South Korean president favors deceased video artist

South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun on Tuesday honored the life and work of recently deceased Nam June Paik, known as the inventor of video art. Some of the Korean-born Paik's artistic experiments were in radio and television, and he is thought to have coined the terms "information superhighway" and "the future is now."

Paik, an avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art in the 1960s by combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music and live performers, died Sunday night at age 74 of natural causes at his Miami apartment, according to a statement on his Web site.

"As the inventor of video art, (Paik) raised Koreans' creativity and artistic quality globally," Roh said, according to his office. "He is a virtuoso who will be long remembered in world art history and will forever be remembered as the big pride of our people."

Paik completed degrees in music and aesthetics in Japan before pursuing graduate work in philosophy.

He made his artistic debut in Wiesbaden, West Germany, in 1963 with a solo art exhibition titled "Exposition of Music-Electronic Television." A stroke in 1996 left him partly paralyzed, reports the AP. I.L.