Houses bathed in neon light. A stick figure parachuting down a rusty iron slab. A photo of the moon. Tigers in the shape of the Korean Peninsula. Messages written on children’s shoes.

These visuals have nothing in common at first glance. But for a new generation of defectors, they are expressions of their identities shaped by both roots in North Korea and new lives in the South.

A recent exhibition in Seoul brought together the work of seven defector artists from “Generation MZ,” a South Korean term referring to millennials and Generation Z.

For many, the term “North Korean art”