Building North Korean Art: Pen Varlen/Pyŏn Wŏllyong and Ethnic Networks amid the Cold War

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the roles of mobile individuals in the geopolitical formation of North Korean art in the mid-1950s. The networks of Pen Varlen (1916–1990), a visitor from the Soviet Union, and his colleagues in North Korea exemplify how the international travels and connections of these ethnic Korean artists reconfigured postcolonial Korean art to construct a new socialist art. The article examines how the codes of Soviet Socialist Realism became transferable, communicable, and adaptable by Pen and his circle in North Korea and how their relation to the Soviet Union shaped a new identity for national art.