hankyoreh

Gangwon Province.

By Park Soo-hyuk, Gangwon correspondent

“Greetings are the beginning of every relationship,” the man said. “When you see someone on the street, nothing happens if you just brush right past them. I want to use ‘Greeting Man’ to work for peace, reconciliation, and communication, and to share the significance of love.”

How would it feel to receive a respectful greeting from a 6-meter-tall giant?

Yoo Young-ho

“Greeting Man” is a large 6-meter-tall aluminum statue by sculptor Yoo Young-ho, 48. The second “Greeting Man” will be unveiled on Oct. 26 at the Unification Memorial in Yanggu County’s Haean Township, Gangwon Province. The area was the site of the some of the fiercest battles of the Korean War.

Yoo’s statue “Greeting Man” is more famous in Uruguay than it is in Korea. On Oct. 24, 2012, Yoo donated his first Greeting Man to Montevideo, Uruguay, on the other side of the world from the Korean peninsula.

Today, “Greeting Man” has become a landmark in the Uruguayan capital, even appearing on the first page of a tourist guidebook for Montevideo.

“I wanted to start talking about peace, love, reconciliation, and meetings in the furthest place from Korea, on the opposite side of the globe,” Yoo said.

After studying in Germany, Yoo worked with Price Shop starting in 2003. Price Shop is a public art project that drew attention to the harmful effects of capitalism.

Since 2011, Yoo has dedicated himself to “Greeting Man.” To enable him to make the work, he made 1,000 mini greeting men, 30cm in size, and sold them to his friends in and outside of Korea.

After raising 200 million won (about US$188,000) this way, he started work on “Greeting Man,” which he completed after eight months of work. He clothed the statue in blue clothes, which symbolize peace and neutrality, and shipped it to Uruguay.

“I wanted to make it even bigger,” Yoo said, “but 6m was the biggest size that I can send around the world in container ships.”

Yoo decided to place the second “Greeting Man” in Yanggu County. In addition to being a site where countless people lost their lives during the Korean War, the county is also where Yoo was born. The county also helped with the “Greeting Man” project. They considered installing the statue in the DMZ, but they were not able to get the idea approved.

“In the future, I want to work with likeminded artists to set up 1,000 greeting men in places like Vietnam, Palestine, and Berlin, places where the scars of war remain today,” Yoo said. “I hope that ‘Greeting Man’ will become a messenger for peace that will help us overcome our religious, cultural, ethnic, and political differences and relate to each other.”

sculptor

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