Mount Kumgang Tourism, launched on November 18, 1998, was a representative program of the so-called “Sunshine Policy” under the administration of the late President, Kim Dae-jung, which sought to improve the inter-Korean relations through greater efforts at reconciliation, cooperation, coexistence, and co-prosperity. Inspired by this epoch-making event that opened a new chapter of the North-South relations, the South Korea’s Art Community has paid so much attention to the production and distribution of Kumkang Mountain paintings. This artistic movement is as how case for the potential for the Oriental paintings in Korea in the new millennium. Contemporary Korean artists’ nostalgia for tradition and their artistic passion to outclass great artists in the past years have aroused the innate artistic sensitivity deep inside them ; Mount Kumgang, a favorite subject of Korean artists is a great trigger of artistic inspiration.
The new Kumkang Mountain paintings, inspired by an acceptance of the true-view landscape painting technique of Jeong Seon, a well-known Korean landscape painter, are created by their individual painting techniques of modern artists based on the on-spot landscape sketches. They are also painted by imitating Jeong Seon’s drawing technique?ink and oriental watercolor on paper. In addition, different drawing techniques of distortion, decomposition, and omission adopted by these paintings render Kumkang Mountain as either
a subject of poetic imagery imbibed with artists’ own sensibilities, or an idealtype mountain surrounded by a spiritual mystique. Among these new paintings are the landscapes that contract, enlarge or otherwise focus stead fastly on the central objects, along with deliberately omitting the rest of it. Other artists who opted for large canvases arranged the rocks of the mountain horizontally side by side to produce overwhelming panoramas. As the diamond represents much strength and amazing beauty, the New Kumkang Mountain Paintings encompass the uncompromising value of Mt. Kumkang or Diamond Mountain. These paintings express the monumental value of Mt. Kumkang and the national historic aspirations for reunification. ‘These new Kumkang Mountain paintings’ play a crucial role in providing new approaches to the current confusion in the Contemporary Art affected by the dichotomous ways of thinking between tradition and modernity, and the East and the West.