
By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
LOVE brought them together, war tore them apart.
A beautiful love story cut short by the Korean War.
Lee Jung-Seop, born to a wealthy family in North Korea, and Yamamoto Masako met and fell in love when they were studying art in Tokyo in 1939.
They got married in 1945, the year World War II ended, and she took up the Korean name Lee Nam-Deok.
The couple were blessed with two sons when the Korean War (1950-53) erupted.
Together with their sons Tae-Hyun and Tae-Seung who were four and two respectively, they survived the 1951 mass exodus from North Korea to South Korea where they stayed in Busan and Jeju for a year.
In a bid to save their children from hardship in a war torn country, Nam-Deok and her sons boarded a Tokyo-bound repatriation ship in 1952.
The separation was meant to be a temporary one.
The following year, Jung -Seop managed to make it to Tokyo for a weeklong reunion with his wife and sons.
Upon his return to South Korea, Jung -Seop who struggled to make money to bring his family home succumbed to hardship and poor health.
He died alone in a hospital in Seoul in 1956 at the age of 40.
Fast track to 2002, the South Korean government set up the Lee Jung-Seop Art Gallery in Seogwipo in Jeju and the road leading to the museum is named after the renowned artist.

Legacy: Visitors learned about Lee Jung -Seop as they stroll along the street named after him.
Jung-Seop’s life and times, written in English, is displayed prominently at the gallery
I wished I had read about the Lee family before I visited the museum in the Summer of 2018 to better appreciate his art work which says a lot about love for his family and life in a turbulent era.


Happier times: The two paintings by Lee Jung -Seop.
Next to the gallery is a small house where the Lee family stayed in a rented room measuring 1.5m by 2.4m for about a year in 1951.


Evolving times: The Lee family stayed briefly in this house about 70 years ago.
According to The Korean Herald in a report on Jun 6, 2016 – It was in Seogwipo that Jung -Seop created paintings that portrayed children playing with crabs and fish, in cheerful colours, and that his wife later recalled that it was the happiest time for the family.