The Absence of ‘Truth’ and Solving the Maze: One Perspective on Postmodernism in Korea

Abstract In this article, the author argues that the Korean art movements of the 1990s sustained their subversive potential as avant-garde impulses because they were not commercialized, unlike those in the Western world. In particular, the author critically supports such young artists’ groups as Golden Apple and Museum, in which the now globally renowned artists, Choi Jeong-hwa and Lee Bul, participated as inaugural members. The prevalent sense of defeatism, lewdness, and irrationality that resided in the works of these younger generation artists, the author argues, innately resisted interpretation, and this became the crucial elements in appraising Korean postmodernism.