contemporary Asian art. Abstract painting techniques around this time were influenced by Japanese and European developments in painting. Academic painting inspired by Japanese modernism was favored by the Park Chung-hee dictatorship and shown in state-run shows called Gukjeon (National Art Exhibition). The government's favoritism towards apolitical painting and censorship of political art sparked backlash from younger artists at the time who then created experimental art collectives in direct resistance to these developments in painting. Some contemporary Korean painting demands an understanding of Korean ceramics and Korean pottery as the glazes used in these works and the textures of the glazes make Korean art more in the tradition of ceramic art, than of western painterly traditions, even if the subjects appear to be of western origin. Brush-strokes as well are far more important than they are to the western artist; paintings are judged on brush-strokes more often than pure technique. The contemporary artist Suh Yongsun, who is highly appreciated and was elected "Korea's artist of the year 2009", makes paintings with heavy brushstrokes and shows topics like both Korean history and urban scenes especially of Western cities like New York and Berlin. His artwork is a good example for the combination of Korean and Western subjects and painting styles. Other Korean artists combining modern Western and Korean painting traditions are i.e. Junggeun Oh and Tschoon Su Kim. While there have been only rare studies on Korean aesthetics, a useful place to begin for understanding how Korean art developed an aesthetic is in Korean philosophy, and related articles on Korean Buddhism, and Korean Confucianism. North Korea During Kim Il-sung's rule, painting was allowed only in the socialist realist genre and propaganda posters were the stock of North Korean visual arts. After Kim Il-sung's death in 1994, directives on painting were relaxed and sometimes completely abolished under Kim Jong-il. New art forms, including a kind of impressionism peculiar to North Korea, rose to complement posters. Art forms other than socialist realism are particularly seen in the patriotic films that dominated that culture from 1949 to 1994, and the reawakened architecture, calligraphy, fabric work and neo-traditional painting, that has occurred from 1994 to date. The impact was greatest on revolutionary posters, lithography and multiples, dramatic and documentary film, realistic painting, grand architecture, and least in areas of domestic pottery, ceramics, exportable needlework, and the visual crafts. Sports art and politically charged revolutionary posters have