KIM Byungjong (1953- ) has been devoting himself in formulating a whole new mode of traditional-style Korean painting in which East Asian thoughts and aesthetics are to be given apt forms. In his works, his way of supplementing the spiritualities that ink wash and brush have traditionally held with colors remarkably fits to what he intends to communicate by dealing with epic themes, and this have led to the pantheism-based praising of the beauty and value of life. Belonging to the eponymous “Name and Soul” series that Kim has attempted since the mid-1980s, Name and Soul-Hwang Jinyi in Communion with Rocks (1989) reinterprets the historic figure named Hwang Jini by bringing her into the present time. Here Hwang Jini is re-characterized into a person who defies the made-up morals instituted by conventions and scholar officials-oriented ethics. And through the letting-off of oppressed eroticism his paintings seek to reveal both the unfortunate circumstances in which traditional-style Korean painting wrestles with the shackles of tradition and the dismal reality that suffocates the society of Korea which exposes itself to persistent and continuous scarring as a slave of ideologies.