Minjung

Korean spelling
Korean alphabet :	민중
Hanja :	民衆
Revised Romanization :	Minjung
McCune-Reischauer :	Minjung

Minjung (literally "mass of the people") describes a politically and culturally oriented popular movement in South Korea that emerged in the late 1970s .

In the pro-democratic uprisings in South Korea from 1979 onwards, representatives of the Minjung culture acted as companions and motors. The artists often organized themselves in groups. One of the best known and earliest of these artists' associations is the group "Reality and Utterance", founded in 1980.

While the military governments had always promoted politically non-binding art modeled on the West (especially monochrome painting), the Minjung artists developed a narrative, figurative visual language with clear political messages. They show, for example, burning landscapes or hells (for example the famous painting by Oh Yoon "Marketing - Inferno" from 1980). At the same time, they often mockingly address the "conquest" of Korea by the western, especially American, consumer world. In this context, for example, they parody advertising logos and icons of Western art.

Minjung art was always loud, radical and oppositional. It is now fully recognized by the state in democratic Korea. Many works are in state collections, for example in the National Museum or the Art Center of the Art Council Korea in Seoul. The icon of resistance became a - state-sponsored - reminder of the path to democracy.

Korea is a strongly Protestant country that has developed its own form of liberation theology , the so-called Minjung theology, which in turn influenced the Minjung art of the late 1970s. The Minjung theology was a reaction to the political, economic and church growth strategies that shaped the decades of military dictatorships from the 1960s to the 1980s and is committed to the socially disadvantaged. Within the Protestant Church in South Korea, the Minjung theology is now a minority phenomenon, although it has a considerable external impact, especially in Germany and Europe.

The term U-Boot-Christ seems to go back to formulations of the Roman Catholic preacher Johannes Leppich, who was very well known in the 1950s and 1960s .

The Catholic theologian and South Korea expert Carsten Wippermann uses the category of submarine Christians as a current reaction to obligations within the framework of Minjung and the considerable group pressure associated with it. Wippermann uses it to designate Christians who officially register as members at a megachurch , but who stay away from meetings and events as often as possible with reference to scheduling problems and thus can also hide from the obligations of the smaller mini-young communities.

literature

Ro Sang-Woo: Educational theoretical elements of the Minjung movement and the pedagogy of communication . 1991, ISBN 3-88345-676-4 .
Frank Hoffmann: Images of Dissent: Transformations of Korean Minjung Art . Harvard Asia Pacific Review, vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer 1997), pp. 44-49.
Jee-sook Beck, Peter Joch: The Battle of Visions. Korean Minjung Art from the 80's to Today . Seoul u. Darmstadt 2005 (catalog for the exhibition Kunsthalle Darmstadt, October 11th - December 3rd, 2005)
Ha-Eun Chung: The Korean MINJUNG and its meaning for an ecumenical theology . Munich 1984
Jürgen Moltmann (Ed.): Minjung. Theology of God's People in South Korea . Neukirchen-Vluyn 1984
Johannes Sang-Tai Shim: Art. Korea V. Theology and theogists . In: LThK3 6, 1997, p. 377
David Kwang-Sun Suh: Art. Korea IV. Christianity History . In: RGG4 4, 2001, pp. 1684-1686
Volker Küster: Art. Minjung Theology . In: RGG4 5 (2002) pp. 1254-1255
Carsten Wippermann: Between cultures: Christianity in South Korea LIT Verlag Münster, 2000 - 299 pages