Graffiti on trial in South Korea. Is it banksy - is it not, and what's at stake?

By Andra Matei

Last December, while the world celebrated the newest graffiti by Banksy, hundreds in South Korea signed a petition to indict the Korean artist HIDEYES for painting on a piece of the Berlin Wall in Seoul. The artist's trial begins soon in South Korea.

A work of art can be anything—but what is it, exactly? And most importantly, who is to decide? In Seoul, hundreds signed a petition demanding punishment for Taeyong Jeong, also known as HIDEYES, a local artist who spray-painted symbols of peace and reconciliation on remnants of the Berlin Wall in Seoul to celebrate Korean Memorial Day.

As a result, a fence demarcating a crime scene was erected around the Berlin Wall at Berlin Square in Seoul, and HIDEYES was asked to erase his painting. With a heavy heart and a troubled mind, on 13 November 2018, Taeyong complied. That night he wrote to me: "I have erased the painting, but in fact, it was me that I have erased. I feel I lost every control over my mind."

A month later, on the other side of the world, in the small Welsh town of Port Talbot, another fence was built around a similar work of graffiti. This fence however was of a different sort. Seasons ‘Greetings sparked enthusiasm, and a media frenzy, worldwide when notorious street-artist Banksy confirmed it was his. The Port Talbot city council, fearing the painting's destruction, took immediate steps to protect the work and to insure its value (by surrounding it with a fence) before the owner of the garage on which it was painted sold it for a "six figure-sum", the BBC reports.

Admittedly, not all art is to everyone's liking, "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric" U. S. Supreme Court Justice J.M. Harlan II once famously said. But what is it exactly that makes these two graffiti pieces (and their surrounding fences) so different?

Avant-Garde Lawyers worked together with freedom of expression expert Prof. Kyung-Sin Park and a team of expert lawyers from Yigong Law in Seoul, to build the defense for HIDEYES. Our first discussion with Taeyong was over Skype, and we could see he had prepared hard for the meeting. He had, in fact, turned his room into an exhibition and went on to passionately explain his paintings and defend his love for street art. When I asked my first lawyerish question: "what are the exact charges brought against you?" He asked in turn: "what does justice know about art?"

When Taeyong painted Look Inside on the Berlin Wall in Seoul, he did it on Memorial Day on purpose, making his subject the divided social and political reality that persists on the Korean peninsula. Look Inside employs the Taegeuk, the ying-yang symbol centered on the flag of South Korea, to speak about separated families and the hope for reunification. And what better site for expressing one's hope of national reunification than the Berlin Wall?

While, HIDEYES uses symbols, forms and colour to lift the viewer's attention from the historical object, made of rebar and concrete, to its social and political context now in urban Seoul, Banksy paints his Season's Greetings in the industrial town of Port Talbot, home to one of the largest steelworks plants in Europe, to speak about air pollution, an environmental issue which affects millions around the world. In his graffiti, a child apparently enjoys eating snowflakes but turning the corner, we find out it's actually ash from a dumpster fire that he is catching on his tongue.

And yet, if Banksy had painted Season's Greetings on a section of the Berlin Wall in Seoul, would the work have been fenced off and erased, or fenced off and sold? Would Banksy be on trial in Seoul? With Banksy pieces removed from the street and sold at auctions for tens of millions by people who profit from the legally-ambiguous field of street art, this is unlikely.

On Tuesday, 23 April, HIDEYES will face a jury trial at Suwon District Court, in Seoul. The prosecution demands a prison sentence for destruction of public property. But Taeyoung Jeong never intended to destroy public property; in fact, he never destroyed it. The Wall is still there, more alive than ever, creating debate and controversy and contributing to the exchange of ideas and opinions, essential for a democratic society. By painting on the Berlin Wall, HIDEYES added value, extending a generations-long conversation, on and about the Wall, around the pain of political division.

We argue that Jeong's graffiti is a form of social and political commentary deserving of the protection afforded to speech, in general. The aim of the defense in this case, however, is not to say that HIDEYES did right when he painted a piece of public property without permission, but rather to remind the jury that according to international law freedom of expression "is applicable not only to information or ideas that are favorably received by the public, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population" , opinion expressed more than 40 years ago in the landmark case of Handyside v.UK.

To regard Look Inside as an isolated act of vandalism strips the work of its essential context and ignores the artistic act altogether. Graffiti is, first and foremost, a form of expression highly dependent on its context. The place where it is performed, the support it is performed on, and the time chosen, bears as much importance as the painting itself.

The Korean jury faces no easy task on 23 April. It is not Banksy on trial, but an artist who has been villainized by the Korean public. The duty here is to reconcile the law with unconventional art and unpopular artists, as well as to determine the limits of public sensibility. The way in which the Korean jury will judge this case and its object, will shape the way graffiti will be perceived at large by Korean society in the future. Establishing these boundaries by reference to the feelings of the most easily offended and least tolerant members of a community cannot be in the interest of any society.

Andra Matei is counsel to Taeyoung Jeong and director of Avant-Garde Lawyers, a collective of lawyers committed to protecting the rights of artists and promoting respect for freedom of artistic expression. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.