Beyond “imagined” nostalgia: Gunsan's heritagization of Japanese colonial architecture in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Hyun Kyung Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Korean History ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract In South Korea, romanticization of the era of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945) has long been taboo: the period is widely regarded as one of the most painful and shameful parts of South Korean history. However, during the past decade unexpected cracks have appeared in established national narratives on the colonial period. This paper explores the dissonance between long-standing national narratives and the commodification of local heritage sites for tourism, by examining the heritagization of Japanese colonial architecture in the city of Gunsan. Despite the Gunsan Municipal Government positions the city's colonial stories in ways that largely align with national official narratives on Japanese colonial history, such efforts have unexpectedly generated feelings of imagined nostalgia in three ways: (1) through clashes between official colonial history and the means by which colonial daily life is depicted in Gunsan's Modern Cultural Belt; (2) through the interwoven colonial and post-colonial stories presented in the city's Modern Historic Landscape District and (3) through the commercialized colonial and post-colonial stories articulated by private businesses in Gunsan. This paper suggests that productive nostalgia can help to overcome the limit of the current form of Gunsan's heritagization, and to construct Gunsan's diverse local memories

The Prison and the Postcolony: Contested Memory and the Museumification of Sŏdaemun Hyŏngmuso

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Russell Burge
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Run Up ◽  
A Site

Abstract Seoul’s Sŏdaemun Prison is famous in South Korea today as a site of heroic resistance where Korean anticolonial activists were martyred at the hands of Japanese colonial officials. This narrative is complicated, however, by the fact that the prison continued to be used after the fall of the Japanese Empire as a tool to suppress political dissent, right up until its final decommissioning in 1987. This study inquires into the political context surrounding Sŏdaemun Prison’s decommissioning and finds that the decision was made by the Chun Doo Hwan administration in the run-up to the Seoul Olympics and was more concerned with the erasure of contemporaneous political excesses than the preservation of colonial memory. Sŏdaemun Prison’s transformation into a site of colonial tourism in the following decade was carried out as part of a larger move in urban planning to overwrite the memory of the postcolonial authoritarian past, a process that reveals much about the limitations and contradictions of South Korean democratization.

Underdevelopment of American Studies in South Korea: Power and Ignorance

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 274-294
Author(s):  
Jooyoung Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
English Language ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Studying Abroad ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Institutional Legacies

AbstractThis article asks why the disciplines of American Studies and U.S. history are so markedly underdeveloped in South Korea (Republic of Korea) and what this underdevelopment implies about U.S.-South Korean relations. Under Japanese colonial rule, the study of English in Korea was important for studying abroad, but few students studied America itself. Under American occupation and the following military rule in South Korea, American studies were not attractive to nationalist youth even though the English language remained useful. American cultural diplomacy fostered a small group of Americanists, but university enrollments were small. In the 1980s, Americans were blamed for their support of authoritarian rule. Japanese-trained historians saw American history as too short to be significant, and Japanese institutional legacies were an obstacle. Americans have also been too constricted in imagining who Koreans were, where Korean ambitions lay, and how Korean society worked. In a sense, the very differences between the two nations hindered them from realizing what those differences were.

A Reconsideration of the New Right’s Formative Period (2003–2008): Conservative Experiences, Mass Media and Cultural Memory in Post-Authoritarian South Korea

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-84
Author(s):  
Patrick Vierthaler
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
New Right ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Korean History ◽  
South Korean

The present article re-considers the emergence and institutionalization of the South Korean New Right Movement (2003–2007). Tracing institutional changes in post-democratization South Korea, I argue that the New Right can be evaluated as a process of Cultural Trauma within the conservative ideological spectrum. Revealing the movement’s institutionalization until the inauguration of the Lee Myung-bak government in 2008, I investigate in detail the role of the conservative mass media in the movement’s rise. Furthermore, I examine the movement’s relation to contemporary Korean history and memory, clarifying why the New Right ultimately failed in gaining wide-spread support for their historical narratives.

The emergence and evolution of International Relations studies in postcolonial South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jungmin Seo ◽  
Young Chul Cho
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial Mentality ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Current State ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
Colonial Legacies

Abstract This study investigates how International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline emerged and evolved in South Korea, focusing on the country's peculiar colonial and postcolonial experiences. In the process, it examines why South Korean IR has been so state-centric and positivist (American-centric), while also disclosing the ways in which international history has shaped the current state of IR in South Korea, institutionally and intellectually. It is argued that IR intellectuals in South Korea have largely reflected the political arrangement of their time, rather than demonstrate academic independence or leadership for its government and/or civil society, as they have navigated difficult power structures in world politics. Related to this, it reveals South Korean IR's twisted postcoloniality, which is the absence – or weakness – of non-Western Japanese colonial legacies in its knowledge production/system, while its embracing the West/America as an ideal and better model of modernity for South Korea's security and development. It also reveals that South Korean IR's recent quest for building a Korean School of IR to overcome its Western dependency appears to be in operation within a colonial mentality towards mainstream American IR.

“Victory over Communism: South Korean Protestants’ Ideas about Democracy, Development, and Dictatorship, 1953–1961”

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 233-258
Author(s):  
Jeongran Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The North ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
North Korean Regime

This article complicates the traditional narrative of anti-Communist Christians in Korea, examining the history of anti-communism among them in light of their claims to support democracy and development. Changes in Christian thinking in Korea followed the end of formal fighting in the Korean War. The conflict transformed Korea’s post-colonial history into a developmental struggle, pitting communism versus capitalism in a deadly battle. From the mid-1950s, South Korean Protestants saw the struggle as a competition between two systems, not simply one to eradicate the North Korean regime. From this new perspective, they began condemning political injustice and corruption under President Syngman Rhee. The contradictions in the ideas of Christians were partly embodied in their support for the civil uprising that would topple the Rhee regime, but also in their endorsement of Park Chung-hee’s military takeover in 1961. South Korean Protestants assisted the coup’s central leadership and helped a totalitarian regime come to power. This paradoxical aspect within Korean Protestant history is closely tied to the unique characteristics of its anti-communism and how it evolved after the Korean War.

Delayed Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-315
Author(s):  
Ja-hyun Chun ◽  
Jung-Sun Han
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
Korean History ◽  
Psychological Healing ◽  
Modern Korean History ◽  
National Reconciliation

The Jeju April 3rd Incident of 1948, which resulted in the largest number of casualties in modern Korean history other than in war, was a national tragedy. The complexity of the incident and its importance in Korean history explain the failure to discuss it publicly until the late 1980s. For this reason, existing studies have largely focused on uncovering the truth about this incident. Even though national reconciliation is an important topic in South Korea, a more structured study from a transitional justice perspective has not been undertaken of this violent event that led to a divided country. Thus, this study provides a theoretical framework for the conditioning of the institutionalisation, national narratives and psychological healing that are required to establish national reconciliation. The paper, then, applies this framework to the Jeju April 3rd Incident. Finally, it evaluates the limitations and challenges of national reconciliation in South Korea.

Elusive Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Everyday Lives

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.

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