韩国艺术家因嘲弄总统而遭遇审查

After 250 South Korean high school students died in the sinking of the Sewol ferry in April, the artist Hong Sung-dam lashed out at a political and business elite he considers responsible for the disaster, doing so in the way he knows best. He painted, pouring his protest onto canvas just as he did during the country’s long years of military dictatorship.

今年4月，250名韩国高中生在“世越号”（旧译“岁月号”）渡轮沉船事件中丧生。之后，艺术家洪成潭用他最擅长的方式猛烈抨击他心目中应对此次灾难负责的政治和商业精英。他采用的方式是绘画，就像在韩国漫长的军事独裁时期，他把自己的抗议倾注到画布上那样。

He was not imprisoned this time, as he was in the waning years of military-backed rule. But Mr. Hong’s 34 foot by 8 foot canvas, which includes a caricature of President Park Geun-hye, was pulled from South Korea’s best-known international art festival in a type of censorship usually reserved for those accused of supporting communist North Korea.

这一次他没像在军事统治末期那样被囚禁，但是他那些34英尺宽、8英尺高的画作（包括一幅讽刺总统朴槿惠的漫画）从韩国最著名的国际艺术展上撤掉了，这种审查通常只针对那些被认为支持共产主义朝鲜的人。

“This is a ridiculous insult to an artist,” Mr. Hong said of the treatment of the painting, in which Ms. Park is depicted as a puppet controlled by her late father, who led the country for nearly two decades after engineering a coup. “What they did was proof of what I tried to say in the painting. Under Park Geun-hye, the country is reverting to the old practices of her father’s era, repressing freedom of expression.”

“这是对艺术家的荒谬侮辱，”洪成潭谈起这幅画的遭遇时说。画中朴槿惠被描绘为被其亡父控制的傀儡，他在发动政变后领导该国将近20年。“他们的做法验证了我的画想表达的东西。在朴槿惠的统治下，这个国家正在向她父亲统治时期的旧做法转变，压制言论自由。”

Ms. Park’s administration has come under withering criticism since the disaster, first for a botched rescue effort, then for resisting the kind of broad independent investigation the victims’ families have demanded into the muddled emergency response and the lax government regulatory system many say helped lead to the sinking.

朴槿惠政府在灾难发生后遭到了猛烈批评，首先是救援工作迟缓，然后是拒绝按照遇难者家属的要求，对混乱的应急措施和松懈的政府监管体系进行广泛的独立调查，很多人认为后者亦是导致沉船的原因。

The painting, which Mr. Hong painted with other artists he invited to participate, shows the doomed ship at its center, upside down. Two enormous figures have lifted it out of the water, and — in an imagined happier ending — the passengers are emerging from the boat, smiling and waving. Surrounding that scene is a phantasmagoria of politically charged images from South Korean history, some dating from the country’s years of military rule. A prisoner is tortured under interrogation, and sinister figures lurk, wearing sunglasses and army uniforms.

洪成潭邀请其他艺术家一起绘制了这幅画。画的中央是遇难渡轮，它上下颠倒。两个巨人把它从水里拉出来，在想象中更愉快的结局里，乘客们从船里出来，微笑着挥手。周围是韩国历史上因政治获罪者们的幻影，有些来自该国的军事统治时期。一个犯人正在被刑讯，戴着墨镜、穿着军装的邪恶人物若隐若现。

Gwangju’s leaders defended their initial refusal to allow the painting in the festival, the Gwangju Biennale, an act that was unexpected in a city with a long history of resistance to conservative political power.

光州的市领导为他们最初拒绝在光州双年展上展出这幅画进行了辩护。该市具有抵制保守政治势力的漫长历史，所以这一做法出人意料。

“We demanded the exclusion of Mr. Hong’s painting because of its explicit political intention, such as the parodying of the president,” Oh Hyeong-guk, a vice mayor of Gwangju, told reporters this month, adding that the city could not tolerate such a work in an art exhibition it helped finance. But as criticism mounted, the city later backtracked a bit, leaving the final decision to the festival’s authorities, who banned the painting.

“我们要求撤掉洪成潭的油画，是因为它具有明显的政治意图，比如嘲弄总统，”光州市副市长吴炯国本月对记者说。他又补充，该市不能容忍在自己资助的艺术展上出现这样的作品。但是因为遭到越来越多的批评，该市后来做出了点让步，把最终决定权留给该展览的主办方，后者禁止展出该画。

Some artists pulled out of the biennale in protest, and a few of its top officials resigned, saying they were torn between defending Mr. Hong’s freedom of expression and respecting the wishes of the city, one of the event’s main financial backers.

有些艺术家撤出双年展以示抗议，该展览的几位高级主管因此辞职，称他们在维护洪成潭的言论自由和尊重该市的意愿之间左右为难。光州市是该展览的主要赞助者。

The controversy, which Ms. Park’s office has not commented on, has renewed longstanding questions about the limits to artistic expression in South Korea.

朴槿惠的办公室未对该争议作出评论。这场争议重新挑起了韩国民众对艺术表达限制的质疑，这种质疑长久以来就存在着。

South Korean artists are vastly freer than they were under military rule, when a brand of crayon called Picasso was once banned because of the artist’s Communist associations. But artists who venture into political satire — like other government critics — often say they feel ostracized and harassed, and unflattering depictions of political leaders can lead to lawsuits and even criminal defamation charges.

比起军事统治时期，韩国艺术家已经自由了很多，当时一种名为毕加索(Picasso)的蜡笔曾被禁止销售，只因为毕加索与共产主义有关系。但是大胆进行政治讽刺的艺术家，乃至其他批评政府的人经常声称感觉被排斥和骚扰，对政治领袖们毫不奉承的描述可能导致诉讼，甚至被判诽谤罪。

For Mr. Hong, a 59-year-old painter who decades ago was jailed and tortured for his political expression, the fight over the painting is the latest skirmish in a long battle with repressive forces he believes are still at work.

59岁的洪成潭几十年前曾因政治表达而遭到囚禁、拷打。他认为自己在与仍然存在的压迫势力进行漫长的战斗。对他来说，围绕这幅画的斗争只是其中的最新一次小冲突。

“He is the last standing artist of resistance from the days of dictatorship,” said Gim Jong-gil, an art critic.

“他是来自独裁时代的最后一位长期反抗的艺术家，”艺术批评家金永吉（音译）说。

As a young man, Mr. Hong studied art in Gwangju, which in the 1970s was a center of activism against the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, Ms. Park’s father. By the time Mr. Park’s rule ended with his assassination in late 1979, Mr. Hong was an award-winning painter and a participant in the city’s underground pro-democracy movement.

洪成潭年轻时曾在光州学艺术，在20世纪70年代反对朴槿惠之父朴正熙独裁统治的运动中，光州是活动中心。朴正熙1979年末被刺杀，结束统治，当时洪成潭已经是一位备受赞誉的画家，是该市地下民主运动的参与者。

Hopes that Mr. Park’s death would lead to democratization were soon crushed as power was seized by Gen. Chun Doo-hwan, one of Mr. Park’s protégés who was the head of military intelligence during the last year of his rule. Gwangju erupted in protests, and the regime sent tanks and paratroopers into the city in May 1980, killing hundreds.

人们本希望朴正熙遇刺能带来民主，但是很快希望就破灭了，因为大权落入了朴正熙的门徒全斗焕将军手中，他在朴正熙统治的最后一年主管军事情报部。1980年5月，光州爆发抗议活动，政府派出坦克和空降兵，杀害了成百上千人。

“I saw with my own eyes so many of my friends and colleagues killed,” Mr. Hong said. “I decided then and there I would make it my lifetime duty to record and indict state brutality. Painting is my language, my picket protest, my placard.”

“我亲眼看着我的很多朋友和同事被害，”洪成潭说，“我当场决定，把记录和控诉政府暴行作为我的终身责任。绘画就是我的语言，我的抗议，我的标语。”

Under Mr. Chun’s rule, Mr. Hong, who was often on the run from the authorities, produced lithographs depicting scenes from the Gwangju massacre. But he is best known for his large canvases, which have often focused on South Koreans who suffered at the hands of their leaders.

全斗焕统治时期，东躲西藏的洪成潭创作了很多描绘光州大屠杀场面的平版画。不过他最著名的作品是大型油画，它们的主题往往是那些因国家领导人而遭受苦难的韩国人。

Mr. Hong’s works, along with pieces by other activist artists, were put to use by the student-led democracy movement of the 1980s. Police officers using tear gas raided university campuses and tore their paintings down.

20世纪80年代学生领导的民主运动经常使用洪成潭等艺术活动家们的作品。警察曾用催泪弹突袭大学校园，撕毁他们的画作。

Although Mr. Hong escaped imprisonment during the darkest years of dictatorship, he was arrested in 1989 as the country was moving toward democracy. Mr. Hong was arrested after sending slides of some of his work, including a painting that depicted the Gwangju uprising, to Korean-Americans who were headed to a youth festival in Pyongyang, North Korea. He was deemed to have violated the National Security Law, still in effect today, which prohibits any act judged to be “helping the enemy” in North Korea. He was interrogated under torture and spent three years in prison.

虽然洪成潭在最黑暗的独裁时期躲过了牢狱之灾，却在1989年该国走向民主时被捕。他把自己部分作品的幻灯（其中一幅画描绘的是光州起义）发给了前往朝鲜平壤参加一个青年节的一些韩裔美国人，因此被捕。他被认为违反了国家安全法。该法如今依然有效，它禁止任何被认定为“帮助”朝鲜“敌人”的行为。他遭受刑讯，在狱中度过了三年。

After South Korea’s transition to democracy in the 1990s, most artists who had been active in the resistance to military rule moved on to other themes. But Mr. Hong continued to produce politically oriented work. In 2012, when the conservative Ms. Park ran for president, he made her a target. One scathing painting showed Ms. Park doing the now-famous “Gangnam Style” dance created by a South Korean performer. She was dancing below a noose, an allusion to the hanging of dissidents under her father’s regime. Another painting put Ms. Park in a delivery room, having just given birth to a baby who resembles her late father.

20世纪90年代韩国向民主社会过渡之后，大多数在反抗军事统治中非常活跃的艺术家转向了其他主题。但是洪成潭继续创作有政治导向的作品。2012年，保守派朴槿惠竞选总统时，他把她当成了一个靶子。在他的一幅尖刻的油画中，朴槿惠在一个绞架下面跳起了韩国艺人创作的著名舞蹈《江南Style》，绞架暗指她父亲统治时期对异见者实施绞刑。在另一幅画中，朴槿惠在产房里刚生了一个酷似其先父的孩子。

Furious conservative politicians have compared Mr. Hong to Joseph Goebbels. The National Election Committee accused him of violating South Korean election law, which prohibits defaming candidates with the intent of preventing their election. But he was not charged. (Another artist, Lee Ha, was less fortunate; he was indicted after depicting Ms. Park as Snow White, holding a rotten apple with her father’s image engraved in its skin. He was acquitted two years later.)

愤怒的保守派政客们把洪成潭比作约瑟夫·戈培尔(Joseph Goebbels)。韩国选举委员会指控他违反韩国选举法，该法禁止为阻止候选人当选而进行诋毁。但是他未被起诉（另一位艺术家李哈[Lee Ha音译]就没这么幸运了。他把朴槿惠描绘成白雪公主，手里拿着一个烂苹果，苹果皮上刻着其父的形象，他因此遭到起诉，两年后被判无罪）。

“Sewol Owol,” Mr. Hong’s painting about the ferry sinking, alludes both to the disaster of the ferry, the Sewol, and the Gwangju killings. (“Owol” means May, the month when the massacre occurred.) Both events hit especially close to home for Mr. Hong, who not only witnessed the Gwangju murders, but has lived for years in Ansan, the city where the high school students who died aboard the Sewol were from.

洪成潭的画作《世越五月》(Sewol Owol)既指沉没的渡轮“世越号”，也指光州大屠杀（Owol的意思是五月，大屠杀就是在五月份发生的）。这两起事件都触到了洪成潭的痛处，他不仅见证了光州大屠杀，而且在安山市生活了很多年——“世越号”渡轮上的高中生就是来自安山市。

One of those students, a girl who was in her junior year and who he said came from a poor family, worked part-time at his studio to help earn money and pick up skills to pursue her dream of being a painter. “Thirty-four years after the Gwangju massacre, in the Sewol disaster, I saw another massacre perpetrated by a cartel of crude capitalist businesses, corrupt bureaucrats and an irresponsible and feckless government,” Mr. Hong said, referring to the corporate greed and government corruption that investigators say contributed to the disaster. “This was state brutality.”

其中一名三年级的女生家境贫寒，在洪成潭的工作室里做兼职贴补家用，同时为追求当画家的梦想学习绘画技巧。“在光州大屠杀发生34年后，在‘世越号’沉船灾难中，我看到了另一场屠杀，凶手是野蛮的资本主义公司、腐败的官员和不负责任的政府，”洪成潭说。他指的是公司的贪婪和政府的腐败，调查者说政府的腐败也是这次灾难的原因之一。“这是国家的暴行。”

After the city’s original rejection of his work, he retooled the painting, slightly. He replaced the caricature of the president with a chicken, a reference to a nickname used by critics: Geun-hye, the chicken. Startled city officials rejected that version as well.

在该市第一次拒绝他的作品之后，他对画作稍微做了一点修改。他用一只小鸡代替总统的漫画——小鸡是批评家们对朴槿惠的谑称。大为震惊的市政府官员们也拒绝了这个版本。

Mr. Hong sees the reaction to the Sewol painting as symptomatic of a dysfunctional society that cannot discuss its problems openly. Such a society, he said, is prone to disasters.

洪成潭认为政府对“世越号”画作的反应表明这个社会功能失调，不能公开讨论自己的问题。他说这样的社会容易发生灾难。

“Satirizing political power should not be a crime,” he said.

“讽刺政治权力不应该是一种罪行，”他说。