"Morning Dew: The Stigma of Being Brainwashed."
From 1959 to 1984, more than ninety thousand Zainichi Koreans (ethnic Korean residents in Japan) were repatriated by the Japanese and North Korean governments to North Korea, a program of deportation couched as a humanitarian effort but was driven by Cold War politics. The so-called “returnees,” convinced they were moving to a “paradise on earth,” faced a harsh reality in North Korea that compelled some of them to defect. Those “ex-returnees” now living again in Japan hide the fact that they defected from North Korea due to fear of ongoing discrimination within the Zainichi community and worries for their relatives who remain in North Korea. Now, they live an invisible existence in Japan.
The Morning Dew exhibition, currently on display at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, is a collaborative effort of artists Soni Kum, Hiroki Yamamoto and Kazuya Takagawa, and Nobuaki Takekawa with curator Yumiko Okada. Based on personal encounters with 16 former “returnees” or their descendants, the three installations presented artistically evoke their hidden stories.
Event co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Media Studies, the Center for Critical Korean Studies, the Department of Asian American Studies, and the Department of East Asian Studies.