Transcending the Past: Singing and the Lingering Cold War in the Korean Christian Diaspora

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
HYUN KYONG HANNAH CHANG
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Choral Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Protestant music in South Korea has received little attention in ethnomusicology despite the fact that Protestant Christianity was one of the most popular religions in twentieth-century Korea. This has meant a missed opportunity to consider the musical impact of a religious institution that mediated translocal experiences between South Korea and the United States during the Cold War period (1950s–1980s). This article explores the politics of music style in South Korean diasporic churches through an ethnography of a church choir in California. I document these singers’ preference for European-style choral music over neotraditional pieces that incorporate the aesthetics of suffering from certain Korean traditional genres. I argue that their musical judgement must be understood in the context of their lived and remembered experience of power inequalities between the United States and South Korea. Based on my interviews with the singers, I show that they understand hymns and related Euro-American genres as healing practices that helped them overcome a difficult past and hear traditional vocal music as sonic icons of Korea's sad past. The article outlines a pervasive South Korean/Korean diasporic historical consciousness that challenges easy conceptions of identity and agency in music studies.

History, Ideology, and Human Rights

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Anthony DiFilippo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Rights Issues

This article will analyze the connection between history, countervailing ideologies, that is, the legacy of the Cold War, and the perceived identification of human rights violations as they pertain to countries with major security interests in Northeast Asia. This article will further show that the enduring nuclear-weapons problem in North Korea has been inextricably linked to human rights issues there, specifically because Washington wants to change the behavior of officials in Pyongyang so that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) becomes a state that at least remotely resembles a liberal democracy. Although supported by much of the international community, including the United States' South Korean and Japanese allies in Northeast Asia, Washington's North Korean policy has remained ineffective, as Pyongyang has continued to perform missile testing and still possesses nuclear weapons.

North Koreans in South Korea and Beyond: Transnational Migration and Contested Nationhood

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-338
Author(s):  
Jin Woong Kang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Transnational Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
North Korean Refugees

This article examines the differentiated identities of North Koreans in South Korea and beyond in terms of transnational migration and contested nationhood. In the post-Cold War era, North Koreans in South Korea have been marginalised as a social minority, and comprise a subaltern group within South Korea, despite having South Korean citizenship. As a result, many North Korean refugees, including those who have already gained South Korean citizenship, have migrated to Western countries for a better life in terms of wealth and welfare. As active agents, they have pursued strategic lives in the host countries’ multicultural societies and Korean communities. Through complex transnational migration to South Korea and elsewhere, North Koreans have reformulated nationhood by contesting the idea of a “homogeneous nation” of Korea. This article focuses on how North Koreans have shaped their own Koreanness in the multicultural societies of the United States and the United Kingdom as well as in the hierarchical nationhood of South Korea. By doing so, it offers an alternative framework for looking at the multifarious identities of North Korean refugees globally.

Monstrous Science: The Great Monster Yonggari (1967) and Cold War Science in 1960s South Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-421
Author(s):  
Chung-kang Kim
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Success ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Nuclear Disaster ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThis essay explores the cinematic Cold War in 1960s South Korea, focusing on a popular film, The Great Monster Yonggari (Taegoesu Yonggari, 1967), and its transnational production, circulation, and responses. Initially produced as a children’s movie by Korean film director Kim Kidŏk, Yonggari had great success at the box office in South Korea. Later, with cooperation and international marketing by the Japanese company Toei, this film was introduced by American International Pictures television in the United States in 1969 with the title Yongary, Monster from the Deep. The transnational cultural nexus in the production and distribution of The Great Monster Yonggari obviously reflects the global Cold War politics among the nations in the “free world.” While paying attention to this ideological aspect of the film and the centrality of science as a national developmental agenda in South Korea, the essay also looks closely at the anxieties behind the Cold War science within Yonggari, as the “silenced” nuclear disaster of Japan started to be publicly spoken in South Korean media in the mid-1960s. The film reminded Koreans of the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of East Asian “Hot Wars” that were hidden behind monstrous Cold War science.

FRUSTRATED ALIGNMENT: THE PACIFIC PACT PROPOSALS FROM 1949 TO 1954 AND SOUTH KOREA–TAIWAN RELATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junghyun Park
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War

This research deals with South Korea–Taiwan relations from 1949, when the concept of a “Pacific Pact” was first introduced, to 1954, when the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL) was formed. Thus far, studies on the regional order of East Asia during the early Cold War period have focused on U.S. policies toward East Asia and U.S. relations with individual East Asian states. In contrast, this present work examines the multilateral nature of the international relations in the region at the time. The extended cooperation, conflict, and competition between South Korea (ROK) and Taiwan (ROC) over the Pacific Pact from 1949 to 1954 vividly show how actively the two nations attempted to engage in the international arena to ensure their own security. Certainly, the primary purpose of this pact was not to form an autonomous regional alliance independent of the United States. In post-World War II Asia, the United States sought to reorganize a new regional order in Asia, with Japan at the center of this proposed order. Under these circumstances, Taiwan and South Korea, standing at the front line of the Cold War, were desperate to attract the U.S.'s attention. Once the two new nations had secured U.S. military and economic aid, however, they no longer pursued their former aggressive and expansive diplomatic strategies. After the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, signed on December 2, 1954, Taiwan discarded the Pacific Pact as an offensive and defensive treaty and concentrated on the APACL. South Korea, for its part, did not further pursue the Pacific Pact after the ROK–U.S. Mutual Defense Agreement was concluded on October 1, 1953.South Korea and Taiwan maintained an exceptionally close relationship even after signing individual treaties with the United States. At times, the two nations competed to play a leading role in the international relations of Asia. Yet, their differences of opinion did not cross the line of cooperation between the two countries until the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to the Cold War system: South Korea then normalized relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1992.

The United States and Korea's Reunification

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
William W. Boyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This article first reviews the official policies of South Korea and the United States toward reunification, second examines the division of Korea during the Cold War, third the division since the Cold War, fourth analyzes the North's nuclear issue, and finally discusses the continuing impasse to reunification and what constructive role the United States should play. The paper shows that there are some striking dissimilarities between the postures of the U.S. and South Korea toward North Korea. The article concludes that South Korea's dramatic change from confrontation to reconciliation toward North Korea, that promises eventual reunification, presents an opportunity for the United States to do the same.

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