The dominance of Dansaekhwa continued into the 1970s. However, by the
1980s it was seen as being elitist and out of touch. This decade saw the rise
of politically active artists, who argued that art should reflect social
reality. Their art became integral to the Minjung movement and its call for
social and political change. Chapter five examines the characteristics of Minjung
art and explores its broader significance. In their search for a visual
language that spoke for the Korean collective also Minjung artists turned to
Korean traditions.
Minjung (민중, 民衆) means the
people or the masses, and the Minjung cultural movement was based on the
communality of the oppressed masses. Minjung art was initially not an art
movement but a radical reaction to the political dictatorship and the Gwangju uprisings
of the 1980s. As such it was the subject matters and messages of the art works,
rather than their style and technique that linked the artists. Like Dansaekhwa artists,
Minjung artists were interested in expressing Korean identity in art, but in
contrast to Dansaekhwa artists, for them Korean identity was found in folk art
from pre-colonial times.
Artists:
- Ha Chong-hyun 하종현
(1935-) - Kwon Young Woo 권영우 (1926-2013)
- Lee U-fan 이우환
(1936-) - Lim Ok-sang 임옥상
(1950-) - Oh Youn 오윤 (1946-1986)
- Kim Bong-jun 김봉준 (1954-)
- Shin Hak-chul 신학철
(1943-)
Chungmoo. “The Minjung Culture Movement and the Construction of Popular Culture
in Korea.” In South Korea’s Minjung Movement. The Culture and Politics of
Dissidence, edited by Kenneth M. Wells, 105-118. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 1995.
Horlyck, Charlotte. “Art and Politics of the 1980s and
mid 1990s.” In Korean Art from the 19th Century to the Present,
133-164. London: Reaktion Books, 2017. [detailed discussion of Minjung art, and arts
of the 1990s, including Kwangju and Venice Biennales]
Han, Jin 한진. Modernization and Nationalism:
The Rise of Social Realism in South Korea (1980-1988). PhD thesis, City
University of New York, 2005.
Hoffmann, Frank. “Images of Dissent.
Transformation in Korean Minjung Art.” Harvard Asia Pacific Review 1,
no. 2 (Summer 1997): 44-49.
Miyoshi Jagger, Sheila. Narratives
of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe,
2003. DK320.54 /861497 [this links to
the discussion of national heroes]
Kim Bok-young 김복영. “The Period of Conflict and
Confrontation.” In Korean Contemporary Art, edited by Korean Culture and
Arts Foundation, Hexa Communications, 39-92. Seoul: Hexa Communications, 1995.
Kim Jeong-hwan김정환.
“Painter Lim Ok-sang: A People’s Artist Mediating Between the Everyday and the
Mounumental.” Koreana, 17, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 44-49. https://issuu.com/the_korea_foundation/docs/2003_01_e_b_a
Korean Rhapsody. A
Montage of History and Memory. Exh. Cat.
Seoul: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, 2011.
Lee, Namhee. The Making of
Minjung. Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007. [excellent discussion of
Minjung]
Sung, Wan-kyung. “The Rise and Fall of
Minjung Art.” In Being Political Popular: South Korean Art at the
Intersection of Popular Culture and Democracy, 1980-2010, edited by Sohl
Lee, 188-203. Irvine, CA: UCI Irvine, 2012.
Wells, Kenneth M. (ed.). South Korea’s
Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1995. [Electronic resource in SOAS Library]
Yim Haksoon. “Cultural Identity and Cultural
Policy in South Korea.” The International Journal of Cultural Policy 8,
no. 1 (2002): 37-48. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10286630290032422
“Minjun Art, an art movement, was born in the 1980s amid South
Korea’s semi-dictatorial democratization movement. It is a realist art that attempts
to express the political oppression and social contradictions that have become apparent
due to the continuation of dictatorships, rapid industrialization, and changes in
the social structure from the standpoint that the subject of history is the people.
This artistic expression, which was born in the field of struggle with the emergence
of various groups, is not merely transient, but inherits the culture of resistance
that the Korean people have nurtured throughout modern history in their quest for
human liberation. It is precisely Korean minjun art that has created an expression
that connects history and the present, and it can be said that it is not a product
of the past, but an ongoing process. In this essay, through the works of Minjun
artists, we will decipher the unique and vivid visual language that emerged in
the independent and self-imposed context of Koreans, which is not a transplant of
Western art.”