Fig. 31. Kim Hong Joo (김홍주 金洪疇, b. 1945). Untitled, 1993. Oil on canvas, 571/8 × 441/8 in. (145 × 112 cm). Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul Fig. 32 (opposite). Do Ho Suh (서도호 徐道濩, b. 1962). My/Our Country (우리 나라), 2014. Bronze, 53 × 76 × 35/8 in. (137 × 194.3 × 8 cm). Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul convey the mountain’s vastness and grandeur (昀椀g. 30). He with the opposing political ideologies. Realism became keeps to the tradition of placing diminutive 昀椀gures within the banner technique of the Minjung movement, while the landscape, but he enlivens them with expressive abstraction was o昀琀en seen as conservative.�� postures of active looking. The 昀椀gures wear traditional One of the few artists who refused to be categorized dress, which suggests to us that this is a scene from the is Kim Hong Joo, whose work captures the uncertainty past, a memory. A昀琀er becoming a South Korean citizen, in post- Minjung South Korea. Kim’s untitled painting from Byeon could no longer be one of those 昀椀gures enjoying 1993 is as much about the profound societal disruption Mount Geumgang—this landscape is a place that he e昀昀ected by rapid modernization as it is about place could not visit again. (昀椀g. 31). In this split composition, the lower half is a metic- A昀琀er decades of authoritarian rule, South Korea’s ulously painted so昀琀 grassland surrounding a reservoir. prodemocracy Minjung movement culminated in the At the dividing horizon line—an allusion to the partition 1980s with protests that were met with violent suppres- at the DMZ—the border of the pasture appears as sion. Nevertheless, this powerful movement led to arti昀椀cial as the blades of grass look real. In the upper half, constitutional changes and South Korea’s 昀椀rst demo- silk- screened photographs of new and old buildings cratic elections, in 1987. Like the political milieu, artists 昀氀oat alongside painted rootless trees and planted 昀椀elds were divided into factions, with certain styles associated within a 昀氀at, unpainted vertical plane. Looking again, we 28