LONDON (AFP) ― North Korea’s embassy in Britain offered the public rare access this week to an exhibition featuring four socialist realism artists and their takes on classic London cityscapes as part of a cultural thaw between the two countries.
Some 60 paintings by Jon Pyong-jin, Kim Hun, Ho Jae-song, Hong Song-iI and other artists including landscapes of their communist homeland went on display in the anonymous two-floor, red-brick townhouse in the Ealing suburb of west London.
The artists dressed soberly for a press viewing in the single room open to visitors. All of them wore North Korean flag pins with the images of Kim Il-sung, who founded the republic of North Korea in 1948, and his son and successor, the late Kim Jong-il (father of current leader Kim Jong-un).
“London, like Pyongyang, is a beautiful city with ordinary, peaceful and romantic people,” said Ho, speaking through an interpreter.
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North Korean artist Jon Pyong-jin poses for a picture next to his paintings at the North Korean Embassy in London on Monday. (AFP-Yonhap) |
When Ho was asked about artistic freedom in Britain, the interpreter cut in, saying, “We have freedom!”
Britain has an embassy in North Korea and there are tentative cultural ties between the two countries including a performance of “Hamlet” by London’s prestigious Globe Theater company in Pyongyang that angered human rights campaigners.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is very critical of the regime, however. He accused it of “extreme brutality” following the execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle.
“I believe culture has an enormously important role to play in developing relationships between people,” said David Heather, an organizer of this week’s exhibition and a British expert on Soviet art who collects North Korean propaganda posters.
“The artists have been on a three-week tour of the beautiful part and less beautiful part of London,” he said.
The tour for the four artists has included visits to two major exhibitions about Rembrandt and Turner.
Hong painted two young women on the edge of a bridge ― a painting entitled “Bright Smile by the Thames,” while Jon posed in front of his latest work “Trafalgar Square at Sunset.”
But the artists appeared less than impressed by Britain.
Asked what he had enjoyed in London, he said, “Nothing in particular.”
When questioned on which Western artists might have inspired him, Ho said, “None.”
In an official interview with NK News Agency, Ho lauded the work of North Korea’s Mansudae Art Studio, to which he and his colleagues belong.
The group includes 700 artists and is behind the innumerable posters and statues to the regime inspired by Soviet art, as well as pictures of landscapes and flower arrangements.
Ho told NK News Agency that artists at the studio “normally” work 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. including a one-hour lunch break.
“It depends on the individual artists, as some of them work through overnight when they are inspired and focused at their artwork,” he said.
