Chun Kyung-ja’s death reveals bizarre family feud

Family members of artist Chun Kyung-ja, whose death this past summer was revealed by media last week, said Tuesday they learned about her death from a Korean bank only a few days before the news broke. 

“I learned on Oct. 19 about my mother’s passing from a staff member of a Korean bank, who called to ask for the approval (from a family member) required to close my mother’s bank account,” said Sumita Kim, the third of Chun’s four children at a press conference in Seoul. Kim is an artist herself and a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland, in the U.S.

Also in attendance were the late artist’s only surviving son and the widow of her second son.

Very little is known by the public about the death and final years of Chun, who was a female cultural icon in Korea’s male-dominated art world, except that she had lived in New York with her first child and daughter Lee Hye-sun since 1997 and that she had a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003.

That Chun passed away on Aug. 6 is a confirmed fact, Kim said, although she and other family members didn’t know where Chun has been laid to rest.

“My sister (Lee) didn’t notify us about mother’s death, nor tell us where her remains are,” Kim said. Kim and Lee are half-sisters.

Kim claimed that Lee kept their mother away from the rest of the siblings for an unknown reason for many years. But she denied rumors that the siblings were involved in an inheritance dispute.

At the press conference, the family members said they would hold a memorial service for the artist at the Seoul Museum of Art, to which Chun donated some 90 works of her art before she moved to the U.S. in 1997, on Oct. 30. Some of her works are on display at a permanent exhibition at the museum.

Best known for her 1977 work “Page 22 in My Sorrowful Legend,” a portrait of a women with snakes, Chun’s unique body of art won her much praise and fame. But she left her artistic career after a forgery scandal in 1991, moving to the U.S. and disappearing from the public eye.

“My mother loved Korea. She loved its people who loved her works and said she would come back to Korea. I hope those who were touched by her passionate works would come to the memorial service and pay tribute to my mother,” said Kim.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)