This study originated from the aspiration that an artistic practice addressing civilian victims of the Korean War might play a modest role in revealing concealed pain within contemporary art.
Although the works engage with the darkness of the Korean W...
This study originated from the aspiration that an artistic practice addressing civilian victims of the Korean War might play a modest role in revealing concealed pain within contemporary art.
Although the works engage with the darkness of the Korean War era, they do not regard it as merely a matter of the past. Rather, they embody the belief that if the victims are summoned into collective memory and encountered in the present, they can exist as contemporaries alongside us.
This perspective seeks to recognize and remember unresolved historical trauma as a form of contemporary darkness. The awareness and remembrance of the shadows cast by the Korean War are understood as a potential source of light within that darkness, grounded in Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy of contemporaneity. In this study, the erasure of names and the disappearance of civilian victims of the Korean War from memory are perceived as manifestations of contemporary darkness and ambiguity.
The suffering of the elderly, women, and children is regarded as the central axis of this darkness. They were others who were not granted personal protection during the war, and even after becoming “dead others,” they remain unable to escape oppression and marginalization.
In some cases, despite having suffered victimization by allied forces, only a perfunctory signboard remains at the site, or even such markers are difficult to locate. The researcher perceives this as the reverse side, fissure, and shadow of reality.
From this awareness emerges the recognition that events grounded in the undeniable reality of the Korean War, yet socially neglected, can serve as the background of modern fantastical poetry. Fantastical poetry subverts concealed and distorted reality by revealing its dark underside, fissures, and shadows.
Through a fantastical-poetic sensibility, this study seeks to summon civilian victims of the Korean War into the present and express them through visual art. Modern fantastical poetry approaches the unconscious—imbued with oppression and alienation experienced by the powerless—through a psychoanalytic perspective, revealing the “void” within reality.
This study understands the treatment of civilian victims of the Korean War as such an empty reality and integrates it with the characteristics of fantastical poetry to express “fantastical-poetic art.”This fantastical-poetic art constitutes contemporary art that embraces both the historicity of the Korean War and personal narratives, engaging with Agamben’s philosophical discourse on the darkness of the age through visual practice. In visual expression, grotesque elements are emphasized, just as the distancing of civilian victims from memory is depicted as the uncanny within narrative.
This is because the protagonists appearing in fantastical-poetic art are “dead others” alienated from the memory of reality. The absence of a boundary between the victims’ time and lives and our own time and lives in the present is defined as “ambiguity.” Tzvetan Todorov identifies ambiguity as a core element of fantastical poetry. As time continues and life persists, this continuity within art transcends linear temporality and summons the past into the present as contemporary. Therefore, within such a Menippean temporality unconstrained by chronological time, civilian victims of the Korean War can be summoned into the present. Through fantastical poetry and fantastical-poetic art, this study expresses the darkness of the age and ambiguous reality—the “void,” the reality behind reality. This study examines “dead others” by distinguishing between “those whose names have disappeared” and “those who have revived their lost names themselves.” “Those whose names have disappeared” include victims of the Bodo League massacres, the bombing victims of Sammachi Pass in Gangwon Province, and detained civilians at the Geoje Prisoner-of-War Camp. “Those who revived their lost names themselves” are the victims of the No Gun-ri Incident, who brought the event to global attention through foreign media and received an official statement of regret from the United States. They also led to the enactment of the No Gun-ri Special Act, thereby inscribing their own history into the realm of public history. This study presents their narratives through fantastical-poetic art that renders the invisible visible. Accordingly, Chapter 2 examines how contemporaneity and fantasy are expressed in the researcher’s work, while Chapter 3 explores how these are addressed from the standpoint of the Other. The perspective of the Other is conveyed through “Voice Drawings,” drawings created by survivors of the Korean War. These are conceptual artworks grounded in real individuals and specific sites, and are expected to function as healing through art for the victims. This study further hopes that both the victims of the Korean War and viewers may discover the “void” within reality and extend it into a lived experience of time and life enriched with warmth and care. In this way, fantastical poetry is written through visual art, and fantastical-poetic art is expressed through the “Voice Drawings” of the Other. Through contemporary art addressing oppression and alienation experienced by civilian victims of the Korean War, this study enables the victims to coexist as contemporaries in the present. Empathy toward oppression and alienation becomes an opportunity to reflect upon the void within reality. Experiencing this through art in the contemporary moment extends into reflection and remembrance for the future. This serves as a meaningful historical and social catalyst, and as a light for healing and peace within the darkness of the Korean War.