PIRA Factory — HAEVAN LEE 이해반

PIRA FACTORY
(Enjoy the earth, x)

During an open studio event in peace culture bunker,
PIRA FACTORY opened by Haevan Lee.
People visited in PIRA FACTORY. They made the PIRA and sent up that with balloons to north side.
@2017 오픈스튜디오, 평화문화진지

지시문
“당신은 x입니다. 지구에 사는 이들에게 이 지구를 즐기는 방법을 알려주세요.
2017년 12월 23일 12시 23분 지구로 살포할 예정입니다. ”

“Please teach those living on Earth how to enjoy the Earth.
It is scheduled to be sprayed onto the Earth at 12:23 
on December 23, 2017”

Peace culture bunker, Seoul (Border area beteween gyeonggi-do and Seoul)

A bill-shaped PIRA삐라(refleat) used by UN forces in psychological warfare against the North Korean People's Army and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War.

Reserach Note

Right in front of the studio(Peace culture bunker), built in bunker style designed during the Nazi era, there not only are military observatory and tanks on display, but also the Berlin Wall that sended from Berlin to South Korea on display.

The word ‘삐라 PIRA’ came from the English word ‘bill’, which means advertising flyer, poster, etc. It is known that the Japanese expressed bill as ‘biru’, and in Korea, it was pronounced as pira and became a term meaning a propaganda leaflet.

During the Korean War in 1950, UN and North Korean forces began using it in earnest for psychological warfare purposes. It is said that UN forces distributed over 2.5 billion leaflets in North Korea. Accordingly, the leaflets distributed at the time were written in English. Chinese was also used to target the Chinese army along with the North Korean army.

After the ceasefire, the full-scale ‘PIRA(leaflet) war’ began. In the 1960s and 1970s in earnest, both North and South Korea produced leaflets focusing on system competition. In North Korea, they criticized South Korea's Yushin(the Revitalizing Reform) dictatorship or emphasized that they lived better than South Korea, while in South Korea, they emphasized a free life that was different from North Korea.

As leaflet dispersal shifted from government-led to private-led, the method also changed. Instead of the obvious paper leaflets, they started sending plastic balloons with leaflet packets, USB, DVD, 1 dollar bill, etc attached to the North.

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