By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
Can you imagine North Korean children working on paintings to submit to international contests?
It sounds unlikely, yet has been happening with Czech painting competition, "The International Children's Exhibition of Fine Arts Lidice."
Czech Ambassador Jaroslav Olsa, who met with the South Korean winners of 2008 last Monday, said, "entries were not only from South Korea, but from North Korea. When it comes to art, the two Koreas come together."
The participation of North Korean students is explained by the contest's long history.
It was during the communist years when the competition began, and "we advertised the contest through our embassies all around the world including Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea," the ambassador said.
When the contest was first established in 1967, it was a domestic initiative, yet from 1973, it received international entries.
Both individuals and entities working with children can participate, and the panel of judges selects 1,200 works for exhibition. The works are awarded Honorable Mentions, and the best of them receive "Rose of Lidice medals."
Seven North Koreans and 11 South Korean children were chosen for exhibition.
The Lidice contest was born out of commemoration for children who had to witness their parents killed or sent to Nazi concentration camps and who were adopted by other families during World War II.
Lidice is a city in center of the Czech Republic. In 1942, Nazis murdered 192 men over 16 years old, while the rest of the population was sent to Nazi concentration camps, where many women and children were killed.
"The competition was established to commemorate the child victims from Lidice and all other children who have died in wars," Olsa said.
The competition is now organized by Lidice Memorial and supported by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education and the Czech Commission for UNESCO.
Thanks to its history, the competition is widely publicized, receiving a big number of entries from all around the world, the ambassador said. In the 2008 competition, 48 countries were represented.
Victims of the massacre are also commemorated by "The 21st Century Contest," a four-year-old knowledge competition for children aimed at spreading knowledge related to World War II and the Nazi regime.
Furthermore, since 2007, the musical performance "Light for Lidice," composed of children's choirs, has been presented to commemorate the Lidice tragedy.
For more information about Lidice-related competitions, visit the Web site: www.lidice-memorial.cz/