Uri nŭn kyŏlk'o tul il su ŏpta" (We Can Never Be Two)

A woodblock print poster produced anonymously in 1988 in South Korea by members of the undongkwŏn (運動圈, "sphere of the movement") - the counterhegemonic network of students, intellectuals, and workers who led the Minjuhwa Undong (민주화운동), South Korea's democratization movement. The poster depicts two figures, rendered to suggest farmers or workers from North and South Korea, intertwined and straining against barbed wire formed in the shape of the Korean peninsula, with text reading "우리는 결코 둘일 수 없다" ("We can never be two") - expressing the movement's aspiration for national reunification. Made using woodblock printing on paper, a technique chosen for its low cost and anonymity under military regime surveillance, the poster reflects the visual language of Minjung art (민중미술), a movement that emerged after the 1980 Kwangju Massacre and rejected Western modernist abstraction in favor of realist and folk-inspired imagery rooted in Korean cultural tradition. Produced and displayed on university campuses and in public spaces during 1986-88, these posters functioned as a primary medium of political communication in an era of strict media censorship. This image is held in the Korean Rare Book Collection at the Library of Congress Asian Division as part of the Minjuhwa undong p'osŭt'ŏ, chŏndan collection, and was digitized and published via the Library of Congress blog "4 Corners of the World" on January 30, 2025, by Elli Kim, Korean reference librarian, Asian Division.