Unfolding history, coloring humanity

The scenery of Jongno from "Angels on the Streets" (1941) / Courtesy of Kim Kwang-sung

‘Beneath weighty modern Korean history breathed people's warmth,' says cartoonist

By Ko Dong-hwan

Cartoonist Kim Kwang-sung captures people's intrinsic down-to-earth warmth from some of the darkest moments in modern Korean history.

Those events ― the nation's occupation by Japan (1910-45, including World War II), the Korean War (1950-53) and Army general Chun Doo-hwan's coup and military control over citizens (1981-88) ― may be hard to glamorize. After all, most history classes have taught students about the dark side of the nation's modern era.

But Kim, born in 1954 and from the last Korean generation to ride the now-defunct streetcars, has unearthed something else from those unsettling times. Paying attention to an individual rather than a nation, poignant sentiment instead of ideological clashes, he has sifted the times to capture what the grassroots felt and desired in their ordinary lives. His cartoons illuminate people's enthusiastic gestures shaded by a gloomy Korean history.

"I am neither a historian nor someone with authority to judge what occurred in the past," Kim told The Korea Times at his home, also his drawing studio, in Incheon. "I am just a cartoonist. I simply wanted to evoke memories from those reminiscing their past. Those who had experienced the Korean War accumulated an odd mixture of compassion and pathos in their bones. So did many enlightened scholars, artists and other democratic movement fighters who witnessed and protested against Chun's regime. For them, having lived to see their 40s and 50s, watching old Korean black-and-white movies that depicted those hard times is still the most beloved pastime."

The cover of "Butterfly's Song" and its scenes

In his graphic novel "Butterfly's Song," Kim portrays the emotional story of a Korean girl, 16, from the Japanese occupation era who was forced to become a sexual slave – known as a "comfort woman'' ― for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The illustrated novel follows the memories of the grown-up Ha Geum-soon, the fictional surviving comfort woman, recalling her dark days. The novel was one of 20 Korean cartoon novels that portrayed the pain of comfort women, under the theme of "Unwithering Flowers," at the 2014 Angouleme International Comics Festival in France.

"In this novel, I did not so much try to depict how brutally Japanese soldiers treated Korean girls and women who were forced into sexual slavery as to unravel the atrocity and criticize Japan," Kim said. "Rather, I focused on depicting Ha's beaten psychological ego and tried to show that her downtrodden narrative is what we, as Koreans, want to share with the world regarding the issue."

After agreeing with Korea's then-minister of Gender Equality and Family, Cho Yun-sun, to work on the novel, Kim interviewed surviving comfort women to understand their pain. As any writer or artist portraying real-life characters, Kim sympathized with his subjects and felt dejected after hearing their stories.

Selections from the novel were exhibited to 250,000 festival visitors in January 2014. The work, along with other Korean cartoons, also attracted Japanese participants who raised anti-Korean banners in front of Japanese booths that said the comfort women issue was a hoax. Festival operators shut down the Japanese booths and evicted all Japanese, including reporters, considering the campaign groundless.

Cartoonist Kim Kwang-sung

"Seoul, the Old Days," a published collection of Kim's drawings of scenes of Seoul from the 1930s to after the 1970s, features close-up depictions of people thriving in the city's diverse areas, including streets, wharves, alleys, railway stations and restaurants. The drawings' settings share the same air with a nation bombarded by the Korean War and abused by Chun's regime.

But Kim's worlds do not smack of harshness in common lives. Instead, they are crowded with people looking eagerly engaged and promising. Such liveliness is almost palpable in these "modern genre paintings," which scrutinize in detail people's many facial expressions, their engagement and urban landscapes. Cartoonist and Korea National University of Arts professor Park Jae-dong referred to the collection as "Kim's love embracing the ages and the people."

"I always stored into my head particularly memorable scenes I encountered," Kim said. "With such inclination, and having lived the ages from the 1950s, I drew the collection of about 70 paintings from time to time throughout the past six years. They cannot be completed in a jiffy like when you are commissioned to do it within a given time period. It is only doable when someone voluntarily engages in the job with passion over a long time."

Kim's depiction of old Seoul could not come solely from his recollection ("because I do not have that genius in me," Kim said). He used old movies and encyclopedias containing photos of the periods to check how people dressed and behaved, what buildings there were and how the city's different landscapes looked. Most of the collection is based on scenes of movies that were filmed in Seoul, including "Sweet Dream" (1936), "Spring of Korean Peninsula" (1941), "Mother and a Guest" (1961) and "A Coachman" (1961).

Some of Kim's depiction of old Seoul are based on scenes from old movies such as (from top) "Sweet Dream," "Spring of Korean Peninsula," "Mother and a Guest" and "A Coachman."

"Movie scenes go a long way to viewers' memories. That's why I used them in portraying old Seoul," said Kim, whose selective drawings from the collection were exhibited at Seoul Station's ever-crammed underground passageways from Oct. 14 to Nov. 11. The exhibition celebrated an urban pedestrian road park called "Seoullo 7017," a renovated overpass near Seoul Station that will be completed in April next year.

Kim's works not only attest to his humanistic perspective and lively depiction of the scenes, unique technical qualities in strokes and coloring make viewers discern something of the "quintessential Korean aesthetic," a quality that perfectly assimilates into the scenes of modern Korean history.

"I used rice papers and brushes. The paper's rough texture allows me to maneuver brushes the way I want," said Kim, who drew fine art paintings as a hobby for 10 years before becoming a professional cartoonist at the age of 35. "Juxtaposition in my drawings is based on the principles of painting, while cartoon drawing experiences contributed to detailed touches."

Kim said he can find the Korean aesthetic only from the nation's modern eras, not the present. He described the latter as "desolate and has too much concrete."

"I am from the last Korean generation who witnessed the modern era," Kim said. "Besides, don't memories from one's teenage and 20s go a long way for everyone?" He picked Jagalchi Fish Market in Busan as a future subject because the historic landmark has changed so much it now almost has no vestiges of what he remembered when growing up in the port city.

Kim said one of a cartoonist's roles is to deliver a message with the drawings. Korea, mired in one of its worst political crises ― involving President Park Geun-hye and her longtime confidant and alleged influence-peddler Choi Soon-sil ― is in a shambles that encouraged Kim to plan a satire piece.

"The current political atmosphere is suffocating and sad," Kim said. "I want to make cartoons out of this but now I am monitoring how things turn out.

"Cartoonists draw humanistic stories a lot. They never go without noticing social minority groups or labor activists. Many of us took part in candle-lit protests against Park's predecessor, Lee Myung-bak." Such vocational spirit was what made Korean cartoonists, including Kim, speak out at Angouleme on the comfort women issue.

"Korean soldiers who fought during the Vietnam War did some terrible things to local citizens which we should reflect upon and be sorry about," Kim said. "That could be a competitive source for my next cartoon, with a good humanitarian message."