[imText4]That’s the message Song Byok, both a painter and a North Korean defector, is hoping to spread through the works in his maiden exhibition, “Part One: freedom of our land” at Gaia Gallery in Insadong.
His works for the exhibition, which began on the 26th and runs through February 1st, depict the past, present and future of North Korea as he sees it. One painting that he says illustrates a possible future for North Korea has a short note accompanying it, “The eternal freedom we desire is a task for us all despite our disparate histories, and a utopian dream we all share.”
One wall of the gallery is dedicated to messages of support left by visitors. It abounds with expressions of desire for the freedom of both halves of the Korean Peninsula, for example “Freedom for North Korea!” and “Hang in there, people! Freedom isn’t far away…”
Throughout, Song himself sits alone at a small table inside the gallery, handing out pamphlets and explaining his works to those who have come to look around.
One such visitor, Kim Sang Mee, says she came to the exhibit after stumbling across one of Song’s caricatures of Kim Jong Il on the internet. “I was always interested in these sorts of things because they’re not just images; there are articles that relate to the images too,” she explains.
“The artist’s memories of North Korea seem different to those which the people in the south imagine”, Kim added. “Generally speaking we express what we think about North Korea openly, whereas the artist seems to be expressing his version of North Korea more indirectly. I wonder if perhaps that’s because of his memories of oppression,” she reflected.
Another visitor, Cho Eun Hee, said, “When you look at his works it feels like there is a difference in his vision of the color red. Like you see with the ‘Red Devils’ (the South Korean football team), the colour red is a positive image to us, but it seems that when he uses it, it is mainly in a negative light.”
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