I have spent nearly a decade exploring how ideology intervenes in sensory perception through various forms of art. One of the most striking instances of this intervention was during the 1970s under the Park Chung Hee regime [South Korean president who seized power with a military coup in 1962 and governed until his assassination in 1979, ed.], when the Anti-Communism Law imposed strict control over artistic expression.
Enacted by the Park Chung Hee regime, the Anti-Communism Law served as the foundation for coercive censorship. Under this oppressive regime, artists were compelled to adorn the sheer brutality of violence with the sensations of sorrow and hatred. On the other hand, there were victims of ideology who were silenced, unable to expose the pain of violence. They were oppressed by the sensory experience of violence, embellished by anti-communist ideology, and compelled to forget its imprints. However, the sensory imprints of violence inscribed on our bodies do not simply vanish. One day, the pain that violence has engraved on the body inevitably resurfaces in strange and unexpected forms.
Kim Mooyoung
