Manbok Kim remembers the house she fled 66 years ago as if it were yesterday. “We had a large orchard,” she recalled. “There were so many apples on the trees.”

Manbok Kim’s drawing of her home in North Korea.

Now 87, Kim is one of 500 North Korean refugees who have contributed a drawing of the home they were forced to flee during the Korean War, as part of a public artwork by the South Korean artist Ik-Joong Kang.

The floating installation, part of the Totally Thames festival that opens on Thursday, is a seven-metre-high illuminated cube constructed from hundreds of 70 x 70cm drawings, which were transferred from palm-sized sketches on Korean rice paper.

All the participants fled the North during the Korean war, which ended in 1953 in an armistice, not a peace agreement. The two countries have technically remained at war ever since, and many of the North Koreans who fled have been permanently separated from their loved ones since, forced to build a new life after the border was effectively sealed.

In the decades since, North Korea has become increasingly secretive and isolated. In a report released last year, the UN accused the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, of crimes against humanity. The report concluded that the country’s leadership was committing systematic and appalling rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world.

The sculpture will float beside the Millennium Bridge for a month. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid

To find participants for the project, Kang visited South Korea’s numerous naengmyeon restaurants, which serve a popular northern speciality of buckwheat noodles with ice.



With a team of volunteers, the artist collected stories and drawings from the refugees he met. “It was an amazing emotional experience,” Kang said. “At first, they were very shy. They told me: ‘No I cannot, I cannot even draw.’ Then they paused and thought about their hometowns, and their families and friends ... and they were overwhelmed with emotion.”

Among the 300 volunteers gathering drawings was the South Korean unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, who was also deeply moved by the process. “When I saw him [Hong] crying, I thought, ‘He really cares’. Maybe he will make it happen ... There is hope for unification,” Kang said.

There are an estimated 200,000 North Korean refugees living in South Korea. Many of them have spent most of their lives in the South and have never been able to revisit their hometowns, an important part of Korean culture.

I went to North Korea twice and the entire population is taught to hate us. Who’s going to break this chain of hatred? Ik-Joong Kang

“Paying a visit to an ancestor’s grave is [a] very important ritual, especially on the day of Chuseok [the Korean version of thanksgiving], or other festive days,” Kang said. “This year’s Chuseok is 15 September and tens of millions of Koreans will be jammed on the highways to go back to their hometowns. It’s a real mass migration. Chuseok is one of the happiest days to some people and the saddest day to others from the North.”

100,000 Dreams, a tunnel made up of 60,000 children’s drawings. Photograph: Ik-Joong Kang

Art for reunification

Kang was born in 1960 in South Korea. “During the 1970s, signs and slogans of ‘bangong’ [anti-communism] were everywhere: on every street, government buildings and schools,” he said. “We were taught [that] communism was evil.”

In 1984, the artist moved to New York. On his daily commute into the city, he painted on three-inch canvases that he carried in his pocket. By the time he was invited to represent South Korea at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997, he had created more than 200,000 works.

Kang represented South Korea at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid

In the years that followed, Kang decided to create public works envisioning the reunification of Korea. “My idea was very simple: let’s make a bridge over the Imjin river,” he said, referring to a waterway that flows from north to south, crossing the demilitarised zone, and the site of a major battle during the Korean war.

Unusually for a South Korean artist, Kang has visited the North twice, in 2000 and 2002, to work on a project called 100,000 Dreams. The artist said he was deeply affected by his visits. “I went to North Korea and the entire population is taught to hate us. Who’s going to break this chain of hatred?”

His next project will be installed at the Odusan Unification Observatory in Paju, in the demilitarised zone, a five-floor observation platform from which North Korea can be seen with the naked eye. Opening in November, the work is a permanent display of 15,000 drawings by refugees. In 2017, Kang will be the subject of a retrospective exhibition in Seoul.

Kang believes the unification of Korea is possible, but many of the ageing refugees fear that their dreams of seeing home again may only be realised in rice paper drawings.

But Hyunsik Kim, 82, remains hopeful. “If I go back to my hometown, I want to build a new home where my old house was and live there. Even if it’s just for a day or a month.”

Ik-Joong Kang’s Floating Dreams is part of the Totally Thames festival, running from 1-30 September 2016

