Retrospective Witnessing: Paintings of Grievous Deaths in the Korean War

ABSTRACT

This article examines visual arts that represent the mass killings of unarmed civilians by the state before and during the Korean War (1950–1953). It analyses three South Korean artists, Kang Yo-bae, Suh Yongsun and Jeon Seung-il, who produced paintings that made direct reference to the grievous and unjust civilian deaths, a taboo subject that is still controversial in a society bound by the unfinished war. This article seeks to contribute to the critical inquiry into the long-delayed yet urgent issue of historical injustice from the perspective of visual representation. It draws attention to the following questions: how the artists establish relations with the violent past, vicariously and retrospectively; how they represent the grievous deaths in critical, imaginative and affective modes of visual expression; and how their paintings participate in a socially engaged act of ethical witnessing. The article further considers how their works are in dialogue with and simultaneously depart from the official investigative attempts in approaching the notion of truth. It argues that the paintings enact a communicative practice of mourning that mediates the living and the dead, without anticipating premature reconciliation.

KEYWORDS:

• Art
• Korea
• visual representation
• witnessing
• postmemory
• trauma
• Korean War
• civilian massacres
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the artists, Kang Yo-bae, Suh Yongsun and Jeon Seung-il, who shared their stories of art and their lives with me. I am grateful to Abidin Kusno, Meiqin Wang, Jooyeon Rhee, and other participants at the workshop, “The Living Past: Disaster, Trauma and Visual Art in East Asia”, held at York University in March 2019, and the anonymous reviewers, for their constructive comments on this article. I am also thankful to the editors of Asian Studies Review for their support for this article. Additional thanks go to Yoon-jin Jung for editing the figures.

Notes

1. The TRCK dealt with a wide range of human rights violations but most applications related to cases of civilian massacres before and during the Korean War. It aimed at truth-finding, restoration of honour to stigmatised victims, and reconciliation by collecting testimonies, acquiring documents and conducting excavations of burial sites (D. Kim, 2010; 2013).

2. The Camellia has Fallen was exhibited at Hakgojae Gallery in Seoul, at Sejong Gallery in Jeju, and in other cities in 1998, in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the April Third uprising.

3. Suh’s major exhibitions dedicated to the Korean War include Memory, Representation and Suh Yongsun’s 6.25, held in 2013 at Korea University Museum in Seoul on the 60^th anniversary of the war’s provisional ceasefire, which included a total of 92 artworks; and Pain, Symptoms and Signs: The Remaking of History in Suh Yongsun’s Painting, held in 2019 at White Block Art Center in Paju, which included a total of 106 artworks.

4. The notion of truth is a complex one. It can be approached as a much more dynamic process than a verification of pieces of facts (Jeon, 2010). Initially, the TRCK modelled itself on South Africa’s TRC (1995–2002), which was established after the abolition of apartheid and used a reconciliatory approach rather than a retributive justice method. Yet, the TRCK was different from the TRC in many respects. One of the differences is that South Africa’s process recognised more notions of truth, including narrative, social and restorative as well as factual truth.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-OLU-2250001).