Communist-style politicization of art… Lee Jung-seop, who only knew pictures, was suffocated.

The ‘silver paper painting’ that comes to mind when thinking of Lee Jung-seop tells us how difficult and poor his life as a refugee was after the Korean War. During the refugee period, when he had no money to buy drawing paper, Lee Jung-seop used an awl or nail to scrape the silver aluminum packaging inside cigarette packs to soothe his longing for his family, whom he had no choice but to live apart from across the Sea of ​​Japan, through drawings. In this way, Lee Jung-seop is as suitable for being called a ‘poor painter’ as he is for being called a ‘national painter’, but in fact, he was the ‘youngest son of a rich family’ who was considered one of the poorest artists in Pyeongan Province.

Lee Jung-seop was born in 1916 as the son of a wealthy farmer in Pyeongwon-gun, South Pyongan Province. His birthplace was a 100-room tile-roofed house with a floor space of over 100,000 pyeong, and there was even land for 700 seats and an orchard. After losing his father at the age of three, he grew up under the care of his maternal grandfather, who was one of the richest men in Pyongyang and served as the CEO of Pyongyang Agricultural and Industrial Bank. In 1932, Lee Jung-seop’s older brother, Lee Jung-seok, cleared the land in his hometown’s plains and moved to Wonsan with his family. There, he established a department store called Baekdu Sanghoe and managed a large farm measuring 300,000 pyeong.

In 1938, Lee Jung-seop, who was studying art at Tokyo Bunka Gakuin, became a lover with Masako Yamamoto, a junior female student. It was during this time in Tokyo that Lee Jung-seop met and interacted with his lifelong friend Koo Sang. The two, who were from the same family, were deeply impressed by each other from their first meeting. Gusang’s first impression of Lee Jung-seop was that he “looked like the face of Luo’s Jesus,” and Lee Jung-seop also said, “Gu looks like Jesus! There is an anecdote that they said, “The face of Luo’s Jesus,” and each rejected the request, saying, “It doesn’t make sense.”

Lee Jung-seop, who graduated from the Cultural Academy and lived in Tokyo while working between Wonsan and Seoul, returned to Korea in 1943 and stayed in Wonsan. In April 1945, Masako Yamamoto crossed the Genkai Sea to visit Lee Jung-seop just before the official communication line was cut off due to the war nearing its end. Masako’s father, who was the president of a subsidiary of the Mitsui conglomerate and a man of considerable wealth, told his daughter, who left for Wonsan to find love during her war years, “If it’s too hard, come back anytime.” A month later, Lee Jung-seop held a traditional wedding and gave Masako the Korean name ‘Lee Nam-deok’.

It was a chaotic time, with the sound of bombings occasionally heard, but Lee Jung-seop spent his time painting ‘peacefully’ with his beloved wife in the newlywed home his mother prepared for him. Three months later, Masako’s country was defeated, and the Soviet Union’s ‘Red Army’ occupied Wonsan. Although it is difficult to confirm the authenticity, it is said that Lee Jung-seop, who was asked by the Communist Party to create a portrait of Stalin to be hung on the streets, resisted in a passive way by not drawing Stalin’s symbolic mustache.

1946 was a turbulent time for Lee Jung-seop. In March of that year, North Korea’s Provisional People’s Committee, with Kim Il-sung as chairman, implemented land reform. The measure was to confiscate land owned by more than 5 hectares per household and distribute it to farmers free of charge. However, although it was called distribution, it was impossible to buy, sell, sharecrop, or mortgage, and it was only a superficial distribution that recognized only the right to cultivate. 1 piece of information corresponds to approximately 3000 pyeong. Lee Jung-seop’s older brother, Lee Jung-seok, had 95% of the 300,000 pyeong land he owned confiscated, except for 15,000 pyeong in 5jeongbo.

Lee Jung-seop was no longer the ‘youngest son of a rich family’ who could just draw without worrying about anything. Although he had no interest in communism and was completely unsuited to organizational life, Lee Jung-seop was appointed vice-chairman of the Wonsan Art Alliance that year. And he got a job as an art teacher at Wonsan Girls’ Normal School. He resigned after two weeks because “I couldn’t figure out what and how to teach,” but aside from the manual labor during the refugee period, those two weeks were Lee Jung-seop’s only working life.

To commemorate the first anniversary of liberation, the ‘Wonsan Branch of the North Korean Literature and Arts General Union’ published a poetry collection called ‘Eunghyang (凝香)’. Chairman Park Gyeong-soo requested a work from Gusang, who was one of the few established poets in Wonsan. Gusang, who taught Korean language at Wonsan Girls’ Normal School, thought it was meaningful to participate in a collection of poems commemorating her liberation, no matter how much the Communist Party ruled, and she published five of her works in ‘Eunghyang’.

“In the dawning sky/ A crow flies// When night and dawn separate/ This street as suspicious as a kasbah/ A scary/ alley/ where shadows of ghosts roam… ”(Construction, ‘Daybreak’) It was an extremely ordinary lyric poem that described the emotions of liberation, which were thought to be joyous and happy, as anxious and ominous. At Park Gyeong-su’s request, Lee Jung-seop also drew a ‘playful military statue’ as the cover art for ‘Eunghyang’. Not only the coterie that published the poetry, but all artists in Wonsan, including Communist Party members, were proud of the publication of the poetry collection.

However, a month later, the Standing Committee of the General Union of North Korean Literature and Arts in Pyongyang published a collection of poems criticizing that most of the poems included in ‘Eunghyang’ had a “skeptical, fanciful, decadent, escapist, and despairing tendency toward the reality of Joseon.” Announced ‘Decision on Hospitalization’. Gusang, who was the only co-author who was not a Communist Party member, received the harshest criticism. Pyongyang’s standing committee banned the release of ‘Eunghyang’ and dispatched censors including Choi Myung-ik, Kim Sa-ryang, and Song Young to Wonsan to investigate the truth and punish those involved.

After hearing degrading criticism from the censors and being forced to criticize himself, Gusang escaped from Wonsan and went to Seoul. Right-wing writers in Seoul, including Kim Dong-ri and Jo Yeon-hyeon, continued to criticize the ‘Eunghyang incident’ as an example of the suppression of freedom of expression perpetrated by the Communist Party. Koo Sang, an unknown local poet, suddenly emerged as an important figure in South Korean literary circles as a “freedom fighter who fled to South Korea to escape political persecution in North Korea.”

Lee Jung-seop, who drew the illustration for ‘Eunghyang’, was also summoned by the authorities and interrogated several times, but did not receive any significant punishment or disadvantage. Afterwards, Lee Jung-seop lived without much financial difficulty thanks to the protection of his older brother and his mother throughout the communist regime. However, he was greatly shocked by his close friend Koo Koo’s visit to South Korea, and felt a deep sense of self-destruction at the reality of freedom of expression being suppressed. Lee Jung-seop fell into despair and drank every day. In October 1950, Wonsan was restored to Allied forces, and soon after the Chinese army entered the war, turning the tide of war. Lee Jung-seop, along with his wife and two sons, took a position on a naval transport ship (LST) and fled to South Korea.

During his time as a refugee living in Busan, Jeju, Tongyeong, Daegu, and Seoul, Lee Jung-seop experienced extreme poverty that he had never experienced before. Lee Jung-seop, who was extremely incompetent financially, was not even capable of taking care of his wife and two sons, let alone providing art supplies for painting. As a last resort, his wife entered a Japanese internment camp with her two sons and returned to her Japanese parents’ home. Lee Jung-seop expressed his longing for his family on cardboard and silver packaging inside cigarette packs and died alone at the Seodaemun Red Cross Hospital at the age of 40. His dream of reuniting with his family and living together in Paris, France never came true.

Tomoko Onuki, ‘Lee Jung-seop, that person’, Hyehwa 1117, 2023

Oh Tae-ho, ‘Study on epistemological differences in literary circles during the liberation period surrounding the decision to enlist in public schools’, Journal of Language and Literature Vol. 48, 2011

Lee Jung-seop, ‘Lee Jung-seop: Letters and Paintings’, Da Vinci, 2011

Choi Yeol, ‘Lee Jung-seop Biography’, Dolpillow, 2014