This project examines developments in the field of visual art in the post-Korean War period of national reconstruction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1953-1960). In particular, I focus on the debates that arise within the emergent genre of Chosŏnhwa, a modernized mode of traditional painting in ink, that address the question of a North Korean mode of socialist realism. Based on editorial articles and round table discussion published in the art journal Chosŏn misul (1957–?) my project traces the dynamic positions held by artists, critics and historians on the relationship between the discourse of (socialist) realism and the role of Korea’s own aesthetic tradition within the development of a new mode of North Korean art in the socialist context. What transpires is a dynamic discourse on what constitutes or should constitute North Korean art in the contemporary era of socialism.

This project examines developments in the field of visual art in the post-Korean War period of national reconstruction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1953-1960). In particular, I focus on the debates that arise within the emergent genre of Chosŏnhwa, a modernized mode of traditional painting in ink, that address the question of a North Korean mode of socialist realism. Based on editorial articles and round table discussion published in the art journal Chosŏn misul (1957–?) my project traces the dynamic positions held by artists, critics and historians on the relationship between the discourse of (socialist) realism and the role of Korea’s own aesthetic tradition within the development of a new mode of North Korean art in the socialist context. What transpires is a dynamic discourse on what constitutes or should constitute North Korean art in the contemporary era of socialism.