The most influential educator about Korean fine arts is a K-pop star. Starting in 2018 and continuing until two days before his military enlistment this month, RM of BTS has used his social media accounts to circulate hundreds of images of Korean painting and sculpture. His carefully curated (and cleverly named) ‘rkive’ is routinely seen by over 45 million people. This digital archive can be understood as an instrument of Korean soft power: one more bright and shiny version of “brand Korea” for global audiences to consume. RM’s featuring of artists from the 1950s-1970s, however, cracks open a doorway through which BTS’ global fans can get a glimpse of Korea’s less-than-shiny past. These postwar decades were a period of both hardship and cultural creativity. This creative energy was fueled, in part, by the cultural geopolitics of the Cold War, as US organizations, both public and private, intervened in virtually every domain of Korea’s cultural sphere. Fine arts were one of the first sites of this activity. This paper explores US interventions in fine arts from three perspectives: the diverse ways that Americans supported Korean artists; the shifting political rationales for this support; and how Americans facilitated the export of Korean art. By taking RM’s promotion of Korean fine arts seriously, we can understand America’s Cold War effort to increase Korea’s visibility of the world stage as a kind of secret history of hallyu. 

Keywords:

BTS, Fine arts, Cold War 

Bibliography:

Chung, Yeon Shim et al., Korean Art from 1953: Collision, Innovation, Interaction (London, New York: Phaidon Press, 2020)

Jang, Sang-hoon, “Cultural Diplomacy, National Identity, and National Museum: South Korea’s First Overseas Exhibition in the US, 1957 to 1959,” Museum & Society, 14.3 (Winter 2016): 456-471.

Russeth, Andrew. “RM, Boy Band Superstar, Embraces New Role: Art Patron,” New York Times, August 24, 2022