininity” through colorful makeup and costumes. Over time, however, aspects of drag have become increasingly diverse, with different artists defining the concept differently.

Underlying the many interpretations and attempts to define drag is its artistry. Through movements that mobilize expressive power and creativity, drag has unified social roles assigned by gender norms, broken taboos, and pushed the boundaries of performance art. Drag culture grew a discourse on stage to an artistic act of creation, and now it’s establishing its own realm even in art institutions that are considered to be legitimate exhibitors of art. In 2017, the Whitney Museum of American Art, a leading contemporary museum in the U.S., presented Liberty, a drag performance in which the contemporary artist Puppies Puppies dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, as part of the Whitney Biennial, where talented emerging artists take center stage. A year later, the Hayward Gallery in London, a global public art institution, explored the meaning of drag as a political tool for resistance through the 2018 exhibition DRAG: Self-portraits and Body Politics. These represent just two examples of how the trend of drag is gaining more attention.

Even in Korean culture, drag has a relatively long history. The drag queen club Trance, where Nana Youngrong Kim currently performs in drag, is approaching its 30th anniversary today. Still, most people think of drag as a “fun part of the culture” that emerged only recently. That’s because it’s only been about six or seven years since drag culture surfaced meaningfully in Korean society. So much so, in fact, that when Kim reveals that he’s been a drag artist for 18 years, people are often surprised and ask him how old he is; many people in Korean society tend to think of drag as something that just recently emerged. Yet Kim has been a drag artist for 18 years, which means he has had to wait over a decade to win recognition for what he’s been doing all along. Over the years, what has Kim done to dispel prejudices about drag culture and enjoy it with a broader audience?

At the time, very few people knew anything about drag, and there were no smartphones or social media. The best way to introduce strangers to drag culture was by handing out business cards! It was an impossible endeavor if Kim didn’t have the confidence and love for what he was doing. However, ambition alone was not enough. Drag is a performance art that relies heavily on conveying attractive visual images through makeup, costumes, and accessories. In order to make sure he looked good enough—from head to toe—to perform, he had to spend half of the money he made from drag performances just to get ready for the next one. With three to four performances a month, it was impossible to keep up with drag art while also paying the bills. Eventually, Nana Youngrong Kim decided that he needed to save money, and so got a day job to make a living and stopped performing.

Kim had been working full-time for about three years when he saw some online chatter about a drag artist. A Korean-American named Kim Chi, who appeared on season 8 of the famous American drag reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, made waves in Korea when she placed in the top three. The public’s curiosity about the drag artist sparked a different motivation for Nana Youngrong Kim. It made him think about returning to drag art. One day, after working overtime, he stumbled upon his reflection on the monitor at the office and realized that the place he wanted to be was not at his office desk but on the stage. He quit his job that same day and resumed his activities in the drag scene.

Kim succeeded in establishing himself relatively quickly and connecting with the public as a drag artist. Why did it play out so differently than in his early days? The short answer is social media. With the ubiquity of smartphones and everyone’s familiarity with social media, it’s become a time when everyone can reveal themselves for who they really are. Anyone can take a photo or video of themselves, upload it, and send it out to a massive audience if they want to. That has allowed drag artists like Kim to capture the public’s attention while also freely expressing their potential. But has social media really changed everything?

In the “I AM CAMPAIGN” video for the cosmetics brand HERA, Kim suggests we all take charge of our own lives and be the hero in it. It’s a statement made within the grammar of commercial advertising, but it’s also an opportunity for the public to clearly see what they can expect and fulfill when they look to him as a role model. By stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring and experimenting with both femininity and masculinity, drag culture is not only about disrupting gender stereotypes. Indeed, for many people who want to express their true selves unapologetically but are afraid of what society will think of them, it serves as a medium that presents a sense of liberation and exhilaration. Upon discovering the possibility of liberation from the norms of an always-follow-the-rules society, the public naturally shifts more toward curiosity about drag culture and becomes voluntary members of drag culture who enjoy and consume it. The achievement of this catharsis has played a crucial role in the explosion of public interest in drag culture in the 21st century.

Yet many people can’t eat even if the table is set for them. Nana Youngrong Kim’s success is not a natural outcome of external circumstances; the secret to his public appeal is his ability to turn ideas in his head into reality quickly. As he puts it, the ability to execute is his greatest weapon, and the ability is evident in his vast range of activities. Aside from stage performances, Kim’s range of activities is much broader than many other drag artists and includes movies, dramas, documentaries, music videos, modeling for brand campaigns, and commercials. In particular, he was the only Korean drag artist to hold gallery exhibitions last year and this year. In addition to being the subject of artworks, he prepared and organized the exhibitions as an executive director. He devised the ideas and concepts, organized the photoshoots, and cast and styled the models. Where does he find the drive to break out of his traditional role and try different things, proving the scalability of drag art? The answer lies in his attitude and perspective that drag can be anything.

With interest in drag rising to the surface of pop culture, Kim looks far beyond the obvious. The stereotype of the so-called “crossdresser”—in which many people believe that the only way to make drag art is to wear exaggerated makeup, wigs, colorful accessories, and show off one’s curved figure—is still very much alive and well. But if cross-dressing is not the premise of drag art, what is? Kim calls attention to the freedom of the performer to transform into whatever form they can imagine. The infinite possibilities for artists to express whatever they desire is what he considers the essence of drag art.

The concept for Kim’s first solo exhibition last year was inspired by the animation Eunbi & Kkabi’s Once Upon a Time and consisted of the series The Spotlight and Yellow Mamba. The character in the former series is Eunbi, who does things according to the rules, while the latter is Kkabi, who acts and does things according to her emotions. To this end, in The Spotlight, Kim played a stereotypical role of past drag—with voluminous hair styling, for example—while in Yellow Mamba, he wore a colorful yellow dress, black mask, and black boxing gloves to show the evolving direction of drag in the present clearly. When viewed through a timeline of past drag (with its long tradition) and contemporary drag (which is evolving into a new art form), Kim’s photographs demonstrate his confidence in the freedom to choose and present himself as he pleases. The heavy makeup and full-bodied hair in The Spotlight and the full-face, jet-black mask in Yellow Mamba are not devices to hide the self. On the contrary, they are tools for revealing himself more boldly. Kim understood the potential of drag art to be anything for unlimited expression and has reflected this through his activities. Kim’s flexible viewpoint can also be seen in his keen self-awareness.

You’ll often hear the word “persona” used to describe drag artists. Originating from the masks worn by actors during theatrical performances in ancient Greece, a persona is a public face that an individual presents to the public. It is different from their actual personality. Many drag artists set their own personas to the point where there’s a common understanding that drag artists build personas. It’s not unusual for someone so shy they can’t talk to strangers to create a persona and project a confident personality. Personas are very useful for outstanding performances. However, the gap between the persona and the real person they are offstage and in their daily lives is a common source of psychological turmoil for drag artists.

Interestingly, Nana Youngrong Kim, the most famous drag artist in Korea right now, is very clear when he says that he doesn’t have a persona. Just as he approaches his performances with the mindset that “a drag artist can be absolutely anything,” when it comes to self-perception, he simply accepts, affirms, and expresses the many qualities within him as they are. This was evident in his 2023 solo exhibition Na, Na. According to one of the exhibition’s main themes, “The Persona Prism,” the persona is Nana Youngrong Kim himself, and just as light spreads through a prism in all its natural colors, so too does the artist express various aspects of his inner self through the exhibition. In other words, it is the core of Kim’s artistic theme not to pretend to be something that is not already there in himself, but to fully show the various aspects that already exist within him.

Kim’s numerous forays into performing as a drag artist could easily be characterized as a time when he has challenged the conventional wisdom that you can’t do everything you want to do. Looking back on his path, Kim’s life has been filled with moments of choice, built on a belief in his own uniqueness, and executed with speed. This exhilarating resistance to accomplish so much is the essence of drag, which holds the potential for unlimited transformation. So perhaps a mundane and important lesson we can learn from Kim’s story is to set aside our stereotypes and recognize the often unbelievable truth: I, too, can be free. With the courageous conviction to express anything and everything, your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.