Gongsan Kim
Beneath the Sky of N. Korea, 2025
Oil on burnt canvas
72" x 72"
For more than seventy-five years, the people of North Korea have lived under the "terms and conditions" of a three-generation hereditary dictatorship. These are not terms freely accepted, but conditions imposed — governing thought, speech, movement, and even survival itself.
The number of lives unjustly lost beneath this system is beyond calculation. Countless individuals have disappeared into political prison camps, where human dignity is stripped away and existence is reduced to obedience. Even now, hundreds of thousands remain confined, living under rules designed to erase their identity and silence their humanity.
Yet beneath the same sky, heaven and earth bear witness. The cries of those who perished have not vanished; they echo across the Korean Peninsula and linger in history's conscience.
Through this work, I reflect on the imposed conditions that have defined generations of lives. And I hold fast to the hope that one day, the sky above North Korea will no longer be governed by fear, but opened by freedom
- Gongsan Kim