Research Article
North Korea's Export of Monumental Art: Focused on the Angkor Panorama Museum in Cambodia
윌리엄스 칼리지
Published: December 2019 · No. 304 · pp. 231-264
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31065/ahak.304.304.201912.008
Full Text
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.
