Politics, love and alienation — three of the most common artist engines throughout time. While not all art is political, artists themselves are by-and-large a political lot, unafraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.

Most of the time, though, an artist’s politics shine through by way of abstraction — a note of dissonance here, and maybe a few symbolic references there. In a way, it’s refreshing to see a political struggle worked out in less figurative terms, and it doesn’t get any more literal than the struggle of artist Song Byeok.

A North Korean who defected to the South in 2002, Byeok spent many years churning out propaganda posters for Kim Jong II’s message machine. He worked away in unquestioning obeisance to the “Supreme Leader” for much of his adult life before harrowing circumstances drove him across the border.

Now, as a working artist in South Korea, Byeok is enjoying the previously unimagined privilege of self-expression. Unsurprisingly, satire is his mode of choice, mixing elements of his previous work with provocative cultural imagery. Case in point, his portrait of Kim Jong II, or at least his head, perched atop Marilyn Monroe’s body.

Such an artistic transgression would have gotten Byeok and possibly his entire family “disappeared” in the North, but in the South it’s earning him acclaim.

It’s fascinating — almost voyeuristically so — to watch an artist process his personal political experience on canvas. It’s also a great example of artwork healing old wounds and educating the uninitiated at the same time.