Son Education was founded in 2023 with the mission to instill joyful learning and mindful growth. We aim to cultivate young people for a greater good and instrumental purpose.

Over the past few years, the mission has honed in on the middle years — grades four through eight — often overlooked and lost during a crucial time of building relationships around learning and development. At Son Education, we believe this window opens up an opportunity without the pressure of achievement and assessments. This window helps students explore ideas, create connections, make mistakes, and fall — all in order to get back up. In the process, we build grit and independence in the young lives we touch.

"On Grit and the Long Durée"

The MacArthur Fellow Angela Duckworth writes in Grit:

"It [grit] is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint… And that grit is the key to attain success because without grit, without effort, talent is nothing more than your unmet potential."

Parents often ask me what this means. If you are reading these words, and the quotes make sense to you, but you're unsure of how to make this into a reality for your children, welcome. You've come to the right place. I would add that in my three decades of teaching and tutoring experience, that grit creates agency or the belief in one's ability. And agency is transformative for thinking, writing, and problem-solving because agency is the basis of ownership and confidence. When a student comes to me with questions about an argument or a claim and has difficulty writing a thesis — it's usually that the student has a hard time putting their ideas out into the world for fear of judgement because they are insecure. They are more than capable, but it takes a team of actors to support them to attain grit because independence is learned over a long period of time.

In November 2024, a mother was arrested for reckless conduct and fined $1,000 because her ten year old child walked by himself to the Dollar Store in Georgia. He went into town to buy something to make for his mother who was working. AirTalk's Larry Mantle, host of the longest running daily radio talk show in Los Angeles, had a short segment on November 20, 2024, asking: "What is considered too much freedom for kids these days?" reflecting upon his own childhood riding his bike throughout Los Angeles in Inglewood, Baldwin Hills, and Leimert Park without phones, without surveillance cameras. He biked all day long with friends in tow with the trust that he would return home before sundown. To have that freedom meant that they could explore, play, create, fall, get back up, and move forward again. What he reminded his listeners of that morning is what I think is the recipe for grit: the independence to fall and to get back up in order to learn, on their own. These experiences are what it takes to be successful at a craft — writer, thinker, mother, father, producer, musician, athlete, make-up artist — whatever you think you need to be, it's quite simple. But why are parents today so afraid to let their kids fall and fail?

I want to harken back to the marathon or the long haul that Duckworth highlights and something as a historian I have been deeply influenced by throughout my studies and writing: the longue durée. The Longue Durée is what French historian Fernand Braudel and the Annales School find important when thinking about history — the approach that focuses on long-term structures and processes over the short-term events or "hot topics." With all things in life as it passes, we only have some years with our children before they conquer the world and greet it for everything that the world will offer them, including the great highs of graduations and jobs or the happiness derived from realizing their dreams, big and small. It will inevitably also include the falls, punches, aches, and pains. Let's think about the middle years of secondary education as the key years to fail and grow that will teach them, at times, to punch through the pain encountered in the long durée of life. If we can set them up to face the challenges, haven't we succeeded as parents?

There was the title of one of four projects exhibited at the fifth Kwangju Biennale held in South Korea in 2002. The name alludes to five of the oldest and largest overseas Korean communities: those in Brazil, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, and the United States. There curator, Yong Soon Min, chose twenty-four visual artists to represent the five locations, and their artwork showcased Korea's diasporic cultural production formulated by the historical migratory routes that have influenced the artists' lives and their art.

There indicates a paradox of diasporic art. While some diasporic artists uphold the ideas of Korean national culture and belonging bound by homogeneity and blood ties, other artists directly challenge the meaning such narratives hold in their artistic expressions. As such, the show discussed multiple identity formations that resist dominant narratives, reflected differing experiences of class, gender, global, and national politics and indicated how the nation-state system is increasingly challenged by globalization. Yet, there are also artists who reinforce monocultural conceptions of national culture and cultural identity for diasporic subjects. In other words, diasporic art both undermines the master narrative of the nation at the same time as it reinforces them.

The fifth Kwangju Biennale held in South Korea in 2002 exhibited four large projects. Project Two: There, Sites of the Korean Diaspora showcased twenty-four artists from five of the oldest and largest Korean diasporic communities — those in Brazil, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, and the United States. There was thus an international large-scale exhibition and part of a biennale platform that provided a unique opportunity for cross-disciplinary analysis of artists, artwork, and cultural production within the field of Korean migration and diaspora studies.

I draw on artwork, interviews, internal documents and recordings, press coverage, art critiques, artist statements, and exhibition catalogues to articulate the production of Korean diasporic art. Key to diasporic art is that artists explore a shared history of trauma, suffering, or displacement and affectively reconstruct and nostalgically re-imagine their historical memories of such events. There indicates a paradox of diasporic art as it pertains to Korean artists. Whereas some diasporic artists uphold the ideas of homogeneity and blood ties, ideas central to the master narrative of the nation, other artists directly challenge the meaning such narratives hold in their artistic expressions. In other words, diasporic art both undermines dominant narratives of the nation at the same time as it reinforces singular conceptions of national culture, cultural belonging, and state affiliation for diasporic subjects.

Master Narrative of the Nation and Overseas Koreans

There was a transnational art exhibition that represented a significant moment within its local Kwangju setting as well as global art historical contexts. This article focuses on the There production as a site critical of exclusive conceptions of identity and belonging, and as such, it provides a possibility of reshaping the understanding and perspectives of Korean diaspora from one that is hierarchical in nature to one that challenges these hierarchies on several fronts.

First, the study of artists in diasporic communities challenges ideas of homogeneity (tanil minjok) and pure-blood relations (sunsu hyŏlt'ong) that have dominated discussions of overseas Koreans. These discussions, centered upon mainstream South Korean academic perspectives and public opinion, have largely confined the understanding of overseas Koreans within a master narrative of the ethnic nation. That narrative reifies a history of progress in order to overcome Korea's long and arduous history of suffering (sunan ŭi yŏksa).

Master narratives of Korean history portray the peninsula as having existed as a uniquely stable unit for more than 5,000 years. Twentieth-century national and cultural identity discourse has produced a strong belief in the homogeneity of the Korean people and its pure bloodline. The idea of homogeneity was coined in academic discourse in 1946 when nationalist scholar Yi Pyŏngdo first introduced the term tanil minjok in an article titled "The Homogeneity of the Korean People" protesting the externally enforced partition of the nation.

The idea of blood-kin relations extend back to Tan'gun, Korea's mythic progenitor and founder of the putative first Korean state of Old Chosŏn in 2333 BCE. The blood tie has been inculcated in various ways during the twentieth century. Korea's claim of being a homogeneous unit housing "splendid people" or paedal minjok was a twentieth-century construction.

Situating There

There's production is a good starting point with which to analyze how the five distinct communities that Yong Soon Min believed best visually represented the Korean diaspora are also those overseas Korean communities that South Korea desires to incorporate into a larger ethnic nation beyond the nation.

Wang-kyung Sung initially conceived of Project Two: There as part of the rationale for the 2002 Kwangju Biennale itself: to expand upon the localized identities of Kwangju and Asia. Sung's attitude is indicative of a growing number of people who would like to understand difference and variety from "globalized historical experiences and standpoints." Expanding the perspectives may be one of the only options to buffer against the oppressive hold of master narratives that still largely confine the discourse on overseas Koreans and cultural identity to the consanguineous link with the nation and its long history of suffering.

Min chose artists from Almaty, Kazakhstan; São Paulo, Brazil; Yanji, China; Osaka and the greater Kansai regions of Japan; and the two coasts of the United States to represent Korean diaspora at the 2002 Kwangju Biennale. Coming from the same era when Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha made strides in the U.S. art world, Min also was a pioneer visual artist, and her successful art practice combined the roles of artist, curator, and teacher.

Several tensions surface within There's production, including the overall artistic vision from the standpoints of artistic director Wang-kyung Sung and Project Two curator Yong Soon Min, the exhibition's reception, on-site working conditions, organization, participant imbalance, and print representation.

Kwangju: From City of Revolt to City of Culture

Talk of Kwangju may elicit one of several reactions from those who know something about South Korea and its metropolitan regions, but foremost in recent historical memory, Kwangju is the place where victims suffered and heroes arose during and after the May 18 Kwangju Uprising in 1980. The Kwangju Uprising of 5.18 was incited when riot police cracked down on pro-democracy students in front of Chŏnnam University.

The lingering questions and solemn shadows of the Kwangju Uprising left an indelible scar on the people of Kwangju. With such a legacy, Kwangju, as a site for artistic manifestations and cultural productions, happens from a local, off-center space — an evocative space where minor narratives may emerge.

The transformation of 5.18 from tragedy, into the fight for democratic struggle to local identity politics that then prevails as a celebration of culture on a global scale is part of the process of "overcoming 5.18." The Kim Young Sam administration first pumped funds into events commemorating the Kwangju Uprising, and studies show that the Kwangju Biennale was initiated by the central government and supported by local governments in an effort to transform Kwangju's image from a city of resistance to a "city of art."

Diasporic Art: Antidote to Master Narratives?

Two main methodological concerns are important to discussing the social dimension of art and its cultural production. First, each art piece and each artist's practice exists within a structure of social relationships, and the tensions of curating a biennale production such as There imbues such social and human dimensions.

The second aspect of methodological concerns attempts to argue that art is an antidote to the master narrative of the Korean nation. The cultural production of the There show exemplifies the possibility of a provisional act of emancipation from dominant narratives, constituted by cultural equality. Equality does not refer to a founding ontological principle, but to a presupposition that Jacques Rancière defines as a "condition that only functions when it is put into action."

Landscape

The examination of landscapes presented at the There exhibition draws from critical frameworks to show a mixture of mediums, style, function, and composition. Octogenarian Hee Man Suk was the oldest (1914–2003) of the twenty-four artists. The function of his numerous landscapes declared the importance of scenes of daily life, Manchurian landscapes, and family scenes. His landscape paintings illustrate his nostalgic visions of his hometown of Musan, Northern Hamgyŏng Province.

Y. David Chung's installation Stripmall was one of two installations presented in Project Two: There. A three-walled "intersection" enmeshed with charcoal drawings with three different video sequences embedded in the walls, Chung describes this piece as a formal attempt at depicting his experience of the sense of time and space within a strip mall site.

Jin Lee presented an eloquent photograph from a series titled Prairie, a work in four parts that follows the four seasons. Lee's photograph-based art engages landscapes within nature and captures identities as indexical traces of the passage of time. Lee states: "The prairie is such an interesting thing to look at because it's discussed in terms of a true American identity but also as a metaphor for democracy — it's made up of hundreds of different plants and that's what makes it so healthy unlike farmland which needs constant maintenance because of monoculture which is not a healthy way to grow."

History, Politics, and Society

A majority of the artwork from the There exhibition tells a story. In Leaving Home, Jun Chae recounts the histories of Japanese Koreans through symbolic representations that elicit a remembered history; abstract objects piled on top of the head of a solemn-faced woman wearing the traditional Korean garb, ch'ima chŏgori. Using mimetic mechanisms and surrealist abstractions, Chae's piling is constructed to rekindle the image of poor, rural women hoisting heavy goods upon their heads.

Fung-sok Ro presented his earthen ceramic sculpture The Gate. His piece depicts stages of development that Japanese Koreans underwent, emphasizing their ability to overcome each arduous "rite of passage" while residing in Japan.

Il Nam Park and Sung Min Kim are two Japanese Korean male artists whose work invokes narratives memorialized into Japanese Korean communal identity. Park's Gap is both a depiction of Park's own life-threatening experience during the 1995 Kobe earthquakes and a direct allusion to the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 when 6,000 Koreans living in Japan became the targets of attacks by Japanese police.

Sexuality and Gender

The viral male and adorned female bodies found at the center of Chŏngsuk Kang's Crossing and Susan Choi's Orientalism are different conceptions of portraiture. The body has now become the main subject matter, reflecting a difference in gender and generation. Choi's photograph engages the audience with the large, glossy, photographic print of herself and her model, seemingly giving both women the right to act and the desire to be acted upon.

Generational differences of Japanese Koreans factor significantly in Kang's bold address of gender and sexuality, one of the first paintings dealing with these issues in Areum circles. Her work quietly resists the male-dominated hierarchy of an association such as Areum, and her ability to use oversized male bodies composed in defeated positions is but one indication of the changing attitudes of third- and fourth-generation Japanese Koreans who no longer recognize the telos of return to the "homeland" as an option in their lives.

Abstraction

In juxtaposition to those narratives of struggle and the history of suffering that Japanese Korean artists interpreted, U.S.-based artists appeal to narratives based not upon real experiences but fantasy and myth. The L.A.-based artist Wonju Lim engages in historical memories of Greek myths and ancient folklore in dense, excessive, architectural installations. The piece she presented in 2002 at Kwangju, Elysian Field, is named after the place reserved for the souls of the heroic and virtuous in Greek mythology.

Fantasy is foremost on the minds of Jennifer Moon's superheroes. Moon's art practice is conceptual and performative. She enacts multiple subjectivities through her body in everyday life, as the business entrepreneur Deirdre Swan, the sex goddess Electra, and the superhero she was training to become on the installation gym set at the Kwangju exhibition site.

Conclusion

Within a diasporic framework, the spatial representation of five far-flung locations of Korean diasporic artists expanded the experience and expression of the collection of artwork presented at There. The geo-cultural corpus of the biennale structure critically develops the idea of diasporic art and proves that it can exist alongside a national frame. Discovering the artists through the 2002 Kwangju Biennale There exhibition clarified the powers of diaspora that lie in intercultural associations collected in a biennale platform, and help us to imagine alternative means toward understanding minor histories and differing identities.

Yet when sites of the Korean diaspora are explored in the specific intercultural activities of the Kwangju Biennale, even as diasporic art exists alongside national frames, an expansive diasporic consciousness does not necessarily overcome Korean national history and national consciousness — thus I call There a provisional emancipation from dominant hierarchies constituted by cultural equality.

The body of work I offer through the themes of landscape, history, culture, society, sexuality and gender, and abstraction lays claim to the unruly complexity of artists' senses of self and to the radical indeterminate nature of an action-centered approach to art. Diasporic art expands the space of Korean identity construction(s) by incorporating the creative expression of artists from different generations and multiple diasporic host communities, all underlined by vastly differing art practices.

The idea of paradoxes that undermine master narratives at the same time as they support them is one of several contradictions that characterize postmodern art — which works to subvert dominant discourses, but is dependent upon those same discourses for its very existence. The challenges to historical narratives as "facts" or "truths" are not new ones but have firm roots in the modern. The implications for examining paradoxes of the margins, of those excluded from the center, are what I explore in diasporic art, art making, cultural production, and the radical indeterminacy that interrogates sameness, oneness, homogeneity, and unity at the same time that it makes room for difference, heterogeneity, hybridity, and the provisional.

Y. David Chung is an artist and filmmaker known for his film and video works, installations, performances, drawings, prints, and public artworks. This interview combines two conversations on the concept of Korean identity and diasporic art: one that took place in 2008, after Chung finished filming his documentary Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People, co-directed with Matt Dibble, and the other in 2018. Hijoo Son and Jooyeon Rhee jointly designed the questions, interviewed Professor Chung, and redacted the transcript into its present form.

Decentering Korean Identity

Jooyeon: David, could you tell us why working on diaspora is so integral to your work?

David: The idea of diaspora has been really important to me for many years, even before recent academic research on diaspora, now called diaspora studies, became significant. I have traveled a lot since I was a kid [in the 1960s and 1970s], and I have seen a substantial Korean population living outside Korea. I was intrigued to see how Koreans in various places across the world shaped their existence outside Korea. Who are these people? How can they frame a structure for their identification with Korea? And, at the same time, how do they then shape their identities outside the country? In some cases, such as the Koreans in the former Soviet Union, who are called Koryŏsaram, people who are two or three generations away still latch onto the idea that they are Korean, even though they are not really Korean. I see similar cases among groups of Korean people in the United States and many places around the world. These cases have been intriguing to me; thus, diaspora became an important subject matter in my works.

Jooyeon: It's interesting to hear you say that second- and third- or, in the case of Koryŏsaram, fourth-generation Koreans who believe they are Korean "are not really Korean." This statement is related to the second question we wanted to ask you. Does your idea about diaspora and Korean identity change or expand as you create works about them? You have featured Koreans in Russia and Kazakhstan, and recently North Koreans. Do fourth-generation Kazakh Koreans, for example, cling to some kind of idea that they are ethnically Korean?

David: I think my ideas do change. Looking toward the Koreans in the Soviet sphere and in North Korea really changes the pivot of where the Korean diaspora come from. It decenters the previously dominant notion of Korean diasporic identity by shifting the geographical location of the origin, because it used to be so focused on South Korea. And it does expand the central idea of where the mother country is. It really does change a lot of ways you look at the diasporic community when you "decenter" the point of origin, because you look at it from their perspective, through the prism of their history and legacy. It's quite different from those who migrated to the United States or South America for economic reasons.

Hijoo: So you're talking about the political and historical reasoning or motivation for movement or forced movement in these cases?

David: Right. The circumstances of their movement shape their ideas about Korean identity.

Hijoo: On the one hand, different types of movement decenter the concept of Korean diaspora, particularly the ways in which cultural producers think about it or deal with it, or write and make artwork about diasporic issues. But from the standpoint of the North Korean refugees, for example, I don't know if we can use diaspora when referring to them. Would you say that these people decenter the concept of diaspora? To a great extent, their lives are still being determined by the South Korean state. Even before they arrived in South Korea, they were in China, Thailand, and all the other countries they had to go through. Do you think the existence of North Korean migrants and refugees "decenters" the concept of diaspora, since a majority of them live in South Korea?

David: Yes, I think so. For those who grew up in Pyŏngyang or elsewhere in North Korea but now live in the West or in post-Soviet countries, their childhood memories and ideas about how they grew up are completely different from those of people from the South. Their political views, for example, are quite different from those from South Korea. So I do think it makes a big difference.

North Korean Refugees as Diaspora

Jooyeon: I presume that your idea about "decentering" is informed by your recent work with North Koreans. Could you just talk a little bit about what you've been doing recently, especially since you have spent some time in Seoul and in Pyŏngyang?

David: Well, this is a project that's been going on and off for several years. About eight years ago, I did the first installation called Pyŏngyang, and it was a drawing and a sculptural work. Shortly after the installation, I wanted to expand that piece by working on a video or film project, but I put it aside for about five years before working on it again. I've been interviewing and working with some North Korean refugees and defectors in Seoul and talking to them about their experiences. Their stories really vary from people who have been in Seoul for ten years to people who just came to South Korea two years ago. I'm most interested in the human component of their lives and their stories about residing in South Korea. I do interview them just a little about how they escaped and the hardships they went through before arriving in South Korea. My main interest, however, is to hear about how they are looking at their lives now. Some of them want to go back to North Korea, and that type of thing is a very interesting example.

Jooyeon: Who are the ones who want to go back to North Korea? Is their desire to return due to the extremely displaced conditions under which they live[d] in South Korea?

David: Some have gone back, though I don't think any of the people I interviewed have returned. There are a number of reasons that they want to return. Maybe they miss their family back in North Korea, some feel like they don't fit in South Korea, many South Koreans can be very judgmental, and so on.

Hijoo: Looking at the scale of identities that you are depicting and encountering, would you say that they represent or are part of the "Korean diaspora," in the sense that the diasporic identity par excellence is one in which that history of displacement, suffering, trauma, pain, violence, and coerced or forced movement is imbricated in that term? In this sense, would you argue that North Korean asylum seekers and refugees are part of that Korean diaspora?

David: Yes, I think they are. For example, some of them are living beyond South Korea in different countries such as England, the United States, and Canada, so they would definitely be part of the Korean diaspora. You have to use this term "diasporic community" very carefully, because there is an official government definition. South Korea established a government institution that deals with Korean diaspora a few years ago, I believe, that interprets things in a certain way. So how do North Koreans residing in South Korea represent part of a diasporic community? That would be a hard question to tease out. I guess it would depend on how you define "diasporic community." The question is: Which one is their mother country? North or South Korea?

Hijoo: Right! Exactly! That's the conundrum!

David: Those refugees living abroad are definitely included in the "diasporic community."

Hijoo: But the conundrum of how to categorize those living in South Korea is yet to be determined, perhaps?

David: Yes, I don't know exactly how you would categorize them.

Jooyeon: Did you exhibit any of your recent video, Defector Project, on North Koreans, while you were in Seoul over the summer?

David: I haven't shown it in Seoul yet. The last time I showed a piece of it was at the University of California at Berkeley, when I was invited to give a talk there. But right now the project is in progress.

Jooyeon: Has your interaction with North Koreans in South Korea informed you in ways that further—or even differ from—what you have learned from ethnic Koreans in the Commonwealth of Independent States such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan? Obviously, North Koreans are Korean—they consider themselves Korean—but how is that negotiated, especially as they interact with South Koreans and shift their understanding of self?

David: As I said earlier, the ways they live really vary. There are some people who have migrated to South Korea and found work. These people are doing okay, though they still feel, of course, the prejudice because of their accent and where they are from. As you know, South Korea is a very hierarchical society. If you are a young man and you didn't serve in the military, then you are in one group of people who are to be discriminated against. If you are North Korean, then you are in a completely different group of people altogether. I think the experiences of the young women and men are different as well. So it's really hard to generalize their stories. But individual stories matter a lot. Some of their stories are quite horrific, such as young women being sold as wives to Chinese men, having kids, and then having to escape to Thailand. Almost all of the people I interviewed went to Thailand and then came up through Thailand to South Korea.

Hijoo: And the majority of them have been women?

David: There are a lot of women, but there were young men as well.

Hijoo: David, you are very well known in the community of South Korean artists and academics, but not necessarily with North Korean refugees. When you approach them, do you tell them who you are, and then they are open to talking to you, or is it just kind of how I often go about doing things: "Hey! I'm this person, I'm doing this ethnographic study, may I interview you?" How do you approach them?

David: Usually they are not familiar with my work. If they're other artists and academics, then they will be. So in that case, yes, then they certainly do. Specifically with the Defector Project, it doesn't really come up. They'll just think I'm someone making a film.

Reception of Diasporic Art

Jooyeon: This past summer, we were talking about your teaching work on film in Seoul, and we wanted to know if your work has been received in South Korea differently than in, let's say, Boston, Chicago, or Washington, where you have shown your documentary video Koryo Saram. Also, what kind of changes have you seen in Seoul concerning the subject matter of your film, the idea of Korean diaspora?

David: That's a good question. I think my work is looked at very differently over in South Korea than it is in United States. Earlier on, when I showed my work in South Korea, I was labeled as a minjung [people's] artist, maybe because my work deals mainly with socially marginalized people. I heard about this terminology, because minjung artists immediately associated my work with theirs due to the style of my work. Even as early as Seoul House [1987], the South Korean art world linked me with that style. I was immediately put in that camp back then.

Hijoo: Are you talking about this labeling as occurring recently or a while ago?

David: A while ago, in the 1990s. The films I showed back then were the works I had done on Los Angeles riots and the relations between the African-American and Korean-American communities. I think people in South Korea are always curious about what my political stance is. Even if they don't come out and say so, they are always searching for that. And then also, Jooyeon's question about the reception of artwork and artists from overseas in South Korea is very critical, whether you are Korean or Korean American, or whoever you are. Cody Choi, for example, had a very interesting take on all this stuff.

Hijoo: He changed his citizenship to South Korean? And he's based in Seoul now?

David: Yes. He's based in Seoul, but because he's spent so much time in Los Angeles—I think he has spent about twenty years there—he has found that he's considered Korean American and not Korean in South Korea.

Jooyeon: So, you're saying that the viewer's subject position—such as being South Korean—matters in the reception of your work, because that has implications?

David: Yes. People always seem to be interested in putting you in a certain camp in South Korea. The understanding between Korean-American and Korean art and artists is very interesting. For example, look at the Void in Korean Art exhibition curated by the Samsung Museum. It's very interesting to hear Korean peoples' comments about Korean-American artists such as Kimsooja, Byron Kim, and Do-ho Suh. There are also Korean artists in the show, and it's actually one of the best-curated pieces in South Korea that I've seen. It had to do mostly with the quality of the art and with empty spaces in artwork. The overall feedback was that these artists are taking parts of past Korean art and interpreting it.

Hijoo: What does that mean?

David: I don't know, but, for example, Byron Kim's celadon paintings are interpreted as directly referring to Korean celadon.

Hijoo: So the Korean markers became the markers because they are legible to South Korean viewers?

David: Right. They're using these objects to reference Korea and Korean art history.

Hijoo: What was the Do-ho Suh piece?

David: It was a soft, fabric piece, a really beautiful gate produced out of fabric. It's a huge piece, a twelve-foot hanging Korean gate hand-sewn together. And Kimsooja had a video about the wandering migrant in which one sees the back of her head and there's water going by.

Hijoo: A Needle Woman series.

David: Yes. It was interesting to see how Korean-American artwork is so different when it's shown in South Korea compared with any other country. Precisely because the viewers are South Korean, they have a natural bias to connect the work to their country. And of course they're going to pick the celadon pieces instead of Byron Kim's Synecdoche [an ongoing work composed of four hundred portraits of sitters' skin tones].

Jooyeon: David, so you are saying that South Korean viewers tend to receive diasporic artists' works politically. But, your current topic of concern—the project you are in middle of doing—is about North Korean immigrant refugees and asylum seekers. However you want to shape that category, it is in itself a very political project. So I don't think you're going to get away from that type of questioning.

David: Not at all. I understand that.

Hijoo: Of course, it's interesting, though, because isn't it important to tell the stories that you are trying to tell?

David: I was very interested in how culture and self-awareness come from traditional storytelling and how those stories form who you are. I was interested in Korean stories and American stories, in what is subject matter. I was thinking about what defines subject matter for immigrants to South Korea. How is it defined for people who are moving from place to place? How does subject matter become defined? If I'm referring to a biblical scene, then I'm obviously referring to Western ideas, and so this was a sort of investigation into what all that was about. I was interested in folk stories, especially Korean folk stories, so it was a blending of all those things. I created a specifically commissioned work, Mega Morning Calm, for the Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art [1994] exhibition, curated by Margo Machida and Vishakha Desai, the gallery directors at that time. They wanted a mural for the entranceway to the Asia Society [in New York City]. The title comes from the Korean creation story of Tan'gun, and that's why it's called Mega Morning Calm.

Hijoo: Oh, because it's a mega-narrative.

David: Yes. It's like the ultimate narrative, or the first narrative.

Hijoo: I've seen the piece. Wasn't there an implicit critique of that narrative? Or, were you interested in bringing the mythical origins onto canvas as subject matter?

David: Yes, I was interested in subject matter. What is subject matter? And I wanted to choose this creation story. Every people has a creation story, and no one knows about the Tan'gun story, which is a fascinating one. As you know, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il claim direct lineage to Tan'gun, and there was some linkage to Everwhite Mountain (Paekdusan) and some war imagery in the installation. Just the story itself…I really loved the story about the bear and the tiger. It was a subject matter that I actually wanted to work with.

Hijoo: But it's a myth.

David: Well, some people believe that it's real. And there's a Tan'gun cult.

Hijoo: Well, yes, of course. People call Tan'gun harabŏji [grandfather]. What do you think about the idea about pure blood ties, that the Korean people are one large family that goes back to this progenitor, Tan'gun?

David: Well, I think that it's interesting. The kind of thing I was looking at in the film Koryo Saram is that there are so many Koreans living abroad—some seven million? I think it's precisely what I wanted to drive at in the film: the idea that identity and culture are temporal. They are made up in the mind. It's a question of how much you want to attach yourself to it. I think that some people don't want anything to do with it and others find it an important thing to latch onto. My work is looking at just the experience of a person from one culture who is mixing with another culture.

Hijoo: But this idea of attachment…you're definitely attaching to your body of work this Korean history. Just look at the titles of your earlier works from the 1990s—street scene, bar scene, apartment, and so on—and then look from those to the titles of your works from Turtle Boat Head [1992] to Mega Morning Calm.

David: The Turtle Boat Head piece is obviously about the Hideyoshi invasions and the turtle warships. Again, I wanted to interject subject matter into the body of work. Once again, I went to the grocery store with that. I felt like I hadn't finished with that theme. This time I actually built a grocery store with paper and wood, and the project was largely based on my father's experience growing up during the Japanese occupation, surviving two wars, and being pushed down to the South.

Hijoo: He's originally from North Korea? Pyŏngyang?

David: My mom is from Kaesong, and my father is from a small town outside Pyŏngyang. They both lost everything during World War II and came to South Korea after the occupation, not during the war itself. It was sometime between 1945 and 1950, so Turtle Boat Head was largely about that experience. My father was in the Korean navy for twenty years, and he'd always talk about these turtle boats. So it's largely a piece about that story.

Hijoo: So, was the piece Turtle Boat Head commemorative?

David: I think that this interjection of culture largely comes from autobiography or at least is informed by that, more than it presents itself as a grand historical narrative.

Hijoo: It's autobiographical, but it's also historical. These are some main, conventional narratives of Korean history.

David: Well, I find this whole politicization is a global thing. People don't talk as much anymore about the artistic merits of a piece. They talk much more about politicization.

Jooyeon: On the topic of the politicization of artwork, do you believe your interaction with artists in South Korea has given you any insight into or posed challenges to your diasporic identity or your work? Were there moments of misunderstanding, miscommunication, understanding, or conflict that you encountered that you might want to share with us?

David: I don't know if my interactions with artists in South Korea pose any challenges to my diasporic identity. If anything, they confirm my understanding that our approaches are very different, because a lot of artists in South Korea would not have the same concerns. Well…there are a lot of artists, writers, filmmakers, and people who are working with the topic of Korean diaspora. When this trend first started, it was really misunderstood, like the art exhibition called The Decade Show.

Hijoo: Yes, in 1990.

David: 1990. That's when the curators grouped marginalized people, without really distinguishing between what made them marginalized, as if there were no distinction among ethnic, cultural, or political reasons for marginalized groups in the United States. I think the understanding of the diaspora has become much more mature now. It's become really different. People understand it much better in both the United States and Korea, actually. In South Korea, there's much more awareness about diasporic people there now. And there isn't the earlier attitude that was, sort of, either you're Korean or you're not. Now they understand, "Oh, okay, you're a foreign Korean." They accept that.

Hijoo: That's really interesting that you say that about The Decade Show. Then there was the Whitney Biennale in 1993. Do you remember how Byron Kim's work on skin colors was really highlighted? And then, of course, there was Yong Soon Min's 2002 There: Sites of the Korean Diaspora show at the Gwangju Biennale. And, subsequently, do you know the Zainichi writer Kyung-sik Suh, who has written books about the Korean diaspora?

David: No. I may have read some of his work.

Hijoo: So, you're not aware of the Korean Japanese….

David: Oh yes, completely, parts of my family are still in Japan.

Hijoo: Your film was really eye-opening for so many of us, the communities that were able to see it. Maybe one day you could show it in North Korea. You're right, there has been a trajectory in which conversations and especially cultural producers have been really key to helping to open the discourse, if I can say that: opening the conversation to think outside conventional narratives that reduce everyone into one pot as in The Decade Show, which you mentioned.

David: The Decade Show made no distinction between those who voluntarily migrated and others, who were forcibly brought over. But of course there is now great awareness of those things. I remember being back then on a panel of Korean immigrants, rape victims, and American Indians. [Laughter.] The title of the panel was "Marginalized Victims." Of course, that would never happen today. In South Korea now, and the United States and other countries, there's a lot more awareness about hybrid cultures, ethnic identity, ethnic nationalism, all these different ways in which people identify themselves, and also the artwork as well.

Capitalizing on Korean Identity in Popular Media

David: In South Korea there's just a lot more understanding of diasporic issues, and the topic is really present in the popular media. On the topic of North Korean refugees, there are television shows about North Koreans who now live outside North Korea, so it's not this hidden thing anymore.

Hijoo: The North Korean beauties! Did you watch the show? What did you think?

David: I'm always amazed at how all of these things are really present in the popular media.

Hijoo: It's not a hidden thing. It's actually commercialized, popularized, and in that sense narrativized. But when I see the famous show with the North Korean beauties, and the producer is a famous woman producer, I would say there's a certain narrative that's constantly pushed on the audience: these women tell their stories of going to hell and back, but ultimately they've faced the challenges, survived, and overcome hardship!

David: That's a whole strange world. Really bizarre.

Hijoo: It seems that South Koreans always put North Koreans in a positive light. Whether through a savior narrative or a victor narrative, it definitely seems as if there's a positive twist, which I know is not always the case.

David: So, a lot of changes have certainly happened, and there's a lot more awareness of the diasporic community.