Summary: Seoul

Above: From Bae Bien-U's Mountain Series

I recently saw Bae Bien-U's works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Deoksugung. One of Korea's most celebrated photographers, he is famous for photographing pine trees, mountains, and other landscapes, and his works apparently appear frequently in primary textbooks. The level of visiblity which he has been getting, and the fact that he is the singular artist being represented at the Museum of Contemporary Art suggests to me that the Koreans themselves might consider his work representative of a "Korean aesthetic".

It was somewhat difficult to distinguish this aesthetic style from a traditional sense of a "Chinese aesthetic", which I also consider to be similarly influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. While in modern times Korea has developed its own distinct character and grown very seperate from China and Japan, historically it has had a great deal of cultural influence/transference from China, by dint of proximity and the development of a Korean Confucianism. Similarly, the etymology of korean toponymy is also a rather curious thing - i lost my English subway map on the first day of my short trip in Seoul, forcing me to consult my backup copy of the subway map which was in Chinese. I realised that korean place names were simply hangeul transliterations of the Chinese names for the places. for example, the subway station from which i first disembarked was called "Mangu", or "망우", and this had been translated from "忘忧" ("forget worry" or "nepenthe"). For Koreans who don't read Chinese, could the process of transliteration have effectively obscured the original meaning of their place names from collective consciousness?




Kim Jong-Ku's Mobile Landscape

A piece I really liked at the Seoul Museum of Art was this "Mobile Landscape" by Kim Jong-Ku. composed of a CCTV (Infrared) camera setup and steel shavings on a white floor board, from the horizontal viewpoint of the CCTV camera on the ground, the steel powder formed delicate monochrome mountains, seemingly replete with the fuzz of pine trees. it was a pity i was not able to read Hangeul as it seemed as if the steel shavings were spelling out another message in a calligraphic style when viewed from a vertical perspective. While it may be an feature of the material itself, the detail of steel filaments aptly reflects the silhouette of pine trees on a mountain, which seems even more apparent now that I can put Bae Bien-U's work side by side with the Mobile Landscape. It is written frequently that pine trees are richly symbolic for the Koreans, held up as a Korean conception of "beauty" and representing longevity and a long Korean history.

I did not know if the actual use of CCTV cameras was truly prevalent in South Korea, but there was certainly widespread use of CCTV signage everywhere - from dingy street corners even to the mom and pop store in residental areas. much to my amusement, many small corner stores (including the ever-so delightful Daiso Korea!) seemed to sell CCTV signs in all sorts of designs and vast quantities. Needless to say, it is not necessary to actually be surveillancing people, as long as people can be convinced into thinking that they are being surveillanced, and a CCTV sign can be yours for as little as 1500 Won (SGD1.80/less than a quid)!

So does Korea really buy into the CCTV myth? Perhaps some true-blooded Koreans might like to come up and disabuse me of the notion, but from casual observation, South Korea already seems like a well-trained panopticon city. The behaviour of people on the subway can be used as a good social indicator: although food and drink appears to be allowed on the train (just as it is also allowed in places like London), there is absolutely no litter to be found anywhere in the cabins, which is remarkable - an average train in London quickly finds itself taken over by the detritus of food wrappers, illicit beer cans, and dismembered copies of the Sun. Also, the special red seats on subways allocated to the elderly, handicapped, or pregnant are never misused by healthy young people, even in peak hour - unlike Singapore where they've had to resort to "Kindness Campaigns" where the face of comedic figure Phua Chu Kang and Rosie have been plastered onto MRT windows with the desperate outcry "BE GRACIOUS!" - and seemingly, to very little effect, other than sparking a healthy debate in the Forum pages on whether or not fictional character Phua Chu Kang was capable of being gracious and being in character at the same time.

I am impressed at the resultant orderliness in Seoul, but all the same I think I am slightly wary of places where they seem to be more CCTV signs than Toilet signs. And Mobile Landscape is a clever twist on a traditional image; I wonder if the metal pole (also present at the museum) from which he derived the steel filings was of equally interesting or significant origin...