hankyoreh

At 1 p.m. on June 22, a street art performance was underway in a Seoul park, where tattoo artist Lee Rang, 30, was putting the word "revolution" and a peace symbol on the back of 26-year-old cook Byeon Gyu-du. Passers-by stopped and watched the tattooing operation with interest, but 10 minutes after it started, police suddenly rushed up to intervene.

"Don't you know it is illegal to do this?" asked one of the police officers. Lee was taken to a nearby police station and charged with violations of medical laws, which regard tattooing as a kind of medical activity.

If proven to have been carried out for profit, a tattoo operation turns into a violation of public health laws rather than just medical laws, which means it could possibly result in life imprisonment for the tattoo artist. In Korea, drawing a tattoo on others is illegal, whether for profit or for free.

Moon Kun-young, a lawyer at law firm Hankyul, recently filed a petition with the Constitutional Court to nullify related legal clauses.

"There is no other country in the world except South Korea where tattooing is subject to such a heavy sentence," she said. "Putting forth such severe punishment without clearly defining tattooing as a kind of medical activity could run counter to the principle that a criminal law must avoid ambiguity," she added.

Kim Wan, a culture activist, who organized the event, which was titled, "I have the right to be tattooed," said of the performance, "It was just a street performance designed to show that tattooing is a cultural activity."

Kim Jun-gi, an art critic and professor of Kyung Hee University, said tattooing is like drawing on the human body instead of a canvas, and decisions on it should not be meddled with by a third party.

But the spokesman of a doctors' association, Woo Bon-sik, raised concerns over the possible danger that the anesthesia used during tattooing could cause, adding that medical experts should be present monitor the entire process.

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