Memories of respect etched by culture

Nam Yohong painted in 1706.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Exhibition demonstrates the sway China had over Korea for centuries

Nam Yohong, the right-hand man to Korea's king Yi Jong, who lived in the first half of the 17th century, had his portrait painted twice by Chinese painters.

The first, in 1627, shows Nam as a benign-looking civil servant with a pair of baggy eyes that may have been the permanent residue of overwork or of the fierce power struggle that jolted the Korean court a few years earlier. (Four years earlier in 1623, Yi Jong rose to power by staging a military coup and deposing the king, his much-resented uncle Gwanghaegun. In the portrait, a tense and taut looking Nam appears to be still recovering from the aftershock of the event.)

The baggy eyes are still there in the second painting. But the gaunt feel has given way to a look of grim determination - a steely gaze and slight frown that betray an iron shrewdness. This was a man who had seen so much blood flow that eventually such violence would not make him flinch. It was painted in 1647, a year after Nam died aged 73.

Such emotional subtleties point to the tremendous skill of the portraitists - in Nam's case two. Both were court painters employed by the Chinese emperors to paint the Korean emissary while he was in Beijing. The city was the capital for the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the succeeding Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).