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North Korea's Export of Monumental Art: Focused on the Angkor Panorama Museum in Cambodia

윤혜정

윌리엄스 칼리지

Published: December 2019 · No. 304 · pp. 231-264

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31065/ahak.304.304.201912.008

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Abstract

Since the 1980s the Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies (MOP) of North Korea has sold abroad, primarily to African countries, architectural structures and artworks continually. And yet the inclusion of sanctions against MOP in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2371 (August 2017) imposed a de facto blockage in trade channels through which North Korea had exported artworks in large scale. Under this political climate the Angkor Panorama Museum, which opened in Siem Reap, Cambodia in 2015, draws attention as the latest case of the art exports from the isolated regime. The Museum features a 360-degree spherical panoramic painting of monumental scale and other artworks— sculptural, pictorial, and video—that North Korean artists created collectively to represent Cambodian history and culture of the tenth to thirteenth centuries. Besides, the institution puts on sale acrylics, oil paintings, prints, gem paintings, and embroideries, which North Korean artisans have produced after taking motifs from Cambodian essential cultural sites or local scenery. Although it is less known how the Angkor Panorama Museum has reached its actual establishment, the close personal relationship between former leaders, Kim Il-sung (1912- 1994) and King Norodom Sihanouk (1922-2012), is believed to have laid the foundation. For the construction of the Museum, quite unusually, North Korea funded more than 24 billion won and further agreed to engage in its long-term operation and management.
Keywords: 만수대 해외개발사그룹(Mansudae Overseas Project Group of CompaniesMOP)미술 수출(美術 輸出Exporting of Art)기념비 미술(紀念碑 美術Monumental Art)앙코르 전경화관(Angkor Panorama Museum)전경화(全景畵Panorama Painting)집체창작(集體創作Working in groups)예술의 현지화(現地化Indigenization of Art)