The image significant: identity in contemporary Korean video art.

More than 30 years haw passed since Paik Nam June's 1965 exhibition Electronic TV at the Cafe a Go-Go, where he proclaimed in an artist's talk that the cathode ray tube would soon replace the canvas. Since then, Paik and his Portapak video camera have become legend and his work is in museums around the world. But while there is extensive reference to Paik, little attention has been given to other video artists from Korea. Despite the almost overwhelming stature afforded to Paik within Korean art circles and Korean society as a whole (Paik was featured in a series of TV and print advertisements for electronics giant Samsung), contemporary Korean video artists have concentrated their efforts on issues of identity. Instead of embracing Paik's use of the video monitor as a stationary sculptural object, younger Korean artists have expanded upon the notion of antipodality - that feeling of being neither here nor there. The images that many contemporary Korean video artists employ refer specifically to Korean culture or history, yet they also introduce broader topics, most importantly the issue of identity: Identity, in this context, is defined as that sense of serf that distinguishes a particular culture or individual from other cultures and individuals. Is identity based on universal characteristics not tied to any specific culture or background or is it something that is inherently bound to culture, ethnicity and nation? If it is inherently hound to the latter, what is each artist's take on this shared pool of memories, history and cultural codes?

Unpacking the dense content of the images with regard to identity in contemporary Korean video art is not the only task at hand. Questions of how these images play into or resist the assumptions of a particular audience must also be raised. There is a conflict between the natural and almost inevitable reliance on specific "Korean" imagery and the equally pressing demand to make the works relevant to a wider audience. Do the artists unconsciously or consciously compromise their own unique identities in order to meet the demands of their audiences or is identity a concept that cannot be separated from the response of the audience?

Unlike Paik, who concerns himself largely with abstract concepts bordering on neo-Dadaism, the artists discussed here - Park Hyun Ki, Yook Keun Byung, Kim Soo Ja, Seo Hyeon Seok, Park Hwa Young and Hong Sung Min - all incorporate images that are highly specific and relevant to a distinctly Korean audience. Many of these artists exhibit work in international contexts to audiences who may be unable to read the subtle cues and metaphors embedded in the given images. A conflict arises when images lose their meaning in a non-Korean context: and when there is the possibility that they may only be relevant in a Korean setting. Although this problem of meaning confronts all artists using cultural or national images or allusions, these artists argue that the imagery they use is simple enough to be universal. Seo says the images belong to "no one specific era, place or culture" and that art is an "individual and highly, subjective experience."(1)

The flip side of this argument is that the depth of their work is lost because the non-Korean audience cannot decipher their intended allusions. What happens, for example, when the text-based collaborative effort of Seo, Park Hwa Young and Hong is presented to a non-Korean speaking audience? Imagery might survive the translation process to the extent that the audience will understand the gist of the images, but the full meaning, which is highly dependent, on the accompanying text, is lost. The success of these artists in the West suggests that the use of these images might be catered to a Eurocentric art world that still insists on fixed notions of the foreign. Works that consequently do well in the Korean art market are often by artists that succeed in this patently western framework and as a result, contemporary artists must respond to western demands in order to make a viable living.

The resulting tension between these arguments regarding the underlying motivation for the images is the one link between the otherwise disparate contemporary video artists of Korea. In terms of style, each artist converses in a different vernacular because of generational differences. Contemporaries of Paik, such as Park Hyun Ki, tend to consider the television monitor and the televised image as static sculptural forms in and of themselves. To use the framework set forth by Roland Barthes, if the emitting agent is the artist and the receptor is the audience, the transmission, or the work itself, is a crystallized form of the artist's vision.(2) For Park, video art is a contemporary means to convey timeless images (or signifiers, since the images themselves may not convey a sense of timelessness to everyone) of spirituality, but the television monitors in his work concurrently exist as totemic sculptures. The resemblance between his stacked monitors and conventional sculpture trips an unconscious signal in the viewer's mind denoting the works as "high" art. At the same time, however, the vernacular that Park chooses is specific to a distinctly Korean context.

Born in 1942, Park Hyun Ki has always been interested in the link between spirituality and technology, issues that could be considered universal, at least in countries dealing with the conflict between industrialization and tradition. Although his formal development has progressed from a conception of the video monitor as art object: to a more sophisticated merging of video and nature, Park has remained faithful to the idea of transcendence. Inspired by Paik's works exhibited at the U.S. Cultural Center in Seoul in 1974, Park's early work such as his untitled series (1976-79), revolved around the deification of the video monitor. Consisting of a monitor sandwiched within a column of stones, the vertical alignment was reminiscent of totemic piles placed on mountainsides across Korea, in keeping with shamanistic customs: passersby may make a wish by placing a stone on top of a larger stone, creating a cairn as a kind of materialized prayer to the gods. Park's initial intent was to reflect ancestral ideas of beauty: "I saw an old man piling up stones, like a child, saying that one represented him and the other his hat. The peace and harmony of the stone, the man and the place where the stone pile was raised, opened my eyes to the beauty of Korean traditions which are based on harmony with nature."(3) The monitor, part of the process of worship by virtue of its inclusion in the "wish" column of stones, is retranslated as an emblem of hope, yearning and desire. The utter starkness and lack of pretense denoted by the bare exhibition space and restraint in the quality and scope of the materials imbues this work with a Cagean simplicity. While the notion of unity between nature and beauty might be considered a universal message, the means by which Park relates this message cannot be considered as such. Park seems to assert that his work reflects the idea of natural beauty and serenity as an integral part of the cultural identity of Korea which happens to coincide with other cultures as well.

Park's more recent work departs from the use of distinctly Korean symbolism but still retains its ties to Korean culture. Water Series, exhibited in 1997 at the Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art in Kyongju, is a primary example. Instead of vertically-oriented projections, this work uses images horizontally-aligned on the exhibition floor. Generated by projecting an image of waves onto cubes of artificial stone, the projections resembled small ponds. Measuring 2.7 x 1.8 meters, the magnitude of these projections alluded to the drinking and poetry-composing parties held by the nobility of the Chosun Dynasty (1392-1910). Such parties would often take place by a lake or river and Park's projections invite the viewer to engage in similar contemplation. The viewer looks down into the projection, thus drawing the gaze inward as he or she becomes pulled into the expanse of "water" shimmering enticingly in the darkness of the gallery. Despite the allusion to traditional poetry-composing parties, the imagery is neutral in the sense that both a Korean and non-Korean audience are on the same footing with regard to the depth of possible interpretation.

Some of Park's other works, however, like Mandala Series (1997), appear too eager to straddle multiple frames of reference. One of Park's most frequently exhibited works, shown in a range of venues including the Jooksan International Arts Festival in Park's hometown of Taegu and the Kim Foster Gallery in New York City, it is an effective but problematic amalgamation of spirituality and multimedia. A round clay mandata (Sanskrit for "whole world" or "healing circle") on the floor reflects a montage of images derived from Buddhism such as the Buddha of a Thousand Hands and a Thousand Eyes and floral and animal motifs. This montage, accompanied by a soundtrack of traffic and chatter as well as sounds of human sexual activity, represents a break from the serene imagery of Park's more static installations. The insertion of material from pornographic video soundtracks functions as a subversive undercurrent that posits a different variation on the idea of transcendence. Transcendence is no longer limited to lofty contemplation or meditative references, but also includes the fulfillment of sexual desire. At the same time, this makes the work ambiguous, given the idea of Buddhist Nirvana as freedom from all desire, including sexual desire. Two opposing levels of being, transcendence and satiation, coexist in Park's work. It is neither one nor the other; it is a discontinuous work that escapes the dialectic of the straightforward transmitter-receiver relationship implied by the television monitor. The problem with the imagery used in Park's works is its readiness to play into Western stereotypes of Asian inscrutability, common in critical reception of contemporary Asian abstract work as well as in the general media where the stereotype of the all-knowing wise sage still lingers today.

Yook (b. 1957) uses more readily digestible imagery that appeals to, or at least can be found in, a myriad of cultures. Ethnic-specific allusions still function as an added dimension in his work, however, reinforcing the idea that identity is at once universal and specific. Yook spent his formative years under the martial law regime of former South Korean President Park Chung Hee in the early 1970s. It was during this period that censorship in Korea reached its peak and as a result, Yook became particularly aware of the power of images. Yook addresses and digests Korea's past history of repression and oppression in his "eye" installations (1993-99). These works generally feature a television monitor embedded in a larger object. The monitor shows a rapid montage of stills, including some that appear to be film footage taken from battle or war scenes and others that depict a large, blinking eye. The video loops give Yook's work a carefully edited and staged quality that connotes image manipulation, relevant even in contemporary times where the suppression and control of images under the guise of censorship, or "decency," still persist. It is interesting that Yook chooses to use loops of cinematic images, especially since it is the motion picture industry that has been the hardest hit by such censorship.(4) Yook's inclusion of war images is also a moderate form of rebellion that at the very least is an attempt to extricate himself from the otherwise apolitical nature of Korean cultural production that frequently revolves around abstract works with no overt sociopolitical content.

Initially shown at the 1995 Lyon Biennale, Yook's video installation, The Sound of Landscape + Eye for Field = Survival is History (1995) demonstrates the artist's attempt to develop a coherent form of expression that will relate the same kind of message to a wide audience, Korean or otherwise. The work is made, in part, of a giant industrial pipe measuring 2.4 meters in width and almost 8 meters in length. At one end of the pipe is a circular video screen that displays recurring images of walking skeletons, wars and natural catastrophes. A constant still of an eye is projected at the top of this circular screen. The eye functions as an omniscient presence hovering above the images and harks back to Yook's own childhood in which he spied on neighbors through knotholes and cracks. The eye is an interrogative force, an all-seeing agent that demands the attention of its audience. The recurring image of the eye recalls the work of German artist Gerd Belz (b. 1955), which depicts the camera as a cyclops-like figure. Yook's work is also reminiscent of Bill Viola's I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like (1986), which features a still of an owl's pupils. Like this work, Yook's installations are pupils: we, the audience, see our own flawed images as reflected by scenes of war, struggle and destruction.

Rather than existing as passive: objects intended only for public viewing, or public consumption, however, the disconcerting nature of the works stems from the fact that they reciprocate the viewer's gaze. Like Paik's TV Buddha (1974), an installation of the Buddha watching his own image on television, Yook's work is based on an interactive process. Like Paik, Yook aims for transcendence, a quality that at first seems diametrically opposed to any construction of a specific identity: "I decided to base my work on something that represents the universe. I chose the eye as my symbol because it best represents mankind, who in turn, best represents the universe."(5) For Yook, the exchange between the work of art and the viewer reflects the eye's role as both the "medium through which we perceive, as well as the medium through which others see us."

The Sound of Landscape + Eye for Field = Rendez Vous (1992), exhibited at the 1992 Documenta IX in Kassel, Germany, underscores this role of both the eye and the work as a receptor of the audience. In this piece, a video monitor featuring a single blinking eye was embedded face up in a sod-covered mound. The placement of the monitor was low enough so that any adult could look directly into the screen. The gently sloping mounds reflected the small hill-like graves found in Korea.(6) Here, Yook mixes the universal icon of the eye with the allusion represented by the mound. In traditional Korean necrology, the size of the grave mound corresponds to the socioeconomic stature of the deceased (analogous to the connection between rank and pyramid size in ancient Egypt). Compared to most graves that rise but a few feet from the surface, the size of Yook's particular mound suggested that what was buried under the sod was of great value. "People sometimes refer to the past as being dead, but that isn't true," asserts Yook. The height and size of the mound support this assertion as well as Yook's need to memorialize the past by making these strong allusions to graves that are akin to monuments. The mound appears as an upright breast, thus signifying the beginning of life, or the act of nurturing. The past buried inside the mound, then, is synonymous with the conception of the future and the development of the present.

The simultaneity of past, present and future also operates in the works of Kim (b. 1957), but ethnic-specific imagery is more prominent. As a result, Kim becomes a proactive agent in dealing with various audiences. For Kim, the video screen becomes an ideal location to resituate the image of the bottari, a recurring icon that has been part of her work since the early 1990s. Bottari are the lengths of cloth used throughout Korea to bundle and transport various goods of different shapes and sizes. Kim used this image to probe the relationship between the tactile, as denoted by the wrapped cloths, and the visual, symbolized by the video screen in Sewing for Walking, a multimedia installation first completed in 1994 for a solo exhibition at the Somi Gallery in Seoul. This exhibition consisted of a V-shaped formation of television monitors each topped by a small bottari. Men's shirts in hues of primarily dull gray and brown covered the floor and visitors were invited to step on them. A hidden camera was perched diagonally on the last monitor situated at the back of the gallery space so that the image of each visitor was seen on each of the monitors. This projection, Kim notes, "was to give each visitor the impression that the exhibition room itself was a kind of bottari, a wrapped space engulfing the viewer."(7) Kim has thus concerned herself with spatial issues readable by any audience.

Yet the bottari is often read by Western audiences as a patently feminine image because of its allusions to sewing and weaving. It is also read as a definitively "Korean" image, thus undercutting, the idea that identity in a Korean context is something that is fragmented, complex and complicated. While it would be disingenuous to say that Kim was unaware that her work might be :read as "ethnic" or feminist, to confine her work to one particular theory would be to marginalize it. Such categorization subsequently becomes an imposition of identity - a generalized identity is thrust upon Kim, the individual.

Despite the danger of categorization and simplification posed by the label of being "Korean," the ethnic-specific aspect of the bottari in and of itself is extremely complex, encompassing several stylistic, social and personal meanings. Non-Korean audiences might choose to simplify the bottari as emblematic of a singular "Koreanness." However, it represents a number of different experiences. For an older Korean audience, the bottari symbolize the Korean War in which thousands of families gathered their most precious belongings to flee the Communists; for older Korean women in particular, bottari are synonymous with marriage. "To pack up one's bottari" is a Korean phrase that means departure, especially in regard to young wives leaving their family homes for the last time. During the Cities on the Move project (1997) in which Kim traveled the urban highways and rural byways for an 11-day period on a flatbed truck filled with bottari, she observed that many of the older women in the more agrarian regions would put down their farming work to stare and even follow the bottari truck in a kind of Pied Piper reverie.

Far from being an ethnic- or culture-specific icon, however, bottari possess universal meanings. Early Jewish and European immigrants carried similar bundles upon their arrival in the United States. As contents are concealed from plain view, the bottari functions as a symbol of the unknown future and its plumpness suggests that the contents are pregnant with hope, a harbinger of good fortune. Suggestive of hidden potential, the amorphous shape aptly fits with the life of the newly-arrived immigrant in search of the proverbial American Dream. Kim is careful, however, not to fix the bottari as an emblem of only one emotion or experience. She observes that the bottari resembles a teardrop, both a reference to the pear shape of the bundle and to the tragic flight compelling its necessity in cases such as the catastrophe of war. A simple description of the symbolic meaning of bottari would be its role in signifying any sort of journey or act involving movement, whether it be immigration, escape, travel or trade.

Cities on the Move best personifies this idea of the bottari as an emblem of movement for all groups, despite the specifically Korean context in which the work was originally performed. The itinerary for this project consisted of locations of personal significance for the artist. Accordingly, the journey can be read both as an extrapolation of Korea's collective history as a war - torn nation and as a self-portrait. In the work there are no explicit autobiographical references other than the itinerary, but the bottari as a repository of meanings connotes that the journey covers multiple biographies and narratives. Kim thus implicitly states that her identity is inextricably linked to the identities of the people she meets during her journey.

Despite the attempts by Yook and Kim to posit universal imagery, they, still contend with the fact that a great deal of meaning is lost in the process of recontextualization in non-Korean exhibition spaces. However, while meaning might be lost, the artists do not tailor their works to be easily understood by an unknowing audience. Nevertheless, the Eurocentric bias in favor of the foreign comes into conflict with the unspoken need to make art that is readable for western audiences in order to make the works both accessible and marketable.

The question of audience is of a different nature in the work of newly emerging artists who do not have the requisite funding or established reputation to participate in shows outside of Korea. The problem has less to do with being read by a set of Western expectations and fetishes and more to do with the relevance of video art to contemporary society: Seo suggests that this particular determination stems from a desire to break away from the sometimes overarching legacy of Paik:

The peculiar placement of Mr. Paik's career in Korean society ... seems to reflect a strange mixture of a kind of blind national pride, lack of historical discourse, and empowerment of American and European influence. Mr. Paik's "model" tends to make it very difficult for audience to engage in the actual content of individual video images.(8)

Emerging artists such as Seo must contend with paradigms set by established artists who have already developed a coherent and recognizable visual vocabulary. In the collaborative exhibition, "Teum," shown in the fall of 1998 at the Artsonje Center in Seoul, Seo, along with Park Hwa Young (b. 1968) and Hong (b. 1964) attempted to formulate their own modes of expression. Given the current economic crisis in Korea, such collaborations have become an increasingly attractive means for younger, less-established artists to create expensive video artworks. However, the disparate approaches of the three artists attest to the conflict between individual expression encompassing an aggregate of varied meanings and a collective effort intended to express a unified set of messages.

The use of single-channel video in "Teum" also mirrors Korea's obsession with television, video and film. In a country where there are more video stores per capita than almost any other, single-channel video is supremely compatible with society's demand for entertainment that is easily produced, distributed and accessible. Strongly influenced by television genres, "Teum" reflects this influence through its amalgamation of various genres, namely the documentary and soap opera. Borrowing from these genres imbues the single-channel collaboration with Barthes's "illogical conjunction" of having-been-there versus being-there. In other words, the collaboration evokes both "spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority."(9) This dissonant conjunction is fitting for a nation with a relatively short modern history. As a heavily colonized country (a tributary of China, an annex of Japan from 1910 to 1945 and a U.S. trust territory from 1945 to 1948), Korea has been grappling with the issue of having to define its national identity amidst this backdrop of domination. The question of identity that these artists attempt to resolve stems from the idea of Korea as both a singular, unique nation and one that has been a pawn exploited by its larger neighbors.

A homonym, the exhibition title "Teum" is eminently appropriate for the intentions of the participating artists since it means "to turn" (as in "to turn on the TV") and also denotes a "small space," such as a crack, a cleft or even a spare moment. The exhibition becomes a springboard activating the initial discussion of emerging video art, while its nominal meaning connotes the peripheral position of the artists who must struggle in a conservative art establishment that is often based on personal connections and affluence. Emerging artists fall through the gaps, or the "teum." The exhibition becomes a means by which the artists try to close these gaps. Unlike the more abstract images favored by Park Hyun Ki, Yook and Kim, the artists of "Teum" emphasize narrative.

The show presented solo works by each artist as well as a seven-minute collaborative project titled Falling, Falling, Falling (1998) that most effectively conveyed the attempt to formulate a personal mode of expression. Each artist created a seven-minute video focusing on a selected concept of "I," "you" and "we." The three videos were projected, simultaneously, in a triptych fashion, allowing the viewer to both distinguish between the individual modes of expression pursued by each artist and also to better digest the similarities between first-, second- and third-person perspectives.

The first short, Seo's The Story of I, begins with the depiction of a love triangle, that universal staple of soap operas. The close connection between the work and the television genre suggests the extent to which younger artists have embraced the televised image for what it is: a method of storytelling. Seo's purpose is not to copy the rode of the television producer but rather to put his work in direct corn petition with the television and shift the balance of power from the emitter/transmitter (the artist and his/her work) to the viewer, or the point of reception. Seo's goal is to depict the essence of urban alienation - the love triangle between the original characters disintegrates into a series of images that move further and further away from the original narrative. It is reflective of the dissolution of the individual. Daytime television viewers are inundated with stories of loss and betrayal to the point where the stories lose their poignancy and become mere fodder for hour-long dramas. Excess of emotion consequently produces emptiness of feeling in Seo's tale of urban life.

Park assumes a different approach by critiquing the' passive observer in The Story of Others. Here, the observer is a cockroach that considers humankind as silly or tragic, without realizing that the real fool in the narrative is himself/herself. A more didactic reflection than the other two shorts, Park satirizes the judgmental person who readily mocks others as being pathetic or mindless. Like Yook's "eye" installations, Park's work talks back by addressing those viewers who, view the lives of people in the news, in documentaries or in soap operas (Korea's three most popular television genres) as inferior to their own. Equating that judgmental viewer with the cockroach, an almost universally reviled life form, indicates the extent of Park's contempt. Yet the hardiness and longevity of the cockroach itself is an acknowledgment by Park that these self-satisfied viewers are an enduring breed. Although moralistic in tone, the critical stance of the work distinguishes it from the works of the other participants.

Adding "others" to "I" produces "we," and Hong's The Story of We is a plausible link between the works of Seo and Park. The work is based on a character who is made to feel guilty for expressing "true love." The work becomes an indictment of a society that forces the two disparate entities of "I" and "you" to conform to the greater good of "we." Common to the extremely homogeneous milieu of Korean society, the suffocating need to conform to a certain unseen set of ideals and beliefs underlies tile optimistic idea of the collective "us." The protagonist's love in The Story of We is not his own for he is but a subset of a larger society that considers his love to be subversive and dangerous. Hong thus proposes the alternative of a fragmented world in which each disparate element may have its own domain.

While the three video shorts demonstrate typical urban angst in, terms of absence, betrayal, depression and conformity; they are unique in their ability to harness the semi-hidden power of the rapt gaze of the Korean television-watching audience. In comparison to their U.S. or European counterparts, Korean viewers change channels less frequently (perhaps because commercials are grouped at the beginning or end of a program, rather than interspersed during the program itself) and are generally devoted to a number of programs. Moreover, unlike the work of Park, Yook or Kim, there is no singular, recurring image that functions as a receptacle of meaning, with the possible exception of Park's cockroach. The stories are narrative ones that depict the absence of personal presence in The Story of I and The Story of We or the absence of self-introspection in The Story of Others. By toying with this idea of absence, the three artists expand the gaps, or the "teum," thus introducing the potential for new modes of video art distinct, if not separate, from the legacy of Paik.

The question of audience, then, comes to the forefront of any discussion of contemporary Korean video art. For less established artists, the dilemma faced is the creation of an identity separate, from that initially established by Paik since they first address a Korean audience whose only contact with video art (in the majority of cases) is the work of Paik. The narrative flow of images these younger artists choose represents a clean break from Paik's repetitive sequences. These younger artists use imagery as an apparatus for establishing an identity for themselves in the eyes of a predominantly Korean audience. The contemporary Korean artist exhibiting abroad is often compelled to use imagery that would be "pleasing" to, or in sync with western expectations regarding the foreign, even though the extent to which they do so varies from artist to artist, and even from work to work. Park Hyun Ki's Mandala works are more overt in their effort to meet these expectations while his Water Series approximates Yook's installations in terms of an absence of ethnic-specific allusions.

To an extent, identity is formed, or at least influenced by, the expectations and demands of the audience. Yet it would not be wholly correct to presume that the artists are compromising their aesthetic and substantive integrity in order to make a sale or to curry critical favor. If the objective of these artists is to establish an interactive environment, then allowing the viewer to influence the work consequently becomes part of the creative process. It is not the case that these artists peddle some brand of esoteric Koreanness to an ignorant audience; rather, the works are based on a notion of fluidity, which is predicated on highly personal, subjective experiences. When attempting to distinguish themselves from other artists and artworks, these artists do so by drawing upon their own personal experiences as do Seo, Park Hwa Young and Hong in their attempts to establish a discrete identity outside the shadow of Paik.

While the artists may draw upon specifically Korean images, moods and perspectives, they do so in conjunction with subjective ideas and thoughts. In turn, this close relationship between what is considered specifically "Korean" and what is subjective indirectly proves that otherwise coded images are actually relevant to many viewers. Consequently, the works prove the very idea of the antipode. They are at once highly specific to Korean culture and history and accessible to non-Korean audiences who may not relate to the coded imagery but may identify with the feelings of transcendence, yearning, urban displacement and disillusionment embodied by the works. The identity of contemporary Korean video art is based on this duality. It is this concurrence of content that enables the viewers of contemporary Korean video art to expand their understanding of history, culture and the human experience, whether it be their own, or the experiences of others.

NOTES

1. From an e-mail communication with the author, February 18, 1999.

2. Roland Barthes, "The Photographic Message," in Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), p. 1.

3. Artist's quotation from the unsigned article, "Exhibit Illuminates Pioneer of Korean Video Art: Park Hyun-Ki Explores Relationship Between Technology and Traditional Aesthetics," Korea Herald, September 8, 1998.

4. The notorious KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency), the government's intelligence agent, reached the height of its power in the Yushin era of the early 1970s when martial law was enacted. Along with the "Law Concerning Special Measures for Safeguarding National Security," the KCIA was used by Park to suppress any organization, act or statement that might be perceived as subverting his regime's authority. Park Won Soon notes that even as recently as 1994, a professor's lecture notes were introduced in court as "evidence of subversive activity." Park Won Woon, The National Security Law (Los Angeles: Korea NGO Network for the UN World Conference on Human Rights, 1993), pp. 122-123. See also Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 356-393 for more information concerning the extent of repression in Park Chung Hee's regime.

An example of the restrictions imposed on motion pictures is the Movie Promotion Law, which requires all motion pictures to be "pre-screened" by a selected government committee. The law has been frequently invoked as a means to ban '"inappropriate" films, primarily those that depict explicit political or sexual ideas and/or acts.

5. All quotations from Yook reported in the unsigned article, "Video Artist Connects Past, Present and Future," The Korea Times, May 12, 1998.

6. The sod-covered grave is considered a protective device to shield the body within. This particular form also has strong ties with Korea's tradition of Confucianism, particularly with regard to the concept of hero and ancestor worship. It is also noteworthy that these graves are not truly "Korean" as they were derived from Chinese burial practices. Chang Chul Soo, Yet Mudum ui Sahoesa [The Social History of Old Graves] (Seoul: Ungjin Press, 1995), pp. 264-285.

7. All quotations by Kim are from an interview with the author, February 12, 1999.

8. From an e-mail communication with the author, February 18, 1999.

9. Barthes, "Rhetoric of the Image," in Image-Music-Text, p. 44.

JOAN KEE is a freelance critic who has written extensively on contemporary Asian art.