This striking image - part of an art exhibition by North Korean defector Song Byeok, which opened yesterday in Seoul - would have been unthinkable at the artist's old job: making propaganda posters in the North with slogans like 'Let Us Exalt The Great Leader'.
Mr Song, 42, said he got the idea to draw a satirical painting of Mr Kim Jong Il when he saw Monroe's iconic pose from the movie The Seven Year Itch. He said Monroe's attempt to hide what was below her dress reminded him of what Kim has done to conceal the truth of what is happening in North Korea.
'It is time to reform and open North Korea, so that poor North Koreans can see what the real world is,' he said.
In 2001, severe food shortages drove Mr Song and his father to try to swim across the border into China. When the current swept his father away, Mr Song ran to a border patrol to seek help. The guards arrested him immediately and left his father to drown, he said.
'That's when I realised this was not a place for a human to live,' he said.
He spent six months in a forced labour camp before defecting in 2002 to Seoul, where he attended art colleges.
Through his paintings, Mr Song wants to help people see the North not as a bizarre land ruled by an eccentric dictator, but as a country whose people long for the freedoms taken for granted elsewhere.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
