Artist Note by Shin Jang-sik — "Between the Northeast Project and Yasukuni" (2006)

These days there seems to be growing interest in Mt. Baekdu. In particular, I watch the drama 〈Jumong〉 every week with pleasure. We have several foundation myths, but it is clear that they have not received the kind of attention given to Greek mythology. Since liberation, our modernization has been intense, yet a defeatism — lamenting the surrounding logic or our lagging behind the times — has remained across generations. Within such circumstances, the rekindled interest in our origins and the various expressions and attempts concerning our identity are clearly a positive phenomenon.

Interest in Dokdo, as part of our clear and pressing reality, has been present from early on, but the interest in Goguryeo and our former territories has remained small, and the fact that this has not stood at the center of our concern is closely tied to the division of our country. The stark reality of the North placed constraints on such thinking and action — there were periods in our modern history when reality was too harsh to allow concern for our former territories.

Today's effort that has made it possible to visit Mt. Geumgang leads our gaze from a Cold War consciousness toward an open one. Only after the normalization of relations with China could we meet Goguryeo. It is clear that being active within world history brings new gifts to us. Even if the one who first set foot on our former territory is a swindler, we must honor the very act of setting foot. This emphasizes how important it is to be first in thought and action.

Visiting Ji'an in present-day China, many feelings cross one's mind. Watching the people of the North across the river is part of the tour program. The melancholy sight that the division of our nation creates today, and the commercialization as tourism of our own self-reproach over not being able to think of Goguryeo — this reality is dispiriting. And yet, even here, the persistence of those who love and seek to meet our history continues.

Have you heard of Mt. Baekdu? Even here one sees the figures of young people sweating their way across the Baekdudaegan. The stele of King Gwanggaeto, trapped in a Chinese-style hut behind a glass case, with a dozing Chinese woman — this symbolically shows our reality today.

Consider Tibet today. The Dalai Lama, who met Mao Zedong in his early days, still wanders foreign lands and has not once been able to visit our country though he wishes to do so. In his lecture in Mongolia one felt the particular feeling of the Mongolian people and their effort toward their identity. Looking at Tibet, swallowed up by China when the world's eye was elsewhere, one cannot but feel grief and pity. Has China, within its history, ever held a territory wider than now? The road from Lhasa in Tibet to Kathmandu in Nepal was named "Friendship Highway" by the Chinese. When the name is such, of course they build and expand the road! Seeing the Han Chinese dozing at the Nepalese border, one cannot shake the thought: even what Zhuge Liang could not do, these people are accomplishing.

It is by no means a luxury to think of Goguryeo within our reality. The Tibet project, the unnamed project in the west, and now the Northeast Project — where our domain will collide and how it will become a question before history and the times — we must, it seems to me, give thought.

Unification will be first. Improving the reality of our nation is first, I think. And we cannot console ourselves by saying that our identity and history are not erased even if someone tries to erase them. To live between the Northeast Project and Yasukuni — this has been our reality, and we have lived this way.

From the time of our fathers and our fathers' fathers

We must come to our senses.