scholarly journals Towards Archival Justice: The Case of Nogŭn-ri Massacre During the Korean War

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Young-Hwa Hong
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Oral Testimony

This paper discusses the social production of archives with a focus on the archive of the Nogŭn-ri Massacre, a case of mass violence against South Korean civilians by US forces during the Korean War. Recent scholarship has criticized views of archives as stable repositories for documents, and instead has shown the process through which archives are constructed through divergent social forces. Moreover, scholars have encouraged archivists to actively function as conduits for the voices of marginalized counterpublics. The archive of the Nogŭn-ri Massacre itself is shown to have been formed by survivors and activists who demanded an apology and redress from the US military for the massacre. This counterpublic archive was first formed of oral testimony, but increasingly accumulated a growing number of written US military documents repurposed by the activists in the service of archival justice.

“He’s a South Korean When He’s Running with You, and He’s a North Korean When He’s Running after You”

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Kim
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War

Through a carefully contextualized analysis of Samuel Fuller’s 1951 film The Steel Helmet, this chapter illuminates several tropes that circulated in contemporaneous US depictions of the Korean War: an interracial group of US soldiers, a Korean orphan, and enemy soldiers who disguise themselves as refugees and routinely violate other rules of war. In this movie are the remnants of a prior racial ideology that had demonized the entire Japanese population during World War II and the emergence of a new one that emphasized lawfulness as the primary criteria that could distinguish between subjects of color—both American and Asian—who were loyal and those who posed a threat. As this film demonstrates, the integration of the US military, and particularly the incorporation of Japanese American and African American soldiers into formerly all-white units, became vital during the Korean War to US assertions of its own ethical superiority over the Communist enemy, as was its soldiers’ humanitarian commitment to protecting Korean civilians—especially orphans. Ultimately, this chapter demonstrates how The Steel Helmet both crystallizes the emergent racial ideologies of US Cold War liberalism—especially their legalistic aspects in regards to war and their espousal of military multiculturalism—and then shatters them.

(Re)mapping the Yanggongju and the Camptown in Shin Sang-ok's Hellflower

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-66
Author(s):  
Laura Ha Reizman
Keyword(s):  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The South ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
New Era ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Love Triangle

The Korean War (1950–53) changed the material and affective landscape of the Korean peninsula and ushered in a new era ruled by a military dictatorship dependent on US military power. With bases dotting the South Korean peninsula, former agricultural villages became camptowns that catered to the needs of American soldiers. This article focuses on the South Korean melodrama Chiokhwa (Hellflower, 1958), directed by Shin Sang-ok, which narrates a love triangle between two brothers and Sonya, a camptown prostitute or yanggongju. It examines the role of the postwar environment in constructing the spaces of the subject. Using the yanggongju figure as a technology of postwar memory, this work reevaluates the ecology of ruination left in the wake of the Korean War—as portrayed through Sonya, scenes of the city, the camptown, the base, and the surrounding fields and marshes—to explore the sense of loss and displacement of this period.

Right to Mourn

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhi Choi
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Memory Space ◽  
War Memorials ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Transient Interactions ◽  
Memorial Sites

Right to Mourn illustrates how suppressed trauma is manifested at the transient interactions among bodies, objects, and rituals in the sites of Korean War memorials. In a highly politicized memory space, many bereaved families of the Korean War have long been deprived of their rights to mourn the loss of their loved ones. These suppressed mourners comprise mainly survivors and victims’ families of the atrocities committed by the US-allied South Korean forces before and during the Korean War. The book explores dialectic roles that memorial sites can play in communicating suppressed trauma: Can a memorial facilitate empathic mourning in which trauma possibly could be transmitted—as incomprehensible, incommunicable, and inaccessible as it is? To further explore such a query, the book critically introduces the specific sites of Korean War memorials in South Korea that were recently built to commemorate the atrocities of the US-allied South Korean forces: the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, the Memorial for the Gurye Victims of Yŏsun Killings, and the No Gun Ri Peace Park. Unpacking these nascent sites of the Korean War, the book provokes readers to look at the nearly seven-decade-old war in the most updated context of the acts of mourning.

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.

Below the 38th Parallel

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-258
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Structural Relationship ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Youth Groups ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Us ◽  
38Th Parallel ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Korean Youth ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Korean youth groups and the US Counterintelligence Corps spans the occupation years and the Korean War. The practices of interrogation spanned tattooing, list-making, essay-writing, and the blood petition. Tracing the development of these interrogation practices also is tracking the development of an intimate structural relationship between the Korean youth groups and US counterintelligence. This chapter begins during the US occupation period as the mobilization of Korean youth groups become key to the rightist regime and US counterintelligence network coming into formation on the peninsula. It then considers a network of US- and UN-run POW camps on the peninsula in order to examine the interrogation practices developed by the anti-Communist South Korean paramilitary youth groups inside the camps.

scholarly journals China’s Policy in Refusing North Korea Nuclear Proliferation

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Vera Zerlinda Alamsyah Sulaiman
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Extended Deterrence ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Impact

This paper explains the main factors underlying China's policy of refusing North Korea's nuclear proliferation, whereas the two countries have established defense alliance relations since the breakup of the Korean War. Geopolitically, North Korea is a strategic country for China in the East Asian region, and both countries view the presence of the US military in the region as a threat. Subsequently, North Korea began to develop its nuclear capability to challenge the continuous US military presence in South Korea. Although China and North Korea see the US influence as a security threat, China maintains its position of refusing North Korea nuclear proliferation. Previous studies regarding the relations between the two countries have explained the factors that underlie China's refusal of North Korea's nuclear proliferation. However, there have been no studies that precisely portray how nuclear weapons can influence China's policy-making towards its allies. By using extended deterrence perspective, this paper explains the variables that influence China's rejection of North Korea's nuclear proliferation. The main argument in this study is that China refuses North Korea's nuclear proliferation as a result of the disadvantage if North Korea continues its nuclear proliferation and the impact towards the regional stability that is unfavorable to China.

The Interrogator

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-168
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Japanese American Internment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War

This chapter begins the story in the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, and follows how the Japanese American subject moved from being an “enemy alien” under surveillance to laboring as an interrogator of Koreans during the Korean War. It reconstructs the types of interrogation rooms these Japanese American interrogators invented, what they resisted, and what they reinterpreted. In contrast with the interrogation rooms of the past that were cloaked in darkness, secrecy, and violence, the US military interrogation room was now supposedly an idealized site of regulated and willing exchange between the interrogator and the interrogated prisoner.

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