[This commentary was cowritten by Young-hae Chang (CEO) and Marc Voge
(CIO) of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. Marc's recent exhibition "Web
Project 8" appeared at the Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul,
Korea.]

+ + +

Since the South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee's assassination in 1979,
Korean art has known two essential tendencies: "Minjung" or "People's
Art," a minority movement of essentially figurative painting and
sculpture, and what Korean critics lump together under the heading of
"Modernism," an assortment of ephemeral groups that practiced avant-
garde art and that, according to their perceptions of every tendency of
the international art scene, hatched, saw the light of day, then
disappeared. For our purposes, Modernism means art that gave a low or
zero priority to political intent. Minjung and Modernism also represent
what in the West would be called left-wing and right-wing political
tendencies. Strange as it may seem, most artists in Korea are
conservative.

Throughout most of the 1980s Minjung artists struggled against first the
military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan (1980-88), then the presidency of
former general Roh Tae-woo (1988-93). Minjung's activities were in stark
contrast with those of the majority of Korean artists, including
Modernism's tolerance of if not easy acceptance of military-style
government. With the election of Kim Young-sam, the first civilian
Korean president in 1993, Minjung seemed partially vindicated. Then,
with Kim Dae-jung's election in 1998, it seemed that Minjung, although
now officially inactive, had won the day. Kim Dae-jung: former dissident
twice condemned to death by dictators, Nobel Peace Prize winner–and
native of the Kwangju region, which was the site of the military
regime's massacre of hundreds of people in 1980. Today, former Minjung
personalities and loyalists are becoming some of the key players on the
Korean art scene. Minjung ideals have indeed triumphed. Or have they? In
fact, what are they?

Politically, Minjung and Modernism still form the two poles of the
Korean art world psyche today, even though in ethical and esthetic terms
both are discredited. What these two tendencies really represent are the
lost opportunity to make ethical and esthetic choices that could have
changed the Korean art world: for or against corrupt government; for or
against the military dictatorship whose most heinous act was the
crushing of the Kwangju Uprising in a bloodbath; and, more and more, for
or against the former collaborators of dictators and military criminals:
big business.

Minjung is discredited for its propagandistic art and its artists who
collaborate today with a government that, even though it is now
democratically elected, has failed to clean up politics, including in
the art world; and with the same big business that received the lion's
share from past military regimes and that in spite of today's economic
crisis, which is partially the fault of its corrupt ways, remains
largely unchastened. Modernism is discredited not only because of its
lack of artistic originality and its expedient politics, but because of
something that is even more important. The Korean one of us–the other
one of us is American–went to live abroad, in Paris, because there was
supposedly something to be learned there, because of Modernist ideals.
Koreans believe they love learning. They do indeed love Western
diplomas. The Korean elite must be educated in the West. Yet what does
it mean if, when it comes back home, it behaves badly, disregarding all
that it supposedly learned in the West? when it behaves no better than
corrupt politicians and business people? when it disregards Western
ethics? Yes, it can pick and choose and not just accept wholesale
Westernization. It can also refuse Western ethics. After all, we live in
a postcolonial world. But at least where is the beginning of a debate on
the ethics of collaborating today with corrupt government and big
business? Where are the few art world voices speaking out against them?
Modernism, all those Korean artists who went to study and work abroad,
was just an excuse to avoid Minjung's difficult ethical questions of the
period, so difficult in fact that today, in far easier circumstances,
not even former Minjung artists themselves can face the still difficult
answers to them.

One of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES' basic artistic stratagems until
now, one that is maybe inspired by an instinctive disgust for both
Minjung and Modernism, has been to make certain works that contain a
relatively strong political and social intent, but clothed, we hope, in
an ironic ambiguity. Another stratagem is for us to claim that our art
is unimportant. (But of course, artists really don't know what they're
doing, so judge for yourself.) Both stratagems have a sound enough
theoretical basis. After all, anything, not just our own art, can lend
itself to being more or less political; and art isn't as important as a
lot of things in life. We know we've wanted art and artists to be
unimportant so that we can go on not considering our possibly unethical
associations in Korea. For if the work we do is unimportant, how can we
do anything unethical?

Yet we're on shaky ground. Y-H_C_H_I was in a Web show out of Montreal
last month called "Maid in Cyberspace"
(http://www.studioxx.org/maid2001/f/even/even.html) with, among others,
the Web artist Pat Binder, whose Web piece is called "Voices from
Ravensbrueck" (http://www.pat-binder.de/ravensbrueck/). It's a beautiful
work that presents some of the writings of women in the Nazi
concentration camp of the title. Unimportant? When she first put it
online last fall, she wrote an E-mail asking if we were interested in
the Holocaust. We wanted to write back to her a long letter expressing
our interest based on our experiences and readings in Paris. We never
did, and we think it's because her Web piece startled and embarrassed us
at a moment when we were beginning to confront and feel guilty about our
shirking even the most minor ethical reflections on the role of new
media art in Korea, even just a thought on, well, just about everything,
every thoughtless step we take here in our collaborations with
government and big business.

It is difficult to define, much less lead the ethical life in Korea. In
the '60s and '70s, the dictator Park Chung-hee established today's
Korean economy on the "chaebol," the giant corporation turned
multinational conglomerate. There are five or six dominant ones in Korea
today, all of which started and thrived in that seemingly golden
economic age that is one part of Park's legacy, and that has made more
and more Koreans today turn a blind eye to the other part of it, his
reign of terror that ended in his assassination in 1979 by the head of
the notorious Korean CIA. In fact today, a majority of Koreans including
the current president, who only want to remember Park's economic
policies, would like to even build a museum to his glory.

The chaebols provide literally everything you need in life, from
delivery room to deathbed. We're not speaking metaphorically. Samsung,
which is the number one or two chaebol, manufactures everything from
sugar, rice, frozen fish, paper and clothing, to cell phones, stereos,
computers, TVs, refrigerators, cars, apartment buildings and
skyscrapers; it sells insurance and securities, and owns department
stores, luxury hotels and restaurants, theme parks, a professional
baseball team, an art and design institute, a major newspaper and an
online auction house
(http://www.samsung.com/about/affiliated_companies/affiliated_other_companie
s.html). You can be born in a Samsung hospital, die there, and have your
funeral there. A Samsung backhoe will dig your grave. This is one way to
see the Korean chaebols.

Another way, the accepted way, is to see them as national heroes. In
Korean prime-time soap operas, most of the heroes are businessmen. In
Korea, businessmen lead the ethical life par excellence. But then so can
artists–if they're willing (and they are) to act like businessmen. Nam
June Paik, the "father of video," recently made a TV commercial for
Samsung in which he shouts but one word: "Creativity, creativity,
creativity!" His message is clear, that business and art are but one and
the same. But are business ethics and art ethics one and the same?

In 1999 we presented ten videos called "The Samsung Project" during the
screening program of Multimedia Art Asia Pacific
(http://www.maap.org.au/), in Brisbane Australia. One of the Samsung
curators (Samsung also has an art foundation and several museums
[http://www.hoammuseum.org/english/general/g_4.html]) who had the
misfortune of being there by accident walked up to one of us afterwards
to ask: "Why do you want to hurt the country?" the implication being
that Samsung = Korea. It does. If out of ethical responsibility you were
to boycott the chaebols because you had decided that they were indeed
guilty of collaborating with former Korean dictators to enrich
themselves and the dictators, and that their monopolies and corruption
coupled with the corruption of the government had thrown the country
into the economic crisis of 1997 that Koreans are still trying to dig
out from, you would surely die from a lack of food and shelter. But
maybe that's taking things a little too seriously–which brings us back
to our tack of seeing art and the artist's life as relatively
unimportant.

The Kassel Documenta 11 "platform" statement is titled "Democracy
Unrealized" (http://www.documenta.de/info-e.html). Now there's a group
of people in the art world that thinks art is important. Why is it then
that most if not all of them–Westerners, that is–abandon critical
thinking and ethical responsibility when they come to Korea? One gets
the feeling they come to Korea like Western movie stars go to Japan, to
get paid for promoting something they wouldn't be proud to promote in
their own countries. If they knew they were working with corrupt
government officials and big business and even criminals, would they
still come here? But they do know. They have to know. Don't they? If
they don't, is it up to Y-H_C_H_I to tell them? Should we tell those who
E-mail us that they're coming to Seoul to work with such and such an
institution: "Don't come, you'll be aiding and abetting corrupt
government and big business and hurting the people"? But Documenta 11
(for instance–we just happened to see its platform statement while we
were writing this text), Documenta 11 is seeking artistic expressions of
"Democracy Unrealized." It isn't concerned about what worries us, which
is the ethics of doing new media art (or any art) in collaboration with
unethical people.

Is ethical conduct a question of degree or of essence? The criminal acts
of government, military and big business in Korea are understandable
everywhere because to a greater or lesser extent they exist everywhere.
But are their wrongdoings of the present and recent past, most of which
have been only symbolically punished if not wholly unpunished, so
essentially criminal that it is up to us (why us?–again, what has
become of other dissident voices in the Korean art world?) to abstain
not only from participating in their cultural projects that include new
media, but to alert all those who might otherwise fall prey to their
continuing cover up and strategy of legitimization? Or is it safe to say
"What's the use? All governments and big business have corruption
problems. Better we get some of that money than not"?

Is it enough to continue to believe that one makes art that is ethically
uncompromising? Frankly, this is not so hard to do. Web art is a
relatively virtuous art. It depletes little or no natural resources,
takes up little or no space on the planet, ends up at worst (or at best)
as mere cybertrash, and in Korea one can create it and exhibit it with
the bare minimum of dealing with government and big business. Until now,
Web art has helped us avoid the very ethical problems that are suddenly
creeping up on us. Yes, things are changing, for us and for Web art in
Korea. Last year, Rhizome's Alex Galloway (http://www.rhizome.org) and
Fine Art Forum's Nisar Keshvani (http://www.fineartforum.org/) both
asked us the same question: What's happening in Korean new media art?
Their question implies that new media artists participate in their local
new media scene. Is that so? And here we've been trying not to. Once we
learned how it worked, it became a relief for us not to deal with a
Korean art scene that mirrors the malfeasance of government and big
business. Now we're taking the time to see why Web art has set us free.

Free until now. The other day a Samsung Foundation curator invited one
of us to meet and talk with its curatorial department about Web art.
Samsung? Samsung! The very multinational giant that is synonymous with
the nation and that supposedly we wanted to hurt. The honorarium is
symbolic, but the import is real for those who have dared to mock
Goliath. So do we accept? (We did–although we can always change our
minds, we suppose.) And we guess we had better come clean that for the
last few months we have been doing some copy writing for Art Center Nabi
(http://www.nabi.or.kr), the recently inaugurated new media center owned
by the corporate giant SK (http://www.skcorp.com/eng/e_home.htm). It is
no secret to anybody in Korea that the Nabi director is the wife of the
CEO of SK and the daughter of a former president who was convicted and
then pardoned for corruption, having admitted taking $654 million in
political bribes (the fine of which was only $350 million), and treason
for his participation as a general in the Kwangju massacre. The director
is intelligent and highly competent and will probably become the most
powerful voice in Korea for new media. She is also a charming person. So
why did she allow or encourage her father to attend the opening of the
center? We guess because nobody saw a problem with it. Among others, one
of the former leading artists of Minjung, the so-called "People's Art,"
was even there to network. And by the way, we were there. In the
following days, Korean women's magazines featured the opening in
laudatory articles that included photos of her and her father. Who are
we to make a big deal about it? Different ethics for different folks,
right? Not to mention that President Kim Dae-jung has allowed himself to
be photographed dining with Chun Doo-hwan, the former Korean dictator-
general who condemned him to death on trumped up charges in 1980. Closer
to home, no less than Rem Koolhaas gave us the green light not to make a
big deal about it–not personally, but we hear he has designed a project
for the new SK headquarters, a skyscraper that would include on its
ground floors Art Center Nabi. Who are we to second guess his ethics?

That's where we stand today. We are far from being as idealistic as
others about new media art. To us it is primarily a wonderful new medium
that fits and molds our lifestyle. We do feel though that since new
media artists inside and outside Korea can just as easily if not more
easily than other artists become the partners of possibly unethical
situations and cybersituations sponsored by Korean government and big
business, both of which are bent on adding new media art to the window
dressing of their high-tech facades, it would be nice to open a debate
on new media ethics in Korea.