Painting for the people

North Korea, one of the world’s last truly closed countries, opens the door just a tad on its artistic vision.

I CONFESS. I trot off to meet Pak Hyo Song with a preconceived notion of what he would be like.

The man in front of me sits in the shadow of the man the media says he should be.

Pak with a ‘jewel painting’ that is produced using powdered gemstones, a characteristic NorthKorean technique.

An artist from a country with a state-prescribed “National form with Socialist content” stipulated by the late Kim Il Sung. Where all artists are state registered and employed, and receive a monthly salary, and produce a set quota of works during set hours.

Pak is a representative of the Mansudae Art Studio, the largest in North Korea, which will be exhibiting 61 works by more than 30 of its artists at Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur beginning on Friday.

Expecting an indoctrinated zealot or lobotomised drone, sheltered from and wary of the ways of our wicked, capitalist world, I am introduced to mild-mannered Mr Pak. The “Mr” pops out of my mouth instinctively, respectful of 48 year’s worth of silver hairs.

He hardly looks like what Time magazine categorised, in a 2004 report, as one of many “salaried functionaries in dictator Kim Jong Il’s propaganda machine”.

True, he wears a button badge above the pocket of his shirt featuring Kim Il Sung on a red background. And he refers to him reverently as “our dear leader, Great Leader”, like, every time the Eternal President was brought up.

However, he never insists I do the same, and accepts my indiscriminate use of “North Korea” and “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” gracefully.

In this social realism piece, Pak explains that the soldier – depicted heroically clearing unexploded ordnance from a railway line– ‘is thinking for the survival of my country, I must take this away with my own body’.

But then, as director of Mansudae’s Foreign Art School and its agent abroad, Pak has seen quite a lot more of the world than his average countryman. Most recently, he has taken exhibitions to London and Italy (2007), and held a rare solo exhibition, his, in Wiesbaden, Germany (2005). But these exhibitions aren’t exactly groundbreaking, even in Malaysia. The Malaysia-Korea Partnership Group has brought collections in from Mansudae before, displaying them in Kuala Lumpur as early as 1992 at Lot 10 in Bukit Bintang. Pak himself has been to our country in his official capacity on several occasions before this.

What is new is the scale on which Mansudae is exporting their art to the rest of the world, driven by initiatives like The Official Western Website of the Mansudae Art Studio Gallery, which sports this formal invitation: “Institutions and galleries interested to participate in this exciting pioneering project of discovery and presentation can contact us to evaluate together if the conditions for a fruitful cooperation exist.”

Visitors to the Berjaya Times Square exhibition can expect to see, eerily, exactly what they would have read about DPR Korean art, which falls within two state-sanctioned styles: Socialist Realism (depictions of the everyday lives of the working forces and expressions of socialist ideology) and natural beauty (landscapes, wildlife).

“Through this exhibition, we want to show the Malaysian people what we are like and what we can do. Many people, they feel Korea is very poor, life is very difficult, but it’s a mistake. Still we enjoy our life by our way; that’s why we prepared some paintings showing the soldiers, the traffic girls – normal workers.

“Through the paintings, people should know our life, our culture,” says Pak.

‘A picture must be painted (so) the viewer can understand its meaning’,decreed North Korea’s Dear Leader....

Remarking on the absence of surreal, impressionist, or abstract elements in the collection, Pak says: “Realism is the foundation of all art works, you see? Most of our artists like realism. We are thinking, if someone else sees the paintings but do not understand through the paintings, then it is not art.”

I hear haunting echoes of Kim Jong Il, quoted by Jane Portal in a 2006 article published with the release of her book, Art Under Control in Korea: “A picture must be painted in such a way that the viewer can understand its meaning. If the people who see a picture cannot grasp its meaning, no matter what a talented artist may have painted, they cannot say it is a good picture.”

In terms of style and subject, the rest of the world says DPR Korean art is stuck in a time warp. Pak says realism is democratic, voluntary, and serves the needs of the people.

“Because of the system of our country, all our factories and studios belong to our Government. But the Government does not give us the subject of painting and scale. It is independent, according to the artist.”

Time warp or not, Pak seems like a happy man. Radiant even. He has the glow of the faithful as he speaks with heart about art, the target of which is to “educate”, making “harmony” for those who view his paintings, giving them “a very comfortable feeling”.

Which would be reason enough to visit the exhibition. But on top of that, in one tiny moment in between moments towards the end of our conversation, Pak gives me a glimpse of a world I had only ever judged but could not understand:

I’ve just asked him about his family. And in the rosy light of his beaming pride, as he tells me about his wife and 20-year-old son studying English and Chinese at university, his version of North Korea seems human, humane, and utterly believable. For that moment anyway.

‘Window of Pyongyang’, an exhibition of 61 paintings from more than 30 North Korean artists, is on at Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur, from March 14 to 16. For enquiries, call 03-9076 9678.