Minjung

Minjung (literally " masses " ) refers to a created in the late 1970s, politically and culturally oriented people's movement in South Korea.

The pro-democracy uprisings in South Korea from 1979 representatives of the minjung culture acted as a companion and motor. The artists organized themselves often in groups. One of the best known and earliest of these artists' associations, the group was founded in 1980 " Reality and Utterance " - " reality and expression ".

Had the military governments always a politically binding promoted art modeled after the West (especially monochrome painting), Minjung artists developed a narrative, figurative imagery with clear political messages. They show, for example, burning landscapes or dens ( such as the now famous painting by Oh Yoon "Marketing - Inferno " from the year 1980). At the same time, they address often mocking the "conquest" of Korea by the Western, especially American, consumer world. They parody in this context, for example, advertising logos and icons of Western art.

The Minjung art was always loud, radical and oppositionell.Inzwischen it is fully recognized in the democratic Korea by the state. Many works are in public collections such as the National Museum or the Art Center of the Arts Council Korea, Seoul. From the icon of resistance, was a - state-sponsored - commemorating the path to democracy.

Korea is a strong Protestant -oriented country, which has developed the so-called Minjung theology own form of liberation theology, which has 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 have marked the decades of military dictatorships of the 1960s to the 1980s and is committed to the socially disadvantaged. Within the Protestant Church in South Korea's Minjung theology today is a minority phenomenon, which however has a considerable visibility, especially in Germany and Europe.

The term submarine Christ seems here to go back to formulations of the very well-known in the 1950s and 1960s, Roman Catholic preacher John Leppich.

The Catholic theologian and Südkoreaexperte Carsten Wippermann use the category submarine Christians as a response to current obligations under Minjung and the considerable associated peer pressure. Wippermann names so that Christians who officially register as members at a megachurch, but can as often as possible to stay away at meetings and events with regard to scheduling problems and so submerge also to the obligations of the smaller Minjunggemeinden.