Survival Strategies of a Korean War Prisoner Who Chose Neutral Nations: A Study Based on Im Kwan-taik’s Oral History and Documents

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-281
Author(s):  
Jung Keun Sik
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Southern Korea ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Abstract This article reconstructs the life history of Korean War prisoner Im Kwan-taek and analyzes his strategy for survival. Im, a North Korean who forces of the United Nations Command (unc) captured, refused repatriation to North Korea and decided to go to a neutral country. After two years in India, he finally settled in Brazil. This study examines his prisoner of war (pow) interrogation reports and the results of two oral history interviews to understand Im’s experiences and survival strategies. Born in Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, Im grew up in southern Korea. However, in 1946, he moved to northern Korea with the support of his deceased father’s comrades from the anti-Japanese movement in China. With the start of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, Im became an officer in the Korean People’s Army (kpa). As a pow, he concealed his identity as much as possible to ensure his survival, and these efforts continued in neutral countries. After the Republic of Korea awarded Im’s father the South Korean Patriotic Medal in 2001, his “secret survivalism” strategy relaxed and he began organizing communication and networks between surviving former pows.

scholarly journals Analysis of Developmental Chronology of South Korean Compressed Growth as a Reference from Sustainable Development Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1905
Author(s):  
Sea Jin Kim ◽  
Woo-Kyun Lee ◽  
Jun Young Ahn ◽  
Wona Lee ◽  
Soo Jeong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
National Development ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Developmental Indicators ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Perspectives

Global challenges including overpopulation, climate change, and income inequality have increased, and a demand for sustainability has emerged. Decision-making for sustainable development is multifaceted and interlinked, owing to the diverse interests of different stakeholders and political conflicts. Analysing a situation from all social, political, environmental, and economic perspectives is necessary to achieve balanced growth and facilitate sustainable development. South Korea was among the poorest countries following the Korean War; however, it has developed rapidly since 1955. This growth was not limited to economic development alone, and the chronology of South Korean development may serve as a reference for development in other countries. Here, we explore the compressed growth of South Korea using a narrative approach and time-series, comparative, and spatial analyses. Developmental indicators, along with the modern history of South Korea, are introduced to explain the reasons for compressed growth. The development of the mid-latitude region comprising 46 countries in this study, where nearly half of Earth’s population resides, was compared with that of South Korea; results show that the developmental chronology of South Korea can serve as a reference for national development in this region.

scholarly journals Mongolia’s Diplomatic Efforts to Join the United Nations and the Changes in the Position of the Great Powers

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Ulambayar Denzenlkham
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Republic

This article discusses Mongolia’s 15 years of diplomatic efforts to join the United Nations, the main factors that influenced it, and the changing policies and positions of the Soviet Union, the Kuomintang of China, the United States, and other great powers. Although the Mongolian People’s Republic was able to join the United Nations in 1946, it was influenced by the Soviet Union’s communist position. Since 1946, Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese policy and position have been a major obstacle. The history of the Republic of China, which existed on the mainland between 1912 and 1949, was the history of the struggle for power between the warlords, the history of the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communists. In the nearly 40 years since the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, neither the warlords nor the Kuomintang have been able to exercise their sovereignty on the mainland, but they are keen to see Outer Mongolia as part of their territory. The Kuomintang was expelled from the mainland in 1949, shortly after 1946. During the Korean War, initiated by Kim Il-sung, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, Mongolia stood firmly behind North Korea, providing both moral and material support. It has not been mentioned anywhere that this resulted in Mongolia’s efforts at the UN being postponed for many years. When Communist China entered the Korean War, the Kuomintang, which fully supported the US-led UN military operation (peacekeeping), not only continuously provoked at the Security Council of the United Nations, but also presented false documents about the MPR - described as “a Chinese territory seized by the Soviet Union” - sending troops to North Korea.The United States, which has recognized the status quo of the Mongolian People’s Republic, has made it clear that it has played an important role in the country’s admission to the United Nations. Thus Mongolia’s attempt finally succeeded and it became the 101st state to join the United Nations. As a consequence, Mongolia’s independence has been approved by a recognize of Western powers and it began to emerge out of its isolation, participate in decision of global issues, and cooperate with the international community. However, not only did this opportunity not be fully exploited, but due to the Cold War, Mongolia became a hotbed of ideological competition between the socialist and capitalist systems at the United Nations, the speakers’ rostrum Nevetheless,Post-Cold War, a whole new era of cooperation between Mongolia and the United Nations began.

The Intimacies of Complicity

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-262
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Kim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Japanese Colonialism ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Korean Christianity ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

This chapter elaborates a transnational literary critical methodology for approaching South Korean depictions of the Korean War that now circulate in the United States in translated form through an analysis of Hwang Sok-yong’s novel The Guest. This magical realist work recounts a massacre that occurred in late 1950 in which roughly thirty-five thousand residents of Sinch’on, located in what is now North Korea, were slaughtered by their friends and neighbors. This chapter situates The Guest in its domestic context, elaborating its critique of both North and South Korean nationalist narratives that tend to avoid holding Koreans themselves accountable for such atrocities, and its complex engagement with the history of Korean Christianity. Even as it does so, however, the novel also implicates Japanese colonialism and Western Christianity in the violence that erupted in Sinch’on. However, this chapter also argues that this novel in its translated form must also be read within the context of its circulation in the United States, which highlights certain aspects of it: the affinities it suggests between working-class Koreans drawn to Marxism and enslaved Africans and its critique of the bystander role adopted by the US military in relation to atrocities committed by its Korean allies.

Propaganda leaflets and Cold War frames during the Korean War

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-264
Author(s):  
Seong Choul Hong
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Moral Judgement ◽  
Causal Interpretation ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

In the history of world wars, the Korean War (1950–1953) was not a forgotten war but the apogee of a propaganda war. By analyzing the contents of propaganda leaflets distributed during the Korean War, this study explored which frames were dominantly employed. The resulting findings were that the frames of ‘demoralization’ (25.7%) and ‘encouraging surrender’ (24.4%) were the most frequently used during the overall war period. Furthermore, the dominant frames varied depending upon the target audiences and language used. In terms of functional frames, the leaflet messages corresponded to definition and causal interpretation (22.8%), moral judgement (26.2%) and solution (49.9%). Interestingly, Chinese and North Korean leaflets preferred the imperialist frame to the Cold War frame even though the US and South Korean leaflets more heavily used the Cold War frame when they referred to foreign troops. Moreover, thematic frames (91.4%) were more widely used than episodic frames (8.6%) in the samples.

“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.

Prisoner Number 600,001: Rethinking Japan, China, and the Korean War 1950–1953

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Military Career ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Chinese Civil War ◽  
The Korean War

Among more than 100,000 prisoners captured by United Nations forces in the Korean War, there was just one Japanese prisoner of war (POW). Matsushita Kazutoshi, Prisoner Number 600,001, had served in the Japanese army in China, both Nationalist and Communist armies in the Chinese Civil War, and in the Chinese People's Volunteers in North Korea, and was to end his military career in the ranks of the South Korean army. Using his forgotten story as a prism, this article explores neglected transborder dimensions of the Korean War. It argues the need to pay closer attention to the historical continuities linking the Asia-Pacific War and Chinese Civil War to the Korean War; it reconsiders the nature of Japan's connections to the conflict in Korea and reconceptualizes the UN POW camps as sites of ongoing Chinese and Korean civil wars.

The Place-ness of the DMZ

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-685
Author(s):  
Dong-Yeon Koh
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Tourist Attractions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Demilitarized Zone ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ideological Tensions

During the last decade, the DMZ (demilitarized zone) has emerged as one of the most popular tourist attractions for both domestic and international travelers—despite continued conflicts over nuclear weapons under Jungun Kim’s administration as well as ongoing landmine problems. Inspired by Marc Augé’s theory of non-place, this essay critically examines the policy to create an eco-friendly image of the DMZ that became prevalent among public art projects such as Dreaming of Earth, proposed by sculptor Jaeeun Choi and renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, and the construction of the Pyungwha Nuri Gil (Spread Peace Trail). The essay further analyzes the key examples from the 2015 Real DMZ Project, the annual art event, started in 2012, on the site of Cheorwon, that serve as alternatives to public art projects for domestic visitors and international travelers. I argue that Hayoun Kwon’s 489 Years, Jisun Shin’s Contemplating Landscape, and Youngjoo Cho’s DMG_Demilitarized Goddesses (all of the 2015 Real DMZ Project) challenge the DMZ’s allegedly safe and benign image. More important, Minouk Lim’s Monument 300 (2014) evolves from the audience’s process of finding imaginary traces left by the historical massacre inside the DMZ. The participatory nature of Lim’s Monument 300: Chasing Watermarks calls our attention not only to the forgotten history of the area but also to the changing and unsettled meanings of the site. Therefore, the essay treats the DMZ as a symbolic site through which one can explore how the historical and political significance of the Korean War and its ideological tensions have been consistently forged within postwar South Korean society, particularly for the last two decades.

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