Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale is a biannual international contemporary art show that integrated three different art events held in the city in 1998: the Busan Youth Biennale, the first biennale of Korea that was voluntarily organized by local artists in 1981; the Sea Art Festival, an environmental art festival launched in 1987 with the sea serving as a backdrop; and the Busan International Outdoor Sculpture Symposium that was first held in 1991. The biennale was previously called the Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival (PICAF) before it launched.
The biennale has its own unique attribute in that it was formed not out of any political logic or need but rather the pure force of local Busan artists’ will and their voluntary participation. Even to this day their interest in Busan's culture and its experimental nature has been the key foundation for shaping the biennale’s identity.
This biennale is the only one like it in the world that was established through an integration of three types of art events such as a Contemporary Art Exhibition, Sculpture Symposium, and Sea Art Festival. The Sculpture Symposium in particular was deemed to be a successful public art event, the results of which were installed throughout the city and dedicated to revitalizing cultural communication with citizens. The networks formed through the event have assumed a crucial role in introducing and expanding domestic art overseas and leading the development of local culture for globalized cultural communication. Founded 38 years ago, the biennale aims to popularize contemporary art and achieve art in everyday life by providing a platform for interchanging experimental contemporary art.
Migrant Sea-Farers (Kim Sagang)
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관리자 2022-12-19 10:28
Research fellow, Migration and Human Rights Institute
The average “day” at the Busan Cooperative Fish Market, Korea’s largest seafood auction market, actually begins at 9 pm, when fishing vessels arrive with their catch at Busan’s South Port. The market’s workers spend the night unloading the fish and sorting it by type and size. At 6 am, the neatly organized fishes are priced by the auctioneers and head out for the market in freezer trucks. Fish discarded as unmarketable are picked off by flocks of seagulls. There is another group of people who only show up in the early afternoon after even the seagulls have left: the migrant workers disembarking after finishing up the cleaning on their fishing vessels.
Fewer and fewer Koreans are working in the fisheries sector; the ones who are left are getting on in years. The ones filling the vacuum today are migrant workers. Of the roughly 24,000 fishing vessel crew members working in Korea’s offshore waters, 10,000 or so are migrant workers from Indonesia and Vietnam. (This includes only workers on 20-ton or larger fishing vessels subject to the Seafarers’ Act.)
These days, the fisheries sector in Korea would be unsustainable without migrant workers. Busan is home to around 1,200 or so migrant fishery workers. On any given journey, they are at sea for two weeks to a month at a time catching fish. Routinely berated and insulted, working longer hours than they ever get to sleep, these workers earn less than not only their Korean fishery counterparts, but also other migrant workers whose jobs are on dry land. It is thanks to them we continue to enjoy Korean-caught mackerel on our dinner tables. (Mackerel is Busan’s “city fish,” and nearly 90% of all mackerel sold in Korea is caught in Busan’s offshore waters.)