Korea has been divided into South and North since the Korean War. Growing up under my father who was forced to flee to south during the war, I felt the sadness and longing of someone displaced from our home, and all my life I lived with the hope and expectation for the reunified Korea one day. Nowadays, globally, there seems to be a strong interest in the Korean peninsula. However, it is unfortunate that the actual human rights situation in North Korea has not been put on the negotiation table.
For a long time I sought for some means to respond to the turmoil and tragedies of my nation, a way for me to ease the grief in my heart. And my art has allowed me to channel my anger and sorrow into the arduous yet cathartic process of healing. My art is done in a ritualistic manner meant to speak healing to the wounded spirits, praying for eradication of the roots of their sorrow. I know there is no way I could possibly understand their hardship. But even so, with their cries of anguish ringing in my heart, I just burn and burn, because I can imagine no other method that could do justice to the depth of their suffering.
For the past 70 years, North Korea has sent countless people to political prison camps to maintain its dictatorship, and so many lives perished there. There are about 120,000 people still trapped and dying. The human rights of these prison camps are said to be the absolute worst on earth right now. Also, countless people were executed at the hands of firing squads more than 300 places, and this senseless tragedy continues to this day. Moreover, the incredible fact of nearly hundreds of thousands North Korean women being trafficked to China truly breaks my heart. Many facts are being revealed by the testimonies of more than 35,000 defectors who have managed to escape throughout the past decades.
My art deals with political issues, but I have simplified my forms and colors as much as possible in an effort to show my emotions in both an immense and minimal manner. Of course, there is also the strong desire to inform North Korea of the repression of human rights through my works. It is my hope that the history of past 70 years is known, remembered, and declared. Through this process, I hope to demarcate each loss, woven together by the collective experiences of this history. When freedom and human rights are restored in North Korea I will no longer write these fiery poems of lament.
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For a long time I sought for some means to respond to the turmoil and tragedies of my nation, a way for me to ease the grief in my heart. And my art has allowed me to channel my anger and sorrow into the arduous yet cathartic process of healing. My art is done in a ritualistic manner meant to speak healing to the wounded spirits, praying for eradication of the roots of their sorrow. I know there is no way I could possibly understand their hardship. But even so, with their cries of anguish ringing in my heart, I just burn and burn, because I can imagine no other method that could do justice to the depth of their suffering.
For the past 70 years, North Korea has sent countless people to political prison camps to maintain its dictatorship, and so many lives perished there. There are about 120,000 people still trapped and dying. The human rights of these prison camps are said to be the absolute worst on earth right now. Also, countless people were executed at the hands of firing squads more than 300 places, and this senseless tragedy continues to this day. Moreover, the incredible fact of nearly hundreds of thousands North Korean women being trafficked to China truly breaks my heart. Many facts are being revealed by the testimonies of more than 35,000 defectors who have managed to escape throughout the past decades.
My art deals with political issues, but I have simplified my forms and colors as much as possible in an effort to show my emotions in both an immense and minimal manner. Of course, there is also the strong desire to inform North Korea of the repression of human rights through my works. It is my hope that the history of past 70 years is known, remembered, and declared. Through this process, I hope to demarcate each loss, woven together by the collective experiences of this history. When freedom and human rights are restored in North Korea I will no longer write these fiery poems of lament.
[email protected]