Korean Folk Painting: Minhwa

The strange  animal, clearly outlined in black ink and bright colours  against a blank background without any horizon line, sits in front of a pine tree. Its  jaws are open, revealing a set of fang-like teeth and a pink tongue.  Oddly,  the pupils of the eyes are yellow rather than white, and it also seems to be cross-eyed, as one eye is looking straight up, the other to the side, giving it   a decidedly  demented, even ‘stoned,’ expression.  After a moment, we realize that the creature is looking at the magpie perched on a branch  of the tree. Maybe they are having a conversation.  One wouldn’t say this creature is very frightening. In fact, the impression is rather endearing. From the evidence of the zig-zag striped coat, it looks   like a very stylized depiction of a tiger, but then we notice that the chest is covered in leopard spots. So while this creature is certainly inspired by the real tigers  that used to roam  old Korea,   it is actually a strange mythical beast. Why was it painted? And why it is coupled with a magpie?

This Magpie-Tiger painting is from 19th century Korea, and is an especially famous example of  a specific genre within Minhwa (literally, ‘people’s art’),  the  most accessible  kind of traditional Korean art, and therefore an excellent way to introduce Korean traditional culture to the wider world.   The anonymous painter who made this delightful painting  was not concerned  with  making  a  realistic imitation  of a tiger or magpie. His goal   was to create a visually striking image  based on a fixed repertoire of themes with specific meanings and practical purposes. 

Minhwa  is characteristically optimistic. It aims to convey a world without sorrow and pain. It is   to be distinguished from the art of the nobility of the Korean Joseon dynasty, although  it  was also an intrinsic part of the lives of the royal court, and as such, Minhwa should not be confused with ‘folk art,’ in the sense of a kind of painting exclusively of the uneducated lower classes.  Nevertheless,  high culture in Joseon was dominated by Chinese cultural norms, and  put a premium on intellectual and philosophical properties in art, and as result, while Minhwa was part of the lives of the upper classes, it was denigrated as  stylistically crude, and as excessively bound to primitive superstition.   But it is argued that Minhwa actually displays more intrinsically Korean characteristics, which ultimately derive from folkloric influences that blend animistic shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. As such, no other country has  produced works comparable to Minhwa.

An example of Chaekgado - Book and object painting. A uniquely Korean style that blends elements of Western perspective with East Asian pictorial conventions

Both present-day Koreans and non-Koreans  are likely to find   Minhwa more than simply historically interesting.  In fact,  Minhwa   can seem strangely familiar, even to an Englishman like me.  This is because the dreams and hopes of the people of Joseon were not so very different from those of  the English today,  or from  anyone else.  They touch on the perennial desire for happiness and longevity.  The style in which these universal aspirations is visualized is also highly accessible to non-Koreans on a purely aesthetic level. The simple outlines, flat patterning, bold colours, stylization to the point of caricature,  and   subject-matter drawn from nature and everyday life, make Minhwa an art that connects  to a quasi-universal language of visual and stylistic preferences.  Consequently, while the specific cultural context with which Minhwa was produced has completely disappeared, and  although today people in the developed world  are no longer consciously  attached to an animistic worldview,  the pictorial values of Minhwa allows us to perceive  not only unsurmountable cultural differences but also a common share of cultural similarities. 

Images from a folding screen.

Minhwa has been categorized as ‘decorative art’, that is, as purely aesthetic in the narrow sense of being visually pleasing and functional.  But to describe Minhwa as ‘decorative art,’ is   misleading, because for those who owned such works  they were  not only beautiful but also useful because they were understood to be imbued with magical power.

Minhwa has also been  likened to the  expressionistic paintings of   modern artists like Picasso. Both comparisons are  misleading.  Minhwa cannot be described as ‘decorative’ in the Western sense because it is also symbolic, and functioned as part of the culture’s ritual processes.  But nor can it be described as  ‘expressionistic’ in the sense that modern Western painting is ‘expressionistic.’  Modern Western artists  were often directly inspired by ‘primitive’ art, although Korean Minhwa was largely unknown in the West in the early twentieth century, and certainly did not have the  impact  of Japanese prints and African tribal art. However, the qualities that attracted Western artist to non-Western art is clearly evident in Minhwa.  What Western artists were seeking in non-Western models was  alternative traditions to the one that dominated their culture, which derived from the Renaissance, and put a premium on the rational analysis of form, and the representational illusion of three dimension as on a two-dimensional surface using perspective.  Examples of non-Western art were appropriated as primarily  aesthetically atypical  phenomena with the capacity to subvert the norm, and their utility and symbolic function were ignored. For the avant-garde, ‘self-expression,’ ‘authenticity,’ ‘aesthetic autonomy,’ and ‘expressiveness’ were the most important artistic qualities, and   were linked to the capacity to innovate according to inner necessity. As a result,  emphasis was placed on the individualism of the style of the artist. Minhwa, by contrast is made by anonymous artists who followed specific pre-determined rules mandated by the requirements of their clientele, and they were committed to the expression of a clearly defined  consensual worldview.

The power of Minhwa  lies ultimately in the fact that it participates in a universal code – a common denominator for all living human beings, a core of desires and belief  that is tied to basic  human activities  like eating, defecating, procreating, sleeping, and aging. Furthermore, despite the ‘disenchantment’ that has come  with modernity, magical ways of thinking   persist, and they connect us to a power that cannot be fully accounted for according to strictly rational criteria. 

What  makes Minhwa  immediately accessible and appealing  to  both the modern Korean and  the non-Korean eye is not its  primarily role within a code that must be read like a text, and  depends on study.  Rather, we can respond directly to these painting’s extraordinary decorative and expressive force, which corresponds to experience as it occurs at the common human core more  directly than words. Minhwa  impacts  at a pre-verbal level  that is  also trans-cultural.  

Another example of Chaekgado on a folding screen.

Chaekgado on a folding screen.

Another popular theme: Flowers-and-Birds

THE GEESE ARE ARRIVING!

This is the time of year when thousands of Siberian geese, like these in the photograph above and at the end of this post, arrive in our neighbourhood for the winter. Hundreds fly directly over our village, usually in tight ‘V’ formation, but sometimes in more eccentric patterns. Soon they will be familiar visitors to the fallow rice fields around our village,where they often gather in huge numbers. Later, I’ll do a post on that spectacle, with a video so you get an idea of the noise they make.

Vast numbers of Siberian geese, white-naped and red-crowned cranes, as well as much less numerous black vulture, use the DMZ area seasonally. Black-faced spoonbills and swan geese, live here year-round. The accessible surrounding areas have become a popular destination for ‘twitchers’ in search of the rare water-birds  that find sanctuary in the paddy fields,   along the Han River delta, and in the extensive grasslands. But also Angora goats, and even the Amur leopard, the Asiatic black bear, and just perhaps, the otherwise long ago vanished from the peninsula, Siberian tiger, live within the DMZ.  In addition, rare species of flora, such as edelweiss, and previously undocumented species like a type of mushroom, have also been discovered there. 

For beyond the embankments, revetments, bunkers, barbed-wire fences and look-out posts,   out towards the great and forbidding unknown of  North Korea, the DMZ looks  uncannily primordial. This is because no humans,  or almost none, can set foot there.  Indeed, a myth that has grown up around the DMZ is that it is ecologically untouched and untouchable no-man’s-land, one within which nature escapes human control, and as a result thrives abundantly.

But the truth concerning the DMZ’s flora and fauna is actually more complicated.   Although the two sides are meant to stay out, human actions are still a constant threat to wildlife and vegetation. Mines abound, for example, and are set off regularly by animals. The area has also been the victim of concentrated showers of deadly defoliants, such as Agent Orange. The result, so it seems, have been some unintended deviations within the eco-system, such as vast populations of acacia trees, which are restricted elsewhere in South Korea because they have a tendency to crowd out all other trees, or the creeping perennial hogweed, an invader from its more usual habitats which are North America and Manchuria.

Anyway, here’s some more sky-writing.

A Visit to Panmunjom

A couple of years ago I visited Panmunjom for the first time. This is where Trump met Kim Jong-un, and where they crossed back and forth between the actual border between North and South in a nciely choreographed dance for the world Press. You can see the border in the picture above - a raised line running between the two blue buildings.

Panmujom is only a few miles from where I live, but you can’t just show up there, and have to take an officially sanctioned tour from Seoul, so I was part of a mixed bag of tourists, mostly Americans.

I noticed that the North Korean border guards  convey old-fashioned swagger through their facial expressions and postures,  as if they want to emulate actors from old war movies. This impression is increased by the cut of their uniforms, which seem to be caught in a time warp, circa 1953. In 2001, Christopher Hitchens had this to say about North Korea: “Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult”. The guards at Panmunjom apparently come from privileged and loyal families, and they are clearly an elite. So they tend to look well fed, and are often rather photogenic. Their South Korean counterparts, on the other hand, have adopted more contemporary Western role models, in line with the   soldier persona that transformed the wise-cracking ‘GI Joe’ into a muscle-bound ’Rambo’, and now into a ‘Terminator-style’ robotic automaton.

The South Korean MP’s wear reflective sunglasses, and stand in modified tae kwon do poses. They try to look super- or non-human, while the North Koreans’ facial expressions and postures register as far more ‘humanistic’, in the sense that they are permitted to be decidedly more individualized in their self-characterization. It strikes me that these North and South Korean men are acting out the roles their respective societies value highly. In the case of the North Koreans,  they strive to embody the state ideology of juche – signifying self-reliance or mastery, combined with absolute loyalty to the ruler. The South Koreans, by contrast, want to embody the alluring fantasy of the ‘cyborg’ - a being that is half-human, half-machine.

 North Korean guards show their curiosity.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

I live near the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone), a strip of land running across the entire Korean Peninsula, cutting it roughly in half by crossing the 38th parallel at an angle, with the west end lying south of the parallel and the eastern to the north. It is 155 miles long, approximately 2.5 miles wide and is the most heavily militarized border in the world. Where I live the DMZ is only fifty miles from Seoul, and at some points it dips even closer to the capital.

It was created with the cessation of fighting in the Korean War in 1953 (the war is officially still on, as no peace treaty was ever signed), and in fact consists of two lines of defenses marking the edges of a buffer zone spreading out on both sides of what is known as the central Military Demarcation Line - the true border between North and South Korea. This line, which only a few patrolling UN soldiers ever see, is indicated by a string of small yellow rusting metal signs written in English and Korean on one side and Chinese and Korean on the other. The Southern limits of the buffer zone are established by substantial defense line (and presumably something similar exists at the Northern side).

Our village is surrounded by army bases, so we often see soldiers, and hear the sound of rifles and machine guns, and occasionally, bigger ordnance. Sometimes, helicopters fly over on their way too Panmunjom, ten miles away, which is where the two sides have meetings, and the only place along the DMZ where you can cross over from one Korea to another - Trump, Kim Jong-un, and Moon Jae-in all stepped back and forth recently, which made for a good photo opportunity. From the roof on our house we can see the mountains of North Korea beyond the Imjin River. At night, isolated lights appear near the peaks of the closest – lookout positions, no doubt. Sometimes, I imagine North Korean soldiers peering at us through binoculars.

I feel as if I’m at the edge of the world – the known world, or maybe the 'Americanized' world. It’s a bit like being located on a map from the Middle Ages next to the area designated terra incognita. There can’t be many such places left on Earth today, certainly not ones that are entirely humanly constructed, in this case, the result of a temporary political expedient thought up by American engineers at the end of World War Two, which has since gotten frozen into place.

In fact, nothing much has happened along the DMZ in the period since it was established. Ironically, as long as you abide by the strict rules imposed, the DMZ is undoubtedly a much safer place to be than Gangnam, the busy downtown district in south Seoul, and certainly safer than London or New York. Nevertheless, occasionally bad things have happened. Between 1966 and 1969 there were several confrontations; in 1968 alone 181 serious violations in and around the DMZ resulted in the deaths of 145 South Koreans and 17 US soldiers, and an unspecified number of North Koreans. In 1976, down near Panmunjom, the most infamous incident took place - what became known as the Axe Murder Incident, in which North Korean soldiers hacked to death two US officers who had ventured out with a crew to prune a tree obstructing surveillance. Occasionally, North Korean soldiers defect across the DMZ, the most dramatic being a year or so ago when a soldier ran across the line at Panmunjom itself.

Today, the business of postmodern warfare is being conducted otherwise. Paul Virilio outlines the transition: from obstruction, to destruction, to communication. From castles, to artillery, to technologies of information control - the ‘information bomb’ and weapon-systems of elusive interactivity. Anachronistically, the DMZ perpetuates the first stages of warfare – it is all ‘ramparts’, ‘shields’ and ‘elephants’. But contemporary war-making has also moved on beyond the second phase - old-fashioned destruction. For, as Virilio notes, what in 1983 he was calling ‘Pure War’, characterised above all by speed, by 2007 when he published a new edition of his book, Pure War: Twenty-Five Years Later, had ceded to ‘Impure War’ or ‘Infowar’. Contemporary warfare is asymmetric and transpolitical, inaugurating a dangerous new era of belligerent ‘metropolitics’ in which the focus of aggression is the city, the camouflage of choice a sweatshirt, jeans and backpack. “Pure War is still around,” Virilio clarifies: “it’s still possible to press the button and send out missiles – Korea can do it, Iran can do it, and so can others; but in reality the real displacement of strategy is in this fusion between hyper-terrorist civil war and international war, to the point that they’re indistinguishable.”

DMZ tourism is on the rise. You can, for example, do bus tours of the zone, and visit three tunnels dug by the North Koreans. Their height and width is decidedly claustrophobic, and for me, a tall Westerner, very low, though probably not for the soldiers of what Christopher Hitchens called the “nation of racists dwarfs”. There are bicycle tracks, an annual marathon, and art exhibitions - one, called REAL DMZ, in which I participated in 2012. There are cycle routes. The area covered by DMZ itself is an accidental nature reserve, giving some idea of what things would be like without human interference.

You could say that the DMZ has been increasingly normalized.