hankyoreh

shows his holding a cashier’s check for 290

By Um Ji-won, staff reporter

He arrived Seoul’s Jongno No. 2 Street at midnight about to put up posters depicting President Lee Myung-bak as Adolf Hilter. His hands trembled as he clutched the pictures, as he thought, “What if a police officer came at me with a club?” He hid off in a corner for about 30 minutes while contemplating what to do next. Finally, he put the first one up. People gathered behind him. Emboldened, he put another 50 up in no time at all. Lee Ha, the 44-year-old painter decided last year to move from showing his work in galleries to working on the street.

At around 1 a.m. on May 17, Lee was arrested and delivered for summary judgment while putting a poster lampooning Chun Doo-hwan up on the wall of the former President’s home in Seoul. The picture showed Chun holding a cashier’s check for 290,000 won (about US$250), his total amount of declared assets. As he held the picture in his hands, police asked him who had orchestrated the event, what political party he belonged to, who had paid for things. “I’m an artist who wants to exhibit his artwork,” he told them, but they refused to believe him. He could only sigh.

000 won (about US$250)

On May 24, Lee stood for summary judgment in Seoul West District Court alongside four other defendants who had committed misdemeanors like not paying their taxi fare or skipping reserves training. Accused of putting up illegal advertising material, Lee submitted a written statement arguing that the charges “may suppress an individual artist’s freedom of expression, and the punishment is not on par with those given to people posting illegal commercial advertisements.”

The court dismissed the police’s summary judgment request that day. This did not mean he was exonerated, though. The message was that because of an ongoing debate over issues such as freedom of expression, Lee would have to go to court and present his case in a formal trial if prosecutors decided to indict.

“It’s not up to the courts to rule over artwork. It’s up to the public,” Lee said.

“There’s no artistic sensitivities in South Korean society, but there’s a lot of political sensitivities,” he complained in an interview Sunday with the Hankyoreh. Back in April, he put up a large poster on a Jongno No. 2 Street bus stop showing former President Park Chung-hee and former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung as conjoined twins. Within twenty minutes, it was torn up by a middle-aged male passerby.

“There is a solemnity with regard to Park Chung-hee, a sense of him being sacred,” Lee said. “It seems like by doing pictures like this, I’ve ended up being labeled as a ‘leftist.’”

Lee, who travels back and forth between South Korea and New York for his work, held an exhibition in New York in May of last year. It was a “lovable dictators” series spoofing Muammar Gaddhafi, Vladmiri Putin, Osama Bin Laden, and Barack Obama.

“I was worried they would curse this East Asian who had the gall to caricature their president,” he recalled. But the visitors who saw the pictures chuckled and took mobile phone pictures.

“Not one of them asked me why I had caricatured Obama,” he said.

“It was then that I realized that the ability to accept and enjoy any kind of expression is way of gauging a society’s health,” he recalled.

Lee’s next target is former New Frontier Party leader Park Geun-hye, Park Chung-hee’s daughter. He plans to put up posters satirizing her some next month on the streets of Busan, a conservative stronghold.

When asked whether his work would survive, Lee responded by saying, “So what if it gets torn up? It’s for the public to decide about pictures. I just want to give the public an opportunity to think.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]