Title: Paradise in Anyang
Year: 2005
Illustrator: Nikorn Studio
Volume: 1
Page: 64
Publisher: Navin Production Co., Ltd.
Related Exhibition/Project: Paradise Sala

A story of forbidden love, Paradise in Anyang begins with our hero Pandit, a Thai Ph.D. student in Hawaii getting drunk with his Korean friend Raymond. Flying in from Korea, Raymond’s sweetheart Oh Hwan Hee is a painter researching the notion of paradise. Feeling unwell, Raymond suggests Hwan Hee study with Pandit to get a unique Thai Buddhist perspective. While the two begin to bond Raymond is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He tells Pandit the awful news but doesn’t want his girlfriend to find out. Raymond asks Pandit to console the distraught Hwan Hee, which he does with the seeds of new romance being planted.

Unable to paint due to her sadness, Hwan Hee returns to Korea, while Pandit continues to seek the truth about paradise. He makes Hwan Hee a book on the subject, making a surprise visit to Korea to present it to her, but despite this she still cannot paint. Dejected, Pandit wanders her hometown of Anyang, where he happens across an old woman under a gazebo, and tells her of his woes. Realising he is Thai, the old woman recounts how she loved a Thai soldier during the Korean War, and how he disappeared before he could learn she was carrying his child. Moved to action, Pandit professes his love to Hwan Hee, but she says her family won’t approve of a foreign boyfriend. Thinking he has been rejected, Pandit returns to Thailand to teach, unbeknownst that Hwan Hee was in an accident and is now in a wheelchair.

Pandit’s best friend Navin visits him in Chiang Mai, telling him about a unique gazebo painting he saw during a trip to Anyang. Shocked, Pandit returns to Korea where he is reunited with his love and her mother, who turns out to be the same old woman he met years before. The couple is married and the story ends in 2010 with Pandit, Hwan Hee, and their young child sitting under the gazebo happy to have found their own private paradise.