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.

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.

Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungmin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Korean Nationalism ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Korean State ◽  
Key Events

South Korea’s nationalism and political history have been shaping each other since the late nineteenth century. While anti-colonial nationalism has been the most important element of contemporary South Korean political identity, the South Korean state has also utilized and altered the forms and contents of South Korean nationalism. Key events in South Korean political history such as colonial experiences, national division, the Korean War, authoritarian rule, democratization, and globalization have been interacting with evolving discourses of nationalism in South Korean society. This chapter reviews the historical development of Korean nationalism, while emphasizing the interactions between nationalism and political history. It also suggests that Korean nationalism is at a crossroads amid democratic consolidation and globalization.

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.

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.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

The New Chinese Communist

1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 592-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen S. Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Major Obstacle ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

A Major obstacle to analysis of Communist movements is the, absence of firsthand evidence on attitudes and motivations affecting tension and cohesion. The refusal of four thousand members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Youth Corps to return to the mainland after the Korean War offered an unusually large and representative cross-section of these two organizations for systematic interrogation. The results of such an interrogation conducted by the author in April 1954, while in no way conclusive, provide suggestive statistical and analytical information concerning the composition and motivations of the post-Yenan Chinese Communist.According to official Communist figures, the Chinese Communist Party numbered approximately three million in December 1948 and more than five million in June 1950. This increase of two million members in eighteen months represents the most rapid expansion of Party rolls in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. It occurred after victory was in sight, but before rigorous measures to consolidate control erupted in the “Three Anti” and “Five Anti” movements of 1951. Those who joined the Party during this period form a group strikingly different from the elite of the Chinese Communist movement, which is composed of devoted revolutionaries trained in the rigorous experiences of the Long March and the wartime days of Yenan.

KOREA'S FIRST-GENERATION DIVIDED FAMILIES: The End of the Line?

World Affairs ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004382002110247
Author(s):  
James Alexander Foley
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Successes And Failures

This article describes and analyzes the desperate situation of Korean first-generation divided family members who are still separated from their relatives nearly 70 years since the end of the Korean War (1950–1953). I aim to provide the reader with a reasonable quantification of the problem and make projections as to this first generation's likely future survival. The elements of the approach adopted to resolve the issue of family separation by the humanitarian bodies charged with addressing the problem, the Red Cross Societies of the two Koreas are described, and suggestions are made for improvement. The reunion program's successes and failures are critically assessed as is the key role played by the Red Cross Talks in the history of inter-Korean relations. Finally, conclusions are drawn as to the practical measures which may contribute to a resolution to the problem before the final disappearance of Korea's first generation of aged, separated family members.

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