{"id":2225,"date":"2021-11-25T09:06:22","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T09:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/?p=2225"},"modified":"2021-12-15T09:04:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T09:04:45","slug":"of-war-and-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/of-war-and-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Of war and love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By Foong Pek Yee<\/div>\n
13 Dec, 2021<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
LOVE\u00a0 brought them together,\u00a0 war tore them apart.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
A beautiful love story\u00a0 cut short by the Korean War.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
They got married in 1945, the year World War II ended, and she took up the Korean name\u00a0 Lee Nam-Deok.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The couple were blessed with two sons when the Korean War (1950-53) erupted.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Together with\u00a0 their sons Tae-Hyun and Tae-Seung who were four and two respectively, they survived the 1951 mass exodus from North Korea to\u00a0 South Korea where they stayed in Busan and Jeju for a year.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The separation was meant to be a temporary one.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The following year, Jung -Seop managed to make it to Tokyo for a weeklong reunion with his wife and sons.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Upon his return to South Korea, Jung -Seop who struggled to make money to bring his family home succumbed to hardship and poor health.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
He died alone in a hospital in Seoul in 1956 at the age of 40.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
\u00a0Legacy: Visitors learned about Lee Jung -Seop\u00a0 as they stroll along the street named after him.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Jung-Seop’s life and times, written in English,\u00a0 is displayed prominently at the gallery<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
Happier times:\u00a0 The two paintings by Lee Jung -Seop.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
Evolving times: The Lee family stayed briefly\u00a0 in this house about 70 years ago.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
According to The Korean Herald in a report on Jun 6, 2016 – It was in Seogwipo\u00a0 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.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Foong Pek Yee 13 Dec, 2021 LOVE\u00a0 brought them together,\u00a0 war tore them apart. A beautiful love story\u00a0 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 … Continue reading “Of war and love”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,52],"tags":[99,98,81,96,100,101,97],"class_list":["post-2225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-korean","category-people","tag-busan","tag-jeju","tag-korean","tag-love","tag-tokyo","tag-turbulent-era","tag-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2225"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2631,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2225\/revisions\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}