Memories of respect etched by culture

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.)