Jokes aside, cartoonist Plantu draws new perspectives

Jean Plantureux, who goes by Plantu, speaks with a group of journalists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul last Thursday. [ESTHER CHUNG]

More surprising than the fact that a teenager’s satirical caricature of President Yoon Suk-yeol recently went viral in Korea is that there were no further reports done on what the teenager was really thinking in the first place, said Le Monde’s celebrated cartoonist Plantu during his first visit to Korea.
 
“If the same happened in France, we would be asking many questions on why the student drew what he or she drew,” said Plantu, whose real name is Jean Plantureux, in speaking with a group of journalists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul last Thursday.
 
Entitled “Yoon Suk-yeol Train,” the cartoon depicts a train with the face of Yoon charging on its tracks with panicked people trying to get away from it. A woman who resembles first lady Kim Keon-hee is seen looking out from the engine room, her hand positioned next to her mouth as if giving orders to Yoon. 
 
The cartoon won second prize in a contest organized last summer by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency. The Culture Ministry recently threatened to investigate the agency for not screening “explicitly political” works.
 

A satirical cartoon depicting a train resembling President Yoon Suk-yeol’s face and first lady Kim Keon-hee, which won second prize in a national cartoon contest, is now at the center of public debate about freedom of expression. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

“If the student was not influenced by anyone in his or her drawing, then the drawing is a powerful statement about how a young person sees the country and its administration,” Plantu said. “That can be a start of a healthy and necessary conversation about whether we are okay with the way things are in our society.”
 
For nearly 50 years, the artist’s cartoon figures of French presidents and other European and non-European leaders alike, such as Kim Jong-il, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin, made the front page of Le Monde, often depicted with a hint of biting humor Plantu is well know for.
 
Plantu retired from the paper in March last year, leaving behind a legacy of some 14,000 cartoons. He is active as a cartoonist of Cartooning for Peace, a group of some 220 cartoonists from 54 countries promoting freedom of expression for cartoonists around the world.
 
“I’ve enjoyed cartooning about politics, especially about issues and incidents that people avoid talking about but need to talk about to make things right,” said Plantu, in speaking with the journalists in Seoul. “They’re intended to make you stop and think.”
 
Plantu is also known for connecting some leaders at odds with each other. He got Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli leader Shimon Peres to sign a single drawing depicting each other’s flags in the early 1990s, which he recalls as one of his most memorable moments as a cartoonist.
 
After his meeting with the journalists, many of whom were also cartoonists, Plantu sat down with some students and aspiring cartoonists in Korea at the Jipyong Brewery office in Seoul. The office is also hosting an exhibition of a collection of Plantu’s works through Nov. 12. The following are edited excerpts of the conversations in French, translated in person by celebrity Ida Daussy.
 

Kim Gi-hwan, CEO of Jipyong Brewery, far right, addresses the audience at the brewery’s headquarter office in Seoul on Oct. 20. [ESTHER CHUNG]

Q. This is your first visit to Korea. What are your impressions?
A. I have been touched by the way Koreans still maintain a sense of respect toward each other. It’s something that we seem to be losing quickly in other parts of the world. I want to include some of these new impressions in my drawings about Korea in the future.
 
Can you tell us about some of your previous works involving Korea?
They were mostly about North Korea, the Kim family, and the weapons of mass destruction. Often, my cartoons would depict several issues at once, like this one I did in 2003, which contains the elements of the U.S. leadership, the Iraq War and the North Korean weapons problem. Another one I drew during Kim Jong-il’s time shows Kim eating away while a North Korean man is shown shackled and starving in the background.

Plantu showing one of his works about North Korea during a talk with local students and cartoonists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul on Oct. 30. [ESTHER CHUNG]

 
Have you ever been afraid for your life because of the works you’ve produced?
Not once. I have always been confident, because I do not mean harm to a specific person that I am depicting. All I am doing is to giving a moment for people to think things over. That’s when nuance becomes very important. Since I was young, I’ve learned to take in different nuances, and to depict them in drawing so that the cartoons are not posing a black-and-white thinking but different nuances.
 
What kinds of nuances did you pick up from “Yoon Suk-yeol train”?
That you can say so much with a single drawing. I want to encourage the teenager who drew it. I think it’s another matter to find out the message that he or she was trying to convey through the work, because, more often than not, artists’ intentions get misunderstood by the viewers. If the student was not influenced by anyone in his or her drawing, then the drawing is a powerful statement about how a young person sees the country and its administration. That can be a start of a healthy and necessary conversation about whether we are okay with the way things are in our society.
 

Jean Plantureux, who goes by Plantu, speaks with a group of journalists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul last Thursday. [ESTHER CHUNG]

What did you think after meeting with some local cartoonists here?
That many Korean cartoonists are as brave as the ones we find in France. Some of the cartoonists have published works that might not have been able to be published in France, because they were that bold, or because of cultural differences. Freedom of speech and expression are very important values, but they unfortunately can lead to very dangerous situations for the cartoonists. I need not say more than the Charlie Hebdo case. Sometimes, we are staking our lives to express our thoughts, and those are the moments we need to be wise in how we draw.
 
Can you elaborate on your last point?  
Take for example how one is before a headlight. The person is not going to be able to see anything but the light and would be blind to their surroundings. But if a person stands before a softer light, he or she would be able to see the light and the surroundings. That is what I have considered my profession to be: to produce works that wouldn’t blind people but help them see their surroundings better or in a different light.  

Plantu showing a satirical cartoon by a Korean cartoonist during a talk with local students and cartoonists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul on Oct. 30. [ESTHER CHUNG]

 
Were you ever censored in publishing your work?
After the Charlie Hebdo incident in Paris, a lot of cartoonists wanted to draw about it, including myself. But my editor in chief at the time said no. So what I ended up doing was writing the sentence, “I should never draw Mohammed,” over and over again in my drawing, until the sentences themselves became the lines and shades to depict the face of Mohammed.
 
There are some topics in France that are just out of the question [for satirical cartoons], such as personal gender or religious preferences as well as issues concerning the privacy of an individual.
 
Your first cartoon on Le Monde was about the Vietnam War. There have been many wars waged since then, including the war in Ukraine. In your depiction of global events for nearly half a century, did you have any recurring thoughts or reflections about human nature?
It is unfortunate to find that humans have not changed. I wish we could learn better from our mistakes. In some ways, because our world has become more digitalized, we are given even less time to think things through before reacting and making decisions. I’ve been drawing about the war in Ukraine, including the ravaging effects of the war on the Ukrainian people, but also the Russians — some of whom are fighting against their own relatives in Ukraine.

Plantu showing one of his works during a talk with local students and cartoonists at the headquarters of Jipyong Brewery in Seoul on Oct. 30. [ESTHER CHUNG]

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]