Che Onejoon, a South Korean artist, has shifted his focus from documenting North Korea's Cold War-era monument-building in Africa to working directly with West African migrant communities in South Korea. His earlier projects, including the Mansudae Masterclass series and films like *Black Monument* (2017) and *My Utopia* (2018), explored the little-known history of North Korean-built statues and buildings across at least 20 African nations. More recently, he co-founded Space AfroAsia, the Afroasia Eco Museum, and the AfroAsia Artist Collective, and now lives and works in the Bosan-dong "Africa Town" near the Demilitarized Zone, creating multilingual music videos and even a K-pop girl group with a mixed Korean-African lineup.
This shift matters because it highlights a growing trend among artists to move from historical investigation to direct community engagement and cross-cultural integration. Che's work challenges South Korea's homogeneous self-image by making visible the African diaspora that has settled in neighborhoods vacated by U.S. military bases. His statement that "the collective is now more important to me than my personal work" reflects a broader redefinition of artistic practice as social and collaborative, rather than individual and object-based.