Young girls with fingers on machine-gun triggers, old ladies staring down rifle scopes and crowds enraptured by simulated firefights. These are strange scenes for many Western eyes, but for a country like South Korea that's spent its whole existence in a state of military high alert, they are commonplace.

In his photo series Really Good, Murder, South Korean artist and photographer Suntag Noh, 41, goes inside his country's weapon shows to look critically at their celebration of war and its equipment.

"All different kinds of people go to the shows," says Noh. "Weapons dealers, weapons enthusiasts, tourists, parents trying to educate their children, model [toy] weapons manufacturers and youth applying for the special forces."

Military trade expos such as IDEX in Abu Dhabi are common across all continents – just this June controversy ensued when calls were made to the organizers of the Paris Arms Show to exclude Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-owned arms company, which was supplying weapons to Syria.

While most international arms expos are public, Noh's work captures a more intimate atmosphere, where South Korean families get up close and personal with lethal hardware, which creates a significant propaganda interface between the citizens and the military.

"Every time a bomb explodes, every time a shouting order is echoed, applause and cheers follow, 'Hurrah, bravo!' […] What is not allowed for viewers of imaginary bombing attacks is to feel disturbed," says Noh.

A fragile armistice has existed between South Korea and North Korea since 1953. Every year, the South Korean military holds a massive exercise called Hoguk, or “Defending the Nation,” in which tens of thousands of troops work on their coordination in the face of a potential attack, with North Korea as the perceived threat. Virtual wars are routinely waged, and drills undertaken with the U.S. that North Korea considers provocative, but live-fire skirmishes have ratcheted up tensions in recent years.

In November 2010, North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong, an inhabited South Korean island just south of the maritime armistice line. South Korean returned fire with K9 Thunder howitzers and put its F-16 fighter jets on alert. Earlier that same year, the Cheonan, a South Korean naval vessel, was torpedoed, resulting in the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors. Initially, the North Koreans tamped down allegations they were the aggressors, but international consensus is against Pyongyang.

Noh does not deny the North Korean threat, but he does ask viewers to think about how they inform themselves on the debate.

"A weapon is praised in the name of ‘science’ and ‘security.' Having some doubts on it is criticized as ‘antisocial.' Why so?" asks Noh. "Do we need a weapon because the Korean peninsula is divided with a threat of war? Isn’t it those overproduced weapons that bring about war? A war requires weapons. The Korean peninsula has been under war for over a century. It is natural to ask us what a weapon means to us."

Suntag Noh's work is celebrated by politically engaged art theorists. In a lengthy and academic catalog essay [pdf.], Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler write, "Suntag perceives Korea as situated in a general state of precariousness, describing it as experiencing a permanent state of emergency, as an enduring projection of a 'delayed danger.' In this respect, the 'case of Korea' simultaneously mirrors the state of a world that has established itself in the midst of codified polarizations — north/south, poor/rich, communism/capitalism, peace/war."

This binary-trap Dressler and Christ describe is a source of chagrin for Noh. He characterizes war as the "modern engine" behind applied sciences such as precision machinery engineering, optics, and electromagnetics. He hopes that in another history these advances could've been made without the collateral deaths of men, women and children.

"The climax of the spectacle is the fantastic super operation using A‐10 Thunderbolt fighter‐bombers and the AH‐64D Apache Longbow helicopters to rescue our troops who have been taken hostage by the enemy. The firm determination that anyone messing with our side will not be forgiven, and the warm humanism of valorizing each and every soldier on our side down to the last guy form the essence of this operation. Let’s not mention the ‘gratuitous sacrifices’ that the operation may inadvertently entail."

For Noh, weapons shows are a disconcerting overlap of capitalism and politics; they are designed "to experience and learn about the legitimacy of a weapon." Ultimately, Noh's call is for South Koreans to critique their role in the rhetoric of war and to question the desensitized version of conflict they're served at the events.

"The state, corporations, arms dealers, and regional communities hold these extravagant shows hand-in-hand," writes Noh in his Really Good, Murder working notes. "[The shows exist] for national security, for the reinforced Korean‐American alliance, for corporations who have dedicated themselves to the development of state‐of‐the‐art sciences, for strengthening international competitiveness, for fostering regional tourism and for educating children. It’s show time."

All Photos: Suntag Noh