In “ZERO: North Korea Encountered on the Path of Folk Culture,” ZERO embodies the concept of gong (空) - understood here not as emptiness or absence, but as an open space and point of departure where new understanding begins. Like returning to a point zero, the exhibition invites us to set aside, for a moment, the perceptions and preconceptions we have long taken for granted, and to view North Korea not as something unfamiliar, but as another way of life shaped upon the same historical and cultural foundations we both share.

As the saying goes, “A mountain is a mountain, and water is water.” Only by seeing things as they are can we encounter their true nature. The same is true of North Korea. It is the place closest to us, yet one that has long felt the most distant. Perhaps that distance has been shaped not only by geographical boundaries, but also by the years in which we did not truly know one another. Through folk culture - the most everyday and deeply human lens through which to view life - this exhibition seeks to gradually narrow that distance.

Bringing together the cultural foundations long shared by South and North Korea and the diversity of their regions, the exhibition presents the lives, aesthetic sensibilities, and everyday memories of the people of the North before us today. Following the traces of life preserved in the folk materials, we hope visitors will rediscover the cultural roots we have long shared, deepen mutual understanding, and reflect on the possibilities of coexistence and reconciliation.

At the end of this journey, what awaits is not an unfamiliar North Korea, but the memory of another life that has long existed alongside our own. May this encounter become a new beginning for understanding one another - ZERO.


gong (空): A Korean rendering of the East Asian philosophical concept of “emptiness” derstood here not as emptiness or absence, but as an open space and point of departure where new understanding begins.