도라지 불고기

Yakiniku ToRaji is the catalog for the solo exhibition by director Jihun Yang, held at Art Space Boan 3 from June 5 to 29, 2025. ✕✕ graduated from a Joseon School and went on to attend a university in South Korea. Jihun meets ✕✕’s family and friends, sharing meals, drinks, and songs together. Through these encounters, he grows naturally close to ●●, ▲▲, and ◆◆, listening to their memories of the Joseon School and their lives in Japan. These exchanges erase the space of the everyday, and in its place raise a question about the sense of mission that fills it: for whom, exactly, is it done—the act of attaching the label of “identity” to people who are simply living ordinary lives?

Director’s Note
They have long been represented as “heroes who, even amid discrimination, never forget their homeland and continue to struggle.” But this framing only draws a line between us and them, limiting the range of lives they are allowed to live. I find myself reaching the limits of making them into people we must belatedly care for because we have forgotten them, or into teaching material for a painful history. The Joseon School is a space that makes possible the complex identities of Zainichi society. Rather than centering on the proposition that the school must be preserved, I wanted to focus on the diverse individuals within it. To move beyond pity and othering, I sought to reveal people who are neither sublime nor wretched. The lives that exist in the greatest numbers go unexplained.