Youngsub Han (painter)

 

It has been my long-term habit to gaze upon the Jungbu Highway, and it started as I moved to Kwangju, Kyunggido. It augments my volition and desire for harder living; looking at fast-moving vehicles, stream of cars moving up north to Seoul in Sunday afternoons. The meaning of seeing all this is reminder of my position away from the main stage of survival and liveliness.

 

There is another point of reference along the highway that I found since converting an old house into an art studio to commence on my life as an artist 10 years ago. A white painted house with red roof located in a valley east of toll gate point. The late Kukjin Kang’s old place reminds me of my own inadvertence and yearning for Kang.

 

Affinity.
We could still smell the tear gas from the 4.19 Revolution on our first meeting as we commenced on our university career in March 1961. My friendship was somewhat shallow during our first two years as we both chose to concentrate on what we did. It was as we reached our third year in the university that people started calling him ‘brother Kang’, a comprehensible alias concerning his big brother-like aura.

 

“Bro, how about a drink?” I ask as I expect his consensus in low-toned voice. He got along well with people, and led people around them with his typical charisma, even with undesirable events occurring.

 

It was my aspiration at the time nearing my graduation to find the meaning of walking the road to becoming an artist, just as much as others such as the deceased Chanseung Jung, Taeshin Choi, Inhwan Kim. The contemplation arose within us as we considered forming a group with others like Kang himself, Chulmo Yang and Younghee Nam who joined us belatedly, ultimately forming ‘Noncol’. Later we published the country’s first literary coterie magazine and opened the first ‘Noncol Coterie Exhibition’. Considering back the Noncol art, Myunghee Han, wife of Inhwan Kim puts it:

 

“As I returned from my summer holiday to Jeju Island, Noncol had included overall seven members. The new members were each unique in their own rights: one was a bigheaded guy who made the most out of his wide range of knowledge from extensive reading and style (Chulmo Yang); another was happily admitted to join on the unanimous decision owing to his total commonness in outlook, the tacit and resonant one (Kukjin Kang); and the other is the cute, tricky little lady who used bring sweet potatoes upon her visits during our first season (Younghee Nam).

 

The group of seven was formed. The morale was high. You can gauge the gravitas of the coterie by checking the list of participants; Kyungsung Lee, Seobo Park, Junsang Lee, Dongli Lee, Duksu Mun and Kwangsu Oh, who each contributed a literary gem. And this is accompanied by a grandiloquent proclamation in the prelude of the book:

 

‘Proclamation’
We together hold high our flag of freedom against any antiestablishment and compromise
1. The formative condition shall be predicated upon our ‘consciousness within freedom’ into our new world
2. We hold as our philosophical ethics the creative change of time in radicalism
3. We pursue formative morale having set our foot on the platform of intellectuality out of indiscreet emotional resources of the established.

 

That was the grand inception, and our group was dissolute after three exhibitions ? the first two in Seoul and the last held in Busan. My tie with Kang remained concrete after the dissolution. The first time I came to serious terms with Kang was the time that I opened private art classes in Gyedong, Jongnogu in my effort to become independent from parents. He remained close to me and my workplace even for the next two classes I opened in Huamdong and Myungryundong. Plus, at the time, it was only natural to go through a series of obstacles and serious life discussions, while one imagines there are episodes and other small bits of history that went unknown to everyone else.

 

‘Gyedong class rat incident’, ‘Yangpyung antique incident’, ‘Ism incident’, ‘the second daughter of the mill shop’ ‘Dongdaemun Middle School recommendation incident’ etc.

 

These times were important for both of us because we were starting to construct our own ideals and identities with the most innocent version of our minds.

 

We were then faced with reality of how the society operated, either according the collective ideals or aid unbalancedness. We didn’t know where we were heading to, having chosen our own paths. Our values changed and didn’t seem to fit either to the society or to each other’s. I didn’t see him much from the on. Then along came our second major get-together, ultimately forming ‘Muhandae Hyupwhae’ (‘Infinity’ Society). The group was collection of people with recalcitrant minds against the established ones, while exerting an immense force of cohesion ? being indisputably the most active of its kind in terms of exhibition efforts, but ending its career with 4th exhibition as their last public display. Members were myself, Boonghyun Choi, Taehyun Lee, Chanseung Jung, Taeshin Choi, Myochun Lee, Jungsu Kim, Changun Jun, Kidong Kim and Kang Bro. Kang and I were involved in an unsavory scandal, rendering our relationship fragile.
To briefly account for the scandal, it happened in a cafeteria at Yonsei University in Shinchon. Kang and I were there to represent ‘Muhandae society’. I witnessed the ugliest side of Korean art world and the established system of dark operation, so bad that I will forever remember it as a major coup likely to claim its spot in an unauthorized chronicle of history. The aftermath of the tragedy was me watching Kang working lively with his broad social basis and financial cushions.

 

My third meeting with him, as I have in mind, would be my condolences and sending of my heart towards him in heaven. Those fellows who stayed ever so close, seungjo Lee, Chanseung Jung, Myunghyun Oh, Kunil Kim, and Kang Bro. Dear Brother.

 

I no longer have anyone truthful around me. The irony of fate does not prove false once again. I remember your bit in the storyline. Our passion, companionship, values and patterns of our lives, I only wish that we talked in faithful spirit.

There shakes a Dangui flower ever so peacefully. It feels just like you. And beyond the flower I see the highway with cars whizzing by, and rain dripping from the eaves, reminding more of you. I am sorry!

 

 

Yangja Hwang, Kukjin Kang (Printpia: Seoul, Korea, 1995, pp. 284-285)