Mikyoung Kim - Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical Fragmentation-Springer International Publishing - Palgrave Macmillan (2019)

KOREAN
MEMORIES AND
PSYCHO-HISTORICAL
F R A G M E N TAT I O N
EDITED BY
MIKYOUNG KIM
Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical
Fragmentation
Mikyoung Kim
Editor
Korean Memories and

Psycho-Historical
Fragmentation
Editor
Mikyoung Kim
Busan, South Korea
ISBN 978-3-030-05905-7 ISBN 978-3-030-05906-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05906-4
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In Loving Memory of My Father,
Bhong-jin Kim
(김봉진 [金奉鎭], April 4, 1926–August 28, 2018)
Painter, Teacher, and Writer

Spring (2006)
Summer (2010)
Fall (1992)
Winter (1986)
Acknowledgements
The Academy of Korean Studies publication grant (AKS-2017-P05) was a

big help to move forward with this volume’s production.
This book could not have been completed without the help of the very
professional and compassionate editors at Palgrave Macmillan. They are
Lucy Batrouney, Mala Sanghera-Warren, Martina O’Sullivan, and Heloise
Harding. They were most patient and supportive of me during the darkest
moments of my professional career.
The contributors of this volume deserve deep appreciation for their
faith in what I wanted to accomplish from this volume. They also patiently
waited for the resumption of my academic activities after their abrupt dis-
continuation and ensuing court battles to recover my previous tenured
faculty position at Hiroshima City University in Japan. They remained
sympathetic and kind during the downtimes which lasted for more than
two years.
My daughter’s dog, Yuki, kept me happy and healthy with our daily
walks in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 2018. And my adopted puppy in Busan,
Korea, Sam, continues to keep me active and busy with his boundless curi-
osity and energy.
ix
Contents
1 Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical Fragmentation:

Fast-Forward, Retrospective 1
Mikyoung Kim
Part I Japanese Colonial Legacies 21
2 From War to War: Ch’anggyŏng Garden and Postcolonial

Militarism in Early (South) Korea 23
Todd A. Henry
3 Women’s Redress Movement for Japanese Military Sexual

Slavery: Decolonizing History, Reconstituting Subjects 51
Na-Young Lee
Part II The Cold War Residuals and the Korean War 73
4 Legacies of the Korean War: Transforming Ancestral

Rituals in South Korea 75
Heonik Kwon
xi
xii Contents
5 Experience of the Korean War and the Means of

Subsistence of War Widows 95
Im-ha Lee
6 Memories of the Korean War among Rural Communities:

The Village Called the “Moscow of Icheon”129
Yong-ki Lee
7 Forgetting Korean Agency in the Transnational Cold War157

Robert Oppenheim
8 Korea’s Vietnam War and the Fall of Saigon:

Reconstructing the War Memories of Detained Diplomats181
Won Kim
Part III Democratization, the People, and Political Leaders 207
9 “Politics of Desire”: Ruling Discourse and Mass

Mobilization of the Park Chung Hee Regime209
Byoung-joo Hwang
10 The Subjectivity of Civil Militia in May 18 Gwangju

Uprising237
Jung Han Kim
11 Memories of Labor, Identities of the Time: Workers and

Intellectuals in Korea’s Labor Movement of the 1980s257
Keong-il Kim
12 Truth, History Revision, and South Korea’s Mnemonic

Representation of the Past281
Ñusta Carranza Ko
Index305
Notes on Contributors
Ñusta Carranza Ko is an Assistant Professor of Global Affairs and

Human Security at the School of Public and International Affairs at the
University of Baltimore. Her research interests include cross-regional
research on human rights and transitional justice processes in East Asia
and Latin America, including policies of memorialization in South Korea,
measures of state compliance with reparations and truth-seeking processes
in South Korea and Peru, and questions of indigenous peoples’ rights and
identities in truth-seeking policies in Peru.
Todd A. Henry is associate professor of modern Korean/East Asian his-
tory at the University of California, San Diego, where he also serves as
Director of the Program in Transnational Korean Studies. He is the author
of Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in
Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (University of California Press, 2014). Dr.
Henry is currently working on a transnational study of authoritarian devel-
opment in South Korea that examines the ideological function and subcul-
tural dynamics of queerness, especially as they relate to tabloid journalism
and medical science, Hot War modes of kinship and citizenship, and global
discourses and practices of the “sexual revolution.”
Byoung-joo Hwang is researcher at the National Institute of Korean
History in South Korea. He has published refereed articles and book
chapters on discourse, ideology, and politics of the Park Chunghee regime.
His books include Mass Dictatorship (Chaeksesang, 2004) and The rural
Saemaul Undong in the Park Chunghee Regime: Modernization, Tradition
xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
and Subject (Hanul Academy, 2014). Hwang served as the editor of

Critical Studies on Modern Korean History, 2011–12.
Jung Han Kim is a Research Professor at Sogang University. He is the
author of many refereed articles and book chapters. He is currently analyz-
ing the US government archival materials on the May 18 Gwangju
Uprising.
Keong-il Kim is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Korean
Studies, the Academy of Korean Studies. His areas of expertise include
historical sociology, labor history, feminist history, Korean modernity, and
East Asian solidarity. He is the author of numerous articles and several
books, including Modern Korea and its Modernity (2003), Women’s
Modernity, Modernity’s Women (2004), Modern Korean Labor History and
Labor Movement (2004), Pioneers of Korean Studies (edited in English,
2004), Lee Je Yu and His Time: Revolutionary Labor Movement in Seoul
during the 1930s (in Japanese, 2006), The Labor Movement against
Japanese Imperialism (2008), The Age of Imperialism and East Asian
Solidarity (2011), Modern Family, Modern Marriage (2012), and Labor
(2014).
Mikyoung Kim is an independent scholar. She is currently litigating to
recover her previous tenured faculty position at Hiroshima City University
of Japan. She has published many refereed journal articles and book chap-
ters on memory, reconciliation, and human rights in East Asia. Her books
include Northeast Asia’s Difficult Past: Essays in Collective Memory
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; with Barry Schwartz), Securitization of
Human Rights: North Korean Refugees in East Asia (Praeger, 2012),
Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia
(Routledge, 2015; winner of the 2016 Best Book Award by ROK Ministry
of Education), and Challenges of Modernization and Governance in South
Korea: The Sinking of the Sewol and Its Causes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017,
with J. J. Suh). Kim served as the editor of North Korean Review
(McFarland, 2011–12), Memory Studies Journal (Sage, 2013, Vol. 6, No.
3), and Review of Korean Studies (17.2). She was elected President of the
Association of Korean Political Studies (www.akps.org) for a two-year
term (September 2016–September 2018) and Chair of the IPSA
(International Political Science Association) Human Rights Research
Committee (July 2016–July 2018). She was a two-term member of ROK
Presidential Council on Peaceful Unification (2013–15) and Vice President
of ROK Fulbright Alumni Association (2012–15).
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
Won Kim is an associate professor at the Social Sciences Division of the

Academy of Korean Studies. He is the author of several highly renowned
books such as Yeogong 1970 (Factory Girls of the 1970s, Imagine, 2005)
and 1970, Park Chung Hee Modernism: Yushin’aesuh Sunday Seoul’kaji
(Park Chung Hee’s Modernism: From Yushin Emergency Decree to the
Sunday Seoul, Chunnyon’eui Sangsang, 2010). He has also published
many articles and book chapters.
Heonik Kwon is Distinguished Professor of Cultural Anthropology and
Senior Research Fellow in Social Science at Trinity College of University
of Cambridge. He is the author of The Other Cold War (Columbia
University Press, 2010) and Ghosts of War in Vietnam (Cambridge
University Press, 2013).
Im-ha Lee is a research professor at the Institute for East Asian Studies,
Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from the
Department of Korean History Studies at SungKyunKwan University in
2003, she worked at SungKyunKwan University and Hansung University.
She has developed wide-ranging research interests such as gendered
nationalism, sexuality, the Korean War, the Cold War, and national wom-
en’s movements. She has published many books and articles in Korean and
German on the topics of women’s oral history, women’s history, psycho-
logical warfare, and public health. Her publications include Liberation
Space: A History of Women who Changed their Daily Life (2015); Bury the
Enemy in Leaflets—The U.S. Army’s Psychological Warfare in the Korean
War (2012); The War Widows Break Silence of the Korean War (2010);
How Girls Became Women (2004); The Women Rise Above War (2004);
The U.S. Army’s Psychological Warfare in East Asia before and after the
Cold War (2017); The Chronic Communicable Disease Control of the
United Nations Civil Assistance Command, Korea (UNCACK) (2014);
The Public Health and Sanitation of the United Nations Civil Assistance
Command, Korea (UNCACK) with the Focus on Communicable Diseases
(2013).
Na-Young Lee is professor in the Department of Sociology at Chung-Ang
University, Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from the Department of
Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland in 2006, she worked at
George Mason University. She has developed a wide range of research inter-
ests such as politics of representation, political economy of globalization,
postcolonialism, gendered nationalism, sexuality, and trans/national wom-
en’s movements. She has published many books and articles in Korean,
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
English, and Japanese, covering the topics of Japanese military “comfort

women,” US military bases, prostitution, gendered space, women’s oral
history, and migration. Her international publications include “Un/forget-
table Histories of US Camptown Prostitution in South Korea: Women’s
Experiences of Sexual Labor and Government Policies” (2017); “Korean
Men’s Pornography Use, Their Interest in Extreme Pornography, and
Dyadic Sexual Relationships” (2015); “The Korean Women’s Movement of
Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’: Navigating between Nationalism and
Feminism” (2014); “Negotiating the Boundaries of Nation, Christianity,
and Gender: The Korean Women’s Movement against Military Prostitution”
(2011); and “The Construction of Military Prostitution in South Korea
during the U.S. Military Rule, 1945–1948” (2007).
Yong-ki Lee is Associate Professor of History at Korea National
University of Education. His main areas of expertise are the local and oral
history of Korea. He is the author of several refereed articles and book
chapters.
Robert Oppenheim is Associate Professor of Asian studies and an affili-
ate of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at
Austin, where he largely teaches courses related to Korean society and
modern history. He is the author of An Asian Frontier: American
Anthropology and Korea, 1882–1945 (University of Nebraska Press,
2016) and several related articles on historical aspects of US anthropologi-
cal research in the peninsula as well as Kyŏngju Things: Assembling Place
(University of Michigan Press, 2008). With Heather Hindman, he has
also published and undertaken research on contemporary South Korean
transnationality and the intersection of media and labor migration gover-
nance in Korea’s contemporary relationship with Nepal.
List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 M105 A1 leaflet bomb (United States Army 1955: 24a, in AGBC
Box 6, Folder 5). Courtesy of the NDSU Archives 160
Fig. 7.2 EUSAK leaflet 8141 (AGBC, Box 1, Folder 47). Courtesy of the
NDSU Archives 161
NDSU Archives 162
xvii
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Personal details of the war widows (with aliases) who
participated in this research 98
Table 5.2 Status of migration (refugee) of the interviewees 100
Table 5.3 Status of occupations of widows (Unit: Person) 117
Table 5.4 Details of economic activities of the interviewees 119
Table 5.5 Pension payment by year/month 123
Table 6.1 Interviewee personal profiles (Pseudonyms, as of 2000) 132
Table 8.1 The list of detained diplomats 184
Table 8.2 Records of interviewees 204
Table 11.1 Categorization of narrative types 261
xix
CHAPTER 1
Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical

Fragmentation: Fast-Forward, Retrospective
Mikyoung Kim
Memory, History, and Korea

Memory is a living thing. Unlike stone-inscribed historiography, memory
keeps on adjusting itself to changing sociopolitical milieu. The mnemonic
iterations of deletion (i.e., forgetting), storage (i.e., remembering), and
retrieval explain the vicissitudes of historical memory. The iteration is
often a function of presentist and traditionalist perspectives which selec-
tively energize remembering, forgetting, and retrieval. Traditional societ-
ies tend to have longer memory spans compared to progressive societies,
and exhibit differences in historical outlook. Whilst traditional societies
have more tenacious remembrance of past events, progressive societies
tend to focus more on what lies ahead than (re)visiting the bygone era.
They thus have different temporal preoccupations, which South Korea’s
contentious memory politics powerfully demonstrate.
The title of this essay is adopted from Professor Nan Kim’s suggestion, Korean
Memories and the Fragmented Modern: Fast Forward, Retrospective. Professor
Ross King of the University of Melbourne reviewed this essay and provided
invaluable feedback. I am deeply grateful to them.
M. Kim (*)
Busan, South Korea
© The Author(s) 2019 1

M. Kim (ed.), Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical
Fragmentation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05906-4_1
2 M. KIM
In 1882 the French scholar Ernest Renan presented a lecture on the

subject “What is a nation?” For Renan the answer lies not in race, religion,
or the like, but in shared memory and compelled forgetting: “[T]he
essence of a nation is that all the individuals have many things in common
and also that all [must already] have forgotten a great many things. All
French citizens are obliged to have forgotten the Saint Bartholomew
[massacre], the massacres of the Midi of the thirteenth century” (Renan
1947–61: 892). It is the sense of obligated forgetting and remembering
(imagining) that is salient in Renan’s argument.1
Furthermore, Maurice Halbwachs (1992) has argued that memory is a
social production: social institutions and contexts make possible certain
memories, encouraging certain recollections while discouraging others.
Pierre Nora has attempted to distinguish between memory and history:
“Memory fastens upon sites, whereas history fastens upon events” (Nora
1986: 181). It is an aphorism that is provocative yet also obfuscating, for
memories constitute history’s data while it is officially endorsed history
that will be mobilized to constantly refashion obligated memory—conse-
quently the state-condoned constructions of history and the nation are
reinforced.
The key lesson to be taken from these considerations is that memory
is multiple and fragmentary. Note Pierre Nora’s comment, citing
Maurice Halbwachs: “there are as many memories as there are groups,
that memory is by nature multiple yet specific; collective and plural yet
individual. By contrast, history belongs to everyone and to no one and
therefore has a universal vocation” (Nora 1986: 3). However, because
history must build on multiple, ephemeral memory, it is forever con-
tested, revised, denied.
In the case of Korea, the state’s control of memory and forgetting must
be judged a dismal failure. Both colonial administrators and domestic dic-
tatorships have failed to suppress thought, memories run wild, and histo-
ries consequently proliferate, differ, and conflict. Korean historiography is
a rich, bitter, and exhilaratingly contested field. It is also of wonderful
longevity—so Lee Ki-baik’s A New History of Korea (1984 [1961]) could
reflect on the richness of Korean historiography in the eighteenth century.
In the debates and contests of present Korean historiography, there are
various rather obvious themes: ideas of Japan’s “modernizing” of a back-
ward Korea against Korean indigenous modernization, Korean writing of
history against that of Japanese scholars, the special tragedy of the “com-
fort women,” compelled into prostitution for the Japanese Imperial Army,
1 KOREAN MEMORIES AND PSYCHO-HISTORICAL FRAGMENTATION… 3
the problem of accounting for the Park Chung Hee dictatorship (1962–79)
where brutal suppression makes a stark contrast to the genius of national
reinvention, and subsequent social repression versus the cultural renais-
sance paradigm in the post-1987 democratization era. These themes of
Korean historiography and the bitterness—brilliance—of its contestation
are dealt with elsewhere (Shin Gi-Wook and Robinson 1999; Cumings
2005; Soh 2009; Lee Jin-kyung 2010; Uchida 2011; Akita and Palmer
2015; King 2018).
It is in this context of constantly fragmenting memories and unsettled
historiography that the present volume has been assembled and is to be
read. Its goal is to throw light on a diversity of difficult memories and
savagely contested history of a nation that, in the twentieth century, was
dragged through processes of colonial subjection, painful division, fratri-
cidal civil war, subsequent domestic turmoil, but also brilliant reinvention
and economic, social, and cultural resurgence.
Korean Memories
This collection of essays on Korean memories sheds light on memory
studies in the context of Korea’s idiosyncratic historical trajectory and the
contestations of its historiography. Korea has been under the intense pres-
sure of rapid social change during the past century. Existing studies of
Korean memories reveal dynamic interactions between the mind map and
its terrains. Koreans have a longer memory span compared to the USA or
most other modern nations, where the foundational myth of Dangun
(around 2333 BCE) and the ancient Kingdom of Kokuryo (107 BCE–
668 CE) are cited as sources of historical pride (Schwartz and Kim 2002;
Hundt and He 2015). The 2002 study of Schwartz and Kim supports the
validity of traditionalist perspectives in the case of Korea where shame and
honor form a dominant paradigm as opposed to guilt and pride.
In Kim 2013a, I have advanced the argument made by Schwartz and
Kim (2002) by showing the dynamic tension between tradition and prog-
ress which permeates both memories and historiography in Korea. This
goes beyond the usual cultural framework of “han-ful” sentiment2 by
accentuating the responsive action schemata of “resistance.” As Koreans
often identify themselves as the people of han (恨), the sentiment reflects
the complexity of the Korean ethos because it not only aggregates the
sentiments of anger against injustice, helplessness in the face of inequality,
and bitterness over exploitation, but it also incorporates self-blame. As the
4 M. KIM
concept was used in Japanese academic circles during the colonial era, it
has overt political implications. At that time, han was used to portray
Koreans as sentimental, passive, fateful, and inward-looking. It became a
tool to explain away the harsh reality of a subjugated people: colonized
Korea resulted from its own weakness, and Koreans had nobody but
themselves to blame. Han facilitated a powerful framework for justifying
the colonial reality. Han was the authoritative concept in explaining
Koreans’ mindset until resistance was factored in as an empirical phenom-
enon to explain Korea’s historical progression (see Kim 2013b). This vol-
ume is yet another extension of existing observations by introducing the
theoretical concept of “psycho-historical fragmentation” which manifests
ruptured memories of strong presentist qualities.
“Psycho-Historical Fragmentation”
In mapping out Korean memories, I am introducing the concept of
“psycho- historical fragmentation,” a theoretical framework, to explain
Korea’s mnemonic rupture as a result of living under fast-paced, strong
pressure. Celebrations of South Korea’s economic and political achieve-
ments notwithstanding, those successes are often characterized as com-
pressed modernization (see Chang 1999, 2010; Ryu 2004). As Korean
society has been undergoing transformation at unusual speed and inten-
sity, so has its historical memory in all its fragmentation and multiplicity.
I build on Robert Lifton’s theorem of “psycho-historical dislocation”
where Lifton describes Hiroshima atomic bomb victims’ traumatic memo-
ries. Lifton’s psychological dislocation is caused by victims’ inability to
make sense of the meaningless deaths as a consequence of the unprece-
dented violence provoked by their own government.3 When the victims
cannot give a meaning to the suffering, the mind splits from historical
experiences. His insight is a heartrending critique of the myth of historical
progress which scientific knowledge and technological advancement claim
to serve for humanity (Lifton 1991). The trauma of the Hiroshima atomic
bombing alerts us to the possibility of self-annihilation brought on by our
very own cleverness. Lifton’s critique is ultimately about human irony and
historical contradiction. Irony and contradiction are the common ground
between Lifton’s “psycho-historical dislocation” of Japan and my idea of
the “psycho-historical fragmentation” of Korea. The diversion from Lifton
lies in the way in which trauma is expressed. Should a schizophrenic split
between the self and historical experience be the case for Japan, mnemonic
cracks under insurmountable fissure define the Korean experience.
Korea’s “psycho-historical fragmentation” is the consequence of com-
pressed modernization that traditional society has undergone since its
encounter with the colonial powers in the nineteenth century. Modernity
was often a source of awe and fear for the Chosŏn Dynasty. The admirable
fronts of Eurocentric modernity were presented in the form of enlighten-
ment, Judeo-Christian religion, and scientific rigor. Yet it was often deliv-
ered in the manners of violence, self-righteousness, and condescension.
Korea’s position vis-à-vis external others has been dictated by a sense of
inferiority, the strong will to overcome it, and the prerequisite of self-
preservation (see Renan [1887] 1947, I: 903).4
Fast-Forward: Compressed Modernization

“Compressed modernization” defines Korea’s historical trajectory where
the drive for survival and success dictate its behavioral and cognitive pat-
tern. Ever since Japan’s colonial exploitation put the hermit kingdom on
the fast-forward track of modernization, Korea has been undergoing an
accelerated social transformation. With railroad and electrical poles pop-
ping up, feudalistic social hierarchy was replaced by aspirations for upward
social mobility. Compulsory education, the infusion of western customs,
and the emergence of “modern girls” changed the outlook of life chances.
Emerging from the post-liberation era’s political chaos, the Park Chung
Hee regime further expedited Korea’s modernization process. The con-
secutive five-year plans fueled economic growth, changing the semi-feudal
agrarian society into an industrial one in less than three decades. Upon the
demise of the dictatorial Park Chung Hee and his authoritarian successors,
the society went through nationwide democratization in the late 1980s.
Korea has moved on from a hereditary monarchy to an authoritarian sys-
tem, and later to a liberal democracy, while containing the remnants of
bygone eras under the modern governing system.
The recent neoliberal transformation has been compressed as well, first
by Korea’s structural adjustments during the 1997–98 financial crisis man-
dated by the International Monetary Fund, and second by the narrowing
space between the graying advanced economies of the West and the
emerging markets of Asia. New problems created by such complicated
transformations, and the tensions between emergent and old problems,
6 M. KIM
have been numerous and yet compressed under the pressure of global and
domestic competition.
Schwartz and Kim (2002) argue that a strong sense of victimhood is
one of the most powerful elements explaining Koreans’ sense of shame
and honor. The shame-provoking past events such as Japanese occupation
(1910–45), the Korean War (1950–53), the wrongdoings of politicians
and distillation of historical experiences involving the “Big Powers” are
argued to have undermined Korean interests and dignity.
On the other hand, Koreans are proud of the 1988 Olympic Games,
the 2002 World Cup competition,5 the invention of the Hangul alphabet,
the indigenous resistance movement during Japanese colonization, the
winning of different international sporting competitions, the Gold
Collection Drive during the IMF crisis, and impressive economic growth.
These findings are based on a 432-question survey conducted at Kyungnam
University in 2000. The common theme that pieces these responses
together is Koreans’ other-directedness where they seek external approval
for self-esteem.
As Korea’s initial push for modernization was externally imposed, its
sense of shame and honor has been governed substantially by its own per-
ception of others. Korea’s unchanging geopolitical reality as the underdog
of East Asia’s hegemonic rivalry adds more to this cognition.
The fierce push for modernization after the 1945 liberation was to
redeem its severely compromised dignity. Individuals, on the other hand,
were motivated to work as hard as they could to benefit from the new
opportunities in the new era. Unbridled competition within and without
at the societal and individual levels thus began. Korea’s trajectory to mod-
ernization, therefore, has been qualitatively intense, quantitatively phe-
nomenal, temporally fast, relationally competitive, and ideologically divisive.
Retrospect: Deficit of Self-Reflection

Koreans’ competition for material accumulation left out important onto-
logical questions. With the negative colonial legacies instilling defeatist
self-blame among the people, Koreans had to try harder to convince
themselves and others of their excellence. The victims, not the perpetra-
tors, bore the burden of proof. The aggressive modality to win in the capi-
talist modus operandi further deprived them of self-reflective engagements
with the question of “What for?” They pushed onward without asking
“Why do I want to be rich?,” “What makes me happy?,” and “What kind

of life do I want to live?” Something important was lost in translation.
Korea’s rapid accumulation of wealth, often described as the “Miracle
of the Han River” and “From Rags to Riches,” was arguably not trans-
lated into higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness. Recent statistics
depict a gloomy picture showing the deepening chasm between wealth
and happiness. A 2011 survey, for instance, points to Korea’s lowest level
of life satisfaction out of 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) member countries. The world’s 11th largest econ-
omy was ranked at 26th in quality of living. A 2013 survey accordingly
reveals a shocking result that one out of seven elementary school children
indicated agreement to the statement, “I have thought about committing
suicide many times for the past year.” For the same statement, a startling
40 percent of middle school students indicated agreement. Yet in another
2013 survey, 12 percent of elementary school, 28 percent of middle
school, and 44 percent of high school students indicated agreement to the
statement, “I am willing to serve a 1-year prison term if it pays off 1 mil-
lion dollars” (Kim 2014). Something is very wrong with this picture.6
Fragmented Memories
Memory is a malleable enterprise (see Renan 1947–61; Schwartz 1996;
Olick 2007). Perceptive fissures unleash a contest between incumbent and
challenging agencies of commemoration where the outcome is yet to be
seen because the processes of the contest reshape, undermine, or trans-
form the established status quo (see Kim 2013a). Mnemonic fragmenta-
tions, therefore, merely open up an arena where banality is challenged by
a fragmented present out of which the future is born. Ruptured memory
is often expressed in trauma, defying a linear and procedural evolution of
historical progress.
Given the fast-forward modality of Korea’s societal change, I have tried
to trace the tenacity and precariousness of Korean memory by conducting
another questionnaire survey in May 2013, seeking the traces of much
more fragmented cognitive functions. The students of Ewha Women’s
University,7 Pusan National University,8 and Dong-A University9 partici-
pated in the survey with a total sample of 582. The results portray a much
more complicated picture than those of the 2000 survey. The list of
shame-provoking events included Korean soldiers’ massacre of civilians
during the Vietnam War (1955–75), the Kwangju Massacre, Koreans’
8 M. KIM
iscrimination against ethnic minorities, violation of North Korean refu-

d
gees’ human rights, high suicide rates, and rising inequality.10 As for proud
historical pasts, the new entries included Korea’s IT technology, the
democracy movement, and memory of the vast ancient territory, including
the Manchu region.
Unlike before, Koreans began to see themselves as the victimizers as
well as the victims. The other-directedness is still evident. Yet the category
of external others has expanded to include ethnic minorities, refugees, and
foreign victims who were wronged by Koreans themselves. The focus has
shifted to take in the powerless within and without as salient others. The
Korean mind is no longer preoccupied with powerful others. Furthermore,
the respondents became conscious of social woes stemming from the phe-
nomenal economic growth which was not accompanied by equitable dis-
tribution of wealth. The concentration of wealth into a handful of
conglomerates and the collusion between political power and economic
players is cited as a shame-provoking aspect of Korean history. The eco-
nomic miracle which used to be a source of pride now has become a source
of shame for causing cut-throat competition and anxiety-driven disparity.
These findings alert us of the need to revise the argument on Koreans’
sense of victimhood and the dialectics of resistance (Kim 2013a). Not
many cases other than Korea show mnemonic fragmentation caused by
the intense pressures of compressed contradictions where the experiences
of victimhood were central to historical consciousness and self-identity.
Despite the claim that the cultural sentiment of han instilled passivity and
submissiveness in the weak, the Korean experiences suggest that some-
thing else was at work in the Korean mind: resistance. Han and resistance
complement each other; where the former describes the mind map, the
latter is an action schema. This was not to negate the universal attributes
of memory, nor to exaggerate the peculiarities of Korean memories. As
Daniel Bell observes in his Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1996),
every culture is organized around an axial principle. Yet the latest survey
results no longer support the dialectical axis of han-resistance as the core
element of Korean memory.
Statistical analyses from Kim’s 2013 survey11 show other evidence of
memory fragmentation where traditional and presentist perspectives coex-
ist without coherence. The high correlation coefficient of 0.80 between
personal and collective senses of honor supports a general tendency of
traditional society where the individual self and the group identify with
each other.12 However, there is no correlation among the responses to the
questionnaire items of “I think Korean history has more to be proud of

than ashamed of,” “I think I have made personal contributions to Korea’s
proud events,” and “I feel personally responsible for Korea’s proud past.”13
The result is interesting because there is no relationship between historical
pride, personal contributions, and personal responsibility. These seem-
ingly interrelated feelings turn out to be random and scattered as if each
belonged to separate cognitive domains. This is a salient contrast to the
large overlap between personal and group senses of honor.
Another interesting result is to do with the association between per-
sonal responsibility for shameful events, personal contributions to shame-
provoking events, and feeling ashamed of Korea’s past.14 The result shows
that those who are weak on historical pride and personal contribution are
more likely to feel ashamed of Korean history. One caveat is that this result
is not definitive because the lack of responsibility and contribution explains
only 7 percent of sense of shame.15
These findings show increasing fragmentation of memories diverging
from the survey results of 2000. A multifaceted and multilayered sense of
shame, pride, and identity seems to be the norm setting the tone for con-
fusing negotiations between a present preoccupation and residual
traditionalism.
In the aftermath of high-pressured modernization and lack of a self-
reflective retrospection, Korean memories crystallize around amorphous
and unarticulated anxieties into a desperate desire for a different present.
And yet their sense of pride, a crucial component of collective identity,
largely denies the negative consequences of compressed modernization.
The institutions, laws, practices, and relationships that had sustained soci-
ety since its modern beginnings in the nineteenth century became the
objects of a critical gaze. Korean memories indeed open up a venue for
careful and unconventional investigations.
Volume Organization and Its Topics

This volume is organized around landmark events in chronological order
while paying attention to the voices of the powerless. If official history is
written from the standpoint of the powerful, memory empowers the for-
merly silenced. A group of contributors with diverse disciplinary back-
grounds were recruited to serve the goal.16 We take pride in offering this
first comprehensive volume on Korean memories in the English-
language world.
10 M. KIM
This work aims to show multilayered, subtle, and less well-known sto-
ries of Korea’s historical past. The essays show fragmented Korean memo-
ries under unprecedented pressure from compressed modernization where
silencing adds another dimension to the fragmentation. Our book
addresses three main themes in contemporary Korea and is accordingly
divided into three sections: Japanese Colonial Legacies; Cold War
Residuals and the Korean War; and Democratization, the People, and
Political Leaders.
Japanese Colonial Legacies

The first section on colonial legacies deals with two themes in memory
studies: commemorative media17 and commemorative agency. Todd
A. Henry’s chapter investigates the fate of Ch’anggyŏng Garden, a Chosŏn
Dynasty palace which was transformed into an amusement park under
Japanese rule and then into an industrial expositions site by the Rhee
Syngman regime. Henry methodically traces how the palace was engi-
neered to endorse the ruling ideology of the power elites, especially show-
ing the violent process of (South) Korea’s decolonization in the decade
after 1945. He argues that the garden’s colonial afterlives were the results
of contentious interactions between the state-building projects of bour-
geois elites and the everyday practices of subaltern subjects. Syngman
Rhee sought to identify the garden as a Japanese vestige, but faced popular
opposition from citizens who favored its reuse as a recreational ground. As
a result of these contentious interactions, postcolonial leaders learned to
creatively exploit this powerful site. To highlight these contestations,
Henry analyzes spectacles aimed at channeling the spiritual and material
energies of the masses in directions that would promote nationalist proj-
ects such as anti-communism.
In Chap. 3, Na-Young Lee shifts our attention to commemorative
agency18 in analyzing the discourse and activism of Japanese military
“Comfort Women.” Based on a 15-year ethnographic field research as an
insider and outsider of the movement, she engages in passionate explora-
tion of major debates and activism with a particular focus on the Korean
Council. Responding to the Japanese government’s continuous denial of
historical wrongdoings and refusal to accept legal reparations for the vic-
tims, the Korean feminist movement has been strong supporters of wom-
en’s transnational solidarity and reconstruction of norms on sexual violence
during armed conflicts. Lee cites the “Butterfly Fund” as a most noteworthy
example of transnational coalition. It was started by Korean victim-

survivors in their support of the victims of wartime sexual violence world-
wide. In the process of the women’s movement, both domestic and
international, the silenced subalterns have changed their identities from
invisible ghosts to vocal activists who could finally speak about their expe-
riences, trying to go beyond postcolonial conditions.
The Cold War Residuals and the Korean War

The second section on the Cold War residuals and the Korean War has five
chapters. While the rest of the international community has put the ideo-
logical rivalry between Communism and capitalism behind its path, the
Korean Peninsula remains the last Cold War frontier.19 The lingering Cold
War structure adds to the precariousness of Korean memories. The
Communist North and the capitalist South are at war with the 1953 armi-
stice still in effect. The Korean peninsula was divided amid the hegemonic
rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States in the East Asian
region leading to the establishment of separate governments in 1948 and
very violent fratricidal war in 1950. The Korean War ended only after the
involvement of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, and the
intervention of the United Nations in 1953. While an unsettled peace
continues, the United States and China loom large in their hegemonic
competition in the region.
Heonik Kwonwo Chap. 4 shows how the radical bipolarization between
the left and the right during the Cold War was manifested in places such
as postcolonial Korea in times of civil strife and war. Achieving national
unity often became equivalent to excising one or the other side from the
body politic. The political history of right and left is thus not to be con-
sidered separately from the history of human lives and social institutions
torn apart by it. Kwonso essay takes us to Jeju Island where one-third of
the island’s population was victimized during the post-liberation and
Korean War anarchic chaos. Focusing on a village in Jeju and a few other
communities in South Korea, he explores how the people of these com-
munities today strive to reconcile with their turbulent past and come to
terms with the complications in interpersonal and communal relations
caused by the war. His work illuminates an intergenerational dynamics
involving intense human emotions in achieving communal reconciliation
being apart from institutional restitution and financial reparations.
12 M. KIM
Im-ha Lee opens up yet another fascinating venue to show how the
Korean War was experienced and felt by the subalterns. Her essay in Chap.
5 sheds a light on a previously undocumented aspect of the Korean War
through interviews on the war and life experiences of war widows. Lee
spoke with one war widow who was in her twenties and pregnant at the
outbreak of the war, and who gave birth during the war. Rather than feel-
ing afraid of or fighting against the enemy, the women of her interviews
recollect the war largely in terms of pregnancy and child delivery, or what
their body remembered associated with gendered hardships. Many of
these women were controlled and watched over by their in-laws following
the death of their husband, and as their pain multiplied, they tried to break
away from their husbands’ families. For the sake of their children’s educa-
tion, some widows tried to establish their own independent households
away from the strict patriarchy of their in-laws, and consequently worked
as laborers, street peddlers, farm workers, and housemaids, among others.
In postwar Korean society, the discourse on war widows, who were often
viewed as “dangerous” women, shows that their moving out from their
in-laws’ home ultimately served as a catalyst for shaking up the dominant
patriarchal norms of Korean society.
In Chap. 6, Yong-ki Lee starts his essay by asking a set of provocative
questions: “What does the Korean War mean for the Korean people?”
“Was it a result of the people’s revolutionary struggle or was it a simple
happenstance?” Whilst both accounts may have their own truth, the for-
mer projects the people as “revolutionary agents,” while the latter proj-
ects the people as mere “victims.” To overcome this problematic
dichotomy, he adopts the perspective of “history from below” and exam-
ines the experiences of villagers in Odu-ri, the “Moscow village” (Red
village) in the Icheon-gun area of Gyeong’gi province. The experiences of
Odu-ri call for an eclectic analytical framework as his oral interviews show
the villagers were both the revolutionary agent and passive bystanders of
the war. The villagers at the same time aspired for cooperation and coex-
istence based upon traditional communal relations. The villagers were
sometimes recruited into, or even voluntarily participated in, the ideo-
logical strife. The Odu-ri as “Moscow village” was constructed and rein-
forced by both the left- and right-wing factions during and after the war.
The villagers of Odu-ri have “subjective” memories of the past, which
contain not only the facts, but also distorted interpretations influenced by
anti-communist ideology. Their memories project inspirations from the
past and the frustrations of the present. Even in its twisted and suppressed
form, their recollection embeds “voices of the people” as counter-hege-

monic narrative.
Robert Oppenheim brings the forgotten people of the Korean War
back into the picture in Chap. 7. His essay shows how the transnational
Cold War involved a host of knowledge projects linking the United States,
Japan, South Korea, and sometimes other locations in a variety of complex
ways. Oppenheim argues that the participation of Korean actors in these
projects evinced a tendency to be structurally forgotten, and the causes of
this occlusion were themselves multi-agentive. Chapter 6 documents and
explores dimensions of this “conspiracy of amnesia” of the Korean War. As
a specific example illustrating this phenomenon, the chapter focuses on
one of the more famous social science projects of the Korean War. In
December 1950, during a dynamic phase of the conflict between the first
and second North Korean occupations of Seoul and other areas in the
south, a team of social scientists under contract to the US Air Force’s
Human Resources Research Institute was dispatched to Korea in order to
study modalities of the (ostensible) “Sovietization” that had taken place in
parts of South Korea temporarily under DPRK control. They were met by
Korean helpers, “research assistants” where the term belies the status of
these members of the team who in private correspondence were also
described as “the cream of [South] Korean social scientists.” A close read-
ing of internal documents from this project reveals that this Korean par-
ticipation contributed not only data and translation but aspects of the
conceptual framing of the results in ways not fully acknowledged, an eli-
sion that had both contingent and strategic aspects.
Won Kim’s essay takes us to Saigon, Vietnam, in the 1970s after its fall
to the Viet Cong. Chapter 8 reconstructs the memories of detained
Korean diplomats in Saigon during 1975 and 1976. It interprets the expe-
riences of detainees by examining oral history documents. Whilst the
existing studies focus mostly on intergovernmental negotiations for their
repatriation, Kim’s research looks at the lived experiences and memories of
Korean detainees. It reveals the lesser-known texts buried under the domi-
nant discourse on Korea’s Vietnam War participation. The former detain-
ees articulate the detention and exit in terms of trauma, frustration, failure
in life, nightmares, and grievances toward the government. The detainees’
experiences in Saigon are still very vivid in psychosomatic terms to the
present day. Kim argues that the reasons for their “living memory” lie not
only with the power of memory, but also with their internalization of
“Cold War ethics.” The former detainees juxtapose the enemy with death
14 M. KIM
and ally themselves with survival in the perceptual modality of binary

opposition. Kim concludes by arguing that Korea’s Vietnam War cannot
be reduced only to a “holy war of anti-communism” or to a “means to
acquire foreign currencies.” The memories of detention are the reincarna-
tion of the battlefield in Vietnam’s Saigon in 1975.
Korea’s Cold War mentality (or ethics) is powerfully manifested in the
so-called “South vs. South divide.” With the socialist North Korean
regime in power, South Korea is internally split in its stance towards North
Korea and the United States. In the Cold War residuals, support for North
Korea is often translated into anti-Americanism, and vice versa. Progressives
argue that helping the Kim Jong-un regime escape from international iso-
lation is a way to build peace in the region, whereas the conservatives
prioritize domestic welfare and the US–ROK alliance over inter-Korean
reconciliation. They believe that the Pyongyang leadership will never
abandon its nuclear ambitions and desire for unification under the
Communist banner. As long as this Cold War-like division continues,
Korean memory is likely to swing with shifting political priorities. The
dynamics of political contention and ideological division make Koreans’
historical memories ever more fragmented—the theme of the chapters
to follow.
Democratization, the People, and Political Leaders

No incident shows more pertinent interactions between the cultural ethos
of han and action schemata of resistance than Korea’s democracy move-
ment in the 1980s.20 The society underwent yet another intense period of
compressed political development with the assassination of President Park
Chung Hee in 1979 followed by the subsequent military coup-d’état and
nationwide resistance movement for democratization.
In Chap. 9, Byoung-joo Hwang proposes a very interesting theory of
the “politics of desire” in analyzing the relationship between Park Chung
Hee’s reign and the people. The nutshell of his argument is that the ruler
and the ruled had a tacit consensus on the workings of state-building. The
Park era witnessed the formation of a fully fledged modern nation-state. As
a nation-state colludes intimately with the processes of capitalistic expan-
sion and its perpetuation, the Park regime’s modernization project can also
be summarized as the construction of national subjectivity. Whilst occupy-
ing different sociopolitical locations in society, farmers, workers, and uni-
versity students were unitary subjects insofar as they could be mobilized for
the state-led modernization project. Hwang’s chapter argues that the state
exercised both coercion and the politics of consent in the mobilization

process. The developmental state was conjoined with the people’s desire
for a better life. The citizens were not passive followers of the state. Instead
they were enthusiastic participants in the modernization drive. The domi-
nant state discourses on modernization and nationalism reappropriated the
egalitarian pressure from below, making its politics not singularly of repres-
sion, but also of desire. Unlike feudalistic discrimination of the premodern
period, the Park regime pursued modernization of society by interpellating
the disparate people into a unified national subjectivity.
Jung Han Kim takes us to the city of Kwangju where the momentous
civil uprising took place in May 1980. In Chap. 10, Kim reveals the inti-
mate details of the ideational transformation of ordinary citizens. The civil
militia of the May 18 Gwangju Uprising changed its subjectivity dramati-
cally in three different phases. In the first phase, the ultimate goal of the
civil militia was to realize the dominant ideology of liberal democracy and
anti-communism. As the militia was attempting to protect liberal democ-
racy, they resisted martial law. In the second phase, the formation of a
fraternal community as a resistance group is the most significant character-
istic of militia members. They shared friendship and camaraderie in their
community, which went beyond social strata defined by family relations,
class position, and occupational prestige. They acted together, supported
each other, and participated in a common fate, potentially including death.
All these experiences led the community to thrive on utopian idealism.
The last phase is referred to as the “last night” on May 27, 1980 when the
civil militia tried to defend the provincial office building against the Special
Forces dispatched by the interim military government. Through this final
and fatal struggle, they were reborn as new political subjects. Since the
existing symbolic order could not locate them in a proper place, the militia
were assigned to a new symbolic identity within the fraternity community.
The desperate struggle on the last day presented an unimaginable choice
within the existing matrix of dominant ideology. Yet it signaled the birth
of an alternative political subject which affected and mediated the motive
and modality of subsequent social movements in the 1980s.
Keong-il Kim gives a voice to yet another silenced group: women fac-
tory workers during Korea’s democratization movement in Chap. 11. He
argues that the role industrial workers played in the democracy movement
of the 1980s has been viewed as one of limited importance because
scholarship on that movement accentuates the activities of students and
intellectuals. Kim examines workers’ experiences and memories using
newly available oral history and life history materials that help reveal the
16 M. KIM
interior world of workers. By looking into the tension-ridden relationship

between the two partners in the worker–student alliance, Kim’s essay illu-
minates the diverse and complicated ways female workers forged their
identities in the radical labor movement. The chapter categorizes the par-
ticipants of the 1980s minju (democracy) labor movement into three
types: those who developed the vanguard intellectual identity, those who
showed a shop-floor-centric worker identity, and those in-between these
two types (i.e., transitional identity). Kim’s essay reveals fragmented mem-
ories and diverse voices of workers by illuminating what it meant for the
women workers to participate in the labor movement and how they felt
connected to the larger democracy movement.
In the final Chap. 12, Ñusta Carranza Ko asserts that the production of
collective memory and history is embedded in transitional justice pro-
cesses of truth-seeking, reparations, prosecutions, and other legislative
reforms that address a state’s past abuses. Her study builds on the growing
interest in memory initiatives by showing the integral role that memory
practices play in truth-seeking and reparations policies. Given the fact that
South Korea is the only country in East Asia which has institutionalized
the transitional justice mechanism of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC), her work focuses on memory initiatives as part of a
broader set of symbolic reparations integrated in TRC work. Drawing
from observations of a state which is a relative latecomer to transitional
justice processes, her chapter examines South Korea’s TRC’s relationship
with the production of collective memory, focusing on symbolic repara-
tions of history revision via the national history textbook. Using political
discourse analysis, Ko’s essay compares the TRC’s version of historical
truth with the contents of the national history textbook. Her research
finds that human rights language in history revisions discursively contests
the truth commissions’ conclusions. Ko concludes by arguing that collec-
tive memory portrayed in the textbook points to the need to reevaluate
the politics behind the creation of memory even in a state that transitioned
to a democracy, that instituted over ten truth commissions, and held two
former heads of state criminally accountable.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Professor Ross King for directing me to Ernest
Renan’s classic work.
2. Although there is no equivalent term for han in English, words that come
closest to capturing its meaning include “mourning,” “frustration,”
“anger,” and “resentment,” with the last the most common translation.
3. Tokyo’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor was the outcome of the gross mis-
calculation of its own military prowess compounded with the self-glorify-
ing Yamato spirit.
4. Until the encroachment of colonial powers, the peninsula’s primary exter-
nal others were continental China and oceanic Japan. Yoon (1984) counted
the number of raids and incursions against Korea from the seas and by
neighboring peoples and found no less than 1 to 1.5 per year during the
Koryo (918–1392) and Chosŏn (1392–1910) Dynasties, respectively
(quoted in Schwartz and Kim 2002: 213).
5. The hosting of the 2002 World Cup (of soccer) was a future event from the
timing of the opinion survey taken in 2000. The respondents were already
proud of the history-to-be competition.
6. Another illustrative example comes from the 2010 Reuters/Ipsos survey.
For the question of “Money is the best sign of a person’s success,” 69
percent of Korean respondents answered “yes” while 31 percent of them
answered “no.” For the same question, 33 percent of American and
German respondents answered “yes” and 67 percent of them “no.”
7. I am thankful to Professor Young-shik Bong for his help.
8. I am thankful to Professor Dong-whan Ahn for his help.
9. I am thankful to Professor Suk-joon Im for his help.
10. The shame-provoking events include divisions between North and South
as well as South vs. South conflict. Whereas North vs. South division refers
to continuing rivalry between North and South Korea, the South vs. South
division is about internal clashes over ideology, class position, gender cat-
egories, socioeconomic status, and place of origin.
11. This statistical analysis was conducted with the help of Professor Seungmin
John Kook.
12. The high coefficient at 0.80 is meaningful with the t test value of −1.5936,
degrees of freedom at 1103.39 and p-value at 0.1113.
Proud of Korea Proud as Korean citizen
Proud of Korea 1.0000000 0.8057007

Proud as Korean citizen 0.8057007 1.000000
13. Pride>Shame Personal Personal

contributions responsibility
Pride>Shame 1.0000000 0.2141379 0.2377999

Personal 0.2141379 1.0000000 0.3796894
contributions
Personal 0.2377999 0.3796894 1.0000000
responsibility
18 M. KIM
14. The survey questions are: “ I feel personally responsible for Korea’s shame-
ful past,” “I think I personally contributed to Korea’s shameful past,” and
“I think Korean history has more to be ashamed of than be proud of.”
15. Residuals:
Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
−1.8763 −0.5814 −0.1329 0.7135 3.0084
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) 1.40174 0.15439 9.079 <2e-16∗∗∗

Contribution 0.14131 0.04318 3.272 0.00113∗∗
Responsibility 0.15361 0.03715 4.135 4.1e-05 ∗∗∗
Signif. codes: 0 “∗∗∗” 0.001 “∗∗” 0.01 “∗” 0.05 “.” 0.1 “ ” 1
Residual standard error: 0.8684 on 553 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.07447, adjusted R-squared: 0.07112
F-statistic: 22.25 on 2 and 553 DF, p-value: 5.092e-10
16. This volume benefits from research in the disciplines of history, sociology,
anthropology, political science, and women’s studies.
17. Commemoration media are the means of mnemonic representation in
both tangible and intangible fashion. Tangible media include diaries, his-
tory textbooks, monuments, museums, family albums, and documentary
films, among others. Intangible media include symbolic rituals such as reli-
gious services, ancestral worship ceremonies, and shamanistic rites (Kim
2013a; see Assmann 1995).
18. Commemorative agency addresses the “who?” question (Hobsbawm and
Ranger 1983; Spillman 1997). An agency can be individual, group, institu-
tion, and/or nation-state. Individuals often embedded in goal-driven insti-
tutions function with commemorative agency with culturally conditioned
worldviews and ethos (Fine 2002; Schudson 1993). The agency debates
invite a presentist framework, just like retrieval, for its susceptibility to a
contemporary political milieu (Kim 2013a).
19. The inter-Korea summit between South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and his
northern counterpart, Kim Jong-un, in September 2018 might change the
impasse. We need more time to see how the actual logistics of putting an
end to the standoff will unfold.
20. This observation is not to undermine the historical significance of other
similar incidents like the March 1, 1910 independence movement. Unlike
these precedents, the democracy movement of the 1980s brought about
tangible and desired social changes serving as a source of historical pride.

The 2000 questionnaire showed that the respondents had mixed feelings
about Korea’s liberation in 1945 because it was not achieved by its own
volition, but by Japan’s unconditional surrender in the aftermath of its
Asia-Pacific War.
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PART I
Japanese Colonial Legacies

CHAPTER 2
From War to War: Ch’anggyŏng Garden

and Postcolonial Militarism in Early (South)
Korea
Todd A. Henry
Introduction
In his pioneering analysis of third world nationalisms, Franz Fanon illumi-
nated the insidious process by which local elites, once positioned as envi-
ous spectators of governance under foreign rule, replaced their former
colonizers as privileged actors of state and capitalist power. However, as
This article is an abridged and revised version of Henry (2016), reprinted by

permission of the Journal of Korean Studies. I thank the academic communities of
the following institutions for their feedback on early versions of this article: the
Association for Korean Studies in Europe, Hanyang University, Seoul National
University, Ehwa Womans University, Sungkonghoe University, Stanford University,
the University of California, Berkeley, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social
Sciences (France), and the International Conference on Korean Studies (Chile). I
also appreciate critical feedback and scholarly assistance provided by Ellie Choi,
Chris Hanscom, Se-Mi Oh, Janice Kim, Charles Armstrong, Suzy Kim, Kim Suja,
Nan Kim, and Mikyoung Kim. As always, all interpretive errors are mine.
T. A. Henry (*)
University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
e-mail: tahenry@ucsd.edu

24 T. A. HENRY
bourgeois elements intent on promoting their own legitimacy, leaders of

newly liberated nations and their decolonizing projects often only
responded to the “minimum demands of the colonized” (Fanon 1963:
35), rather than facilitating a thorough restructuring of society and cul-
ture. Through authoritarian politics, postcolonial elites resubordinated
underclass citizens, typically deemed untrustworthy but exploitable, to a
position of obedience and discipline. They also advanced capitalist forces
that reproduced the alienating conditions of foreign domination, thereby
stunting popular forms of liberation and revolution.
This chapter offers a similar narrative of early (South) Korea as it
emerged from the thrall of Japanese rule in 1945 and, after national divi-
sion and civil war, became a US-supported bulwark of anti-communist
development on the peninsula and in Asia. It traces how the geopolitical
exigencies of these “Hot Wars” worked to postpone, if not foreclose,
democratic, if not radical, forms of decolonization. Meanwhile, the new
state and its bourgeois proxies sought to channel the energies of the masses
into a nascent formula of militarized modernization that would, over the
following decades, catapult the country to a position of global notoriety,
but not without extracting considerable necropolitical labor from their
human (and animal) compatriots. To capture these complex dynamics, I
focus on the cultural politics of Ch’anggyŏng Garden both before and
after the “long Korean War” (1948–53), exploring how postcolonial hos-
tilities laid the violent foundations for the promotion of Cold War devel-
opmentalism during the 1960s and 1970s.
First built in 1483 by the fourth Yi family monarch, King Sejong (r.
1418–50), for his retiring father, King Taejong (r. 1400–18), this site
originally functioned as one of five palaces, housing various queens and
other members of an expanding royal family. Like other wooden struc-
tures, Ch’anggyŏng Palace was partially destroyed (and subsequently
rebuilt) numerous times throughout the Chosŏn period (1392–1910)—
first, during Hideyoshi’s invasions of the 1590s and, later, by several fires
in the 1610s and 1830s. However, perhaps the greatest destruction to the
palace occurred during the process of Japanese colonization. In 1909,
protectorate officials began to desacralize the private palace and its royal
inhabitants by transforming it into a public park. To this end, Japanese
authorities outfitted this site with botanical and zoological gardens as well
as a royal museum. These recreational facilities aimed to placate Sunjong
(1874–1926), the last Chosŏn monarch whom, in 1907, they had forced
to live as a powerless figurehead in the neighboring Ch’angdŏk Palace.
2 FROM WAR TO WAR: CH’ANGGYŎ NG GARDEN AND POSTCOLONIAL… 25
Renaming the palace as a garden in 1911, the new colonial state encouraged
Koreans to overlook this national tragedy by visiting the public garden
where they, too, could enjoy “modern” entertainments devised by a puta-
tively more advanced Japan which now controlled this powerful site of
mass mobilization.
Unlike Shintō shrines and other colonial monuments that were
quickly razed from Seoul’s landscape after Liberation, the cherry blos-
soms and exotic animals that had long served as the main attractions of
Ch’anggyŏng Garden far outlasted the period of Japanese rule (1910–
45). Expanding Fanon’s analysis of third world nationalisms to capture
popular responses to revolutionary forms of postcolonialism in early
(South) Korea, I argue that the garden remained an important site after
Liberation, one that continued to contain both the state-building proj-
ects of bourgeois elites and the everyday practices of subaltern citizens.
For his part, the country’s first leader, Syngman Rhee (1948–60), a
nationalist who had spent much of the colonial period outside the pen-
insula, attempted to identify the garden as a Japanese vestige, if only as a
strategy to control a citizenry he viewed as potentially intractable.
Indeed, several times before the international phase of the Korean War
began in June of 1950, his regime sought to limit popular uses of the
garden under the pretext of protecting its historical ruins, a deplorable
situation that officials attributed to the destructive machinations of their
former colonizers. Combined with efforts to reinvent cultural traditions
deemed indigenous to the peninsula, such gestures aimed to garner pop-
ular support for Rhee’s dictatorship. However, (South) Korean citizens,
accustomed to recreational uses of the garden, opposed the state’s rena-
tionalization of this colonial space. Despite its desacralization under
Japanese rule, some visitors protested their government’s decision to
temporarily close the garden for repairs. Visitors to this site, one of few
public meeting grounds available to Seoul residents, even forced Rhee to
abandon its anticolonialist tactics of palace restoration, ensuring consid-
erable continuity across the 1945 divide.
As a result of these contentious interactions, postcolonial leaders learned
to creatively exploit this powerful, if unruly, site after liberation. Rather than
eradicate the garden’s popular amusements, they actively recycled and
expanded these attractions. Such efforts sought to tame the individual ener-
gies of a national collective that officials considered potentially disruptive in
advancing the state’s policy of militarized capitalism in its ongoing confron-
tation against the North. In what follows, I consider state spectacles aimed
26 T. A. HENRY
at channeling the energies of the masses in directions that would promote

anti-communist militarism and capitalist development. These projects rede-
ployed what, in the context of Japanese mobilizations for the Asia-Pacific
War (1937–45), Takahashi Testuya has called “emotional alchemy.”
Although no longer exploiting soldiers’ deaths to glorify the Japanese impe-
rial house at erstwhile shrines, similar practices of emotional alchemy, pro-
moted by the Tonga ilbo and other media supporters, reappeared at
Ch’anggyŏng Garden, where prominent politicians joined Buddhist monks
in memorial ceremonies for fallen police officers. Seeking to “console” and
“comfort” individuals who had lost family members, these public ceremo-
nies not only heroicized individuals who died on behalf of their state but
also encouraged future generations to support the ever-expanding Hot
Wars of capitalist Asia.
The Postcolonial Politics of Anti-communist

Consolation
When Seoul was liberated in 1945, the city embodied a complex and mul-
tilayered history of the past—most recently, a 35-year period of foreign
rule. After independence, political leaders took different stances on issues
of pro-Japanese “collaboration” and its close associations to disparities in
class, land, and identity. As Bruce Cumings (1981, 1992) has documented,
these contentious issues led to national division and ultimately thrust the
peninsula into a civil and international war. Although less well studied, the
physical legacy of colonialism—manifested in the country’s built environ-
ment of cities, towns, and villages—also preoccupied post-Liberation offi-
cials. As the showcase capital, Seoul contained the most obvious markers
of Japanese rule, symbols that had disclosed both the pretentions and limi-
tations of the Government-General and its supporters. The immediate
erasure of structures deemed distinctly Japanese—for example, Namsan’s
Shintō shrines—and their replacement with anticolonial monuments con-
stituted direct and extreme responses to this city’s colonial legacy. Perhaps
the most spectacular example of this top-down project of decolonization
can be seen in the replacement of Korea Shrine (Chosŏn sin’gung; J: Chōsen
jingū) with a towering statue of Syngman Rhee, erected in 1955 to cele-
brate his eightieth birthday and to promote the legitimacy of his anti-
communist regime. After its destruction in the wake of the April Revolution
of 1960, Park Chung Hee (1917–79) replaced this statue with a bust of
An Chunggŭn (1878–1910)—a more popular anticolonial patriot who, in
1909, assassinated—Itō Hirobumi (1841–1909), the first Resident-

General of Korea.1
In addition to the erasure-replacement model of inherently Japanese
structures, another common path of state-led decolonization used by
(South) Korean officials involved reusing less offensive, Western-style
monuments and the public spaces they occupied, redeploying “modern”
sites to advance their nation-building goals. For instance, the Government-
General Building, the neo-classical complex that had once served as the
administrative center of colonial Korea and its capital city, remained on the
grounds of Kyŏngbok Palace until 1995, when this imposing symbol was
finally razed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of liberation from Japanese
rule. During the half century between Liberation and the building’s
destruction, South Korean leaders simultaneously worked to indigenize
the Western-style building and its surroundings. Once refashioned, this
otherwise imposing structure came to function as Capitol Hall (1948–86)
and, later, as the National Museum (1986–95), before undergoing a
decades-long project to restore the royal palace to its imagined glory.2
Ch’anggyŏng Garden followed a similar trajectory of state-led decolo-
nization, although one more heavily mediated by the practices of its
everyday users. To be sure, the former grounds of Kyŏngbok Palace, out-
fitted with a walking garden and other modern facilities after the unveil-
ing of the Government-General Building in 1926, served as the stage for
several industrial expositions during the colonial period, including two
major spectacles of this sort held in 1915 and 1929.3 However, in con-
trast to the awe-inspiring, if uninviting, aura of this former palace,
Ch’anggyŏng Garden functioned as a popular site of recreation and
amusement, beckoning thousands of local residents and Seoul visitors on
a regular basis. Such popularity began to emerge on the eve of annexa-
tion, as colonial officials worked to subordinate the Korean royal house to
the Japanese imperial institution. As discussed above, authorities subse-
quently desacralized its most powerful symbols, Seoul’s palace grounds,
by converting these public sites into civic parks and other public
monuments.
During the period of occupation, the state’s desacralization of
Ch’anggyŏng Palace became increasingly entrenched, a process advanced
by millions of Japanese colonizers and colonized Koreans who visited the
public garden during cherry blossom festivals. This springtime practice
gained popularity after the planting of several thousand trees in 1922 and,
two years later, the opening of the garden during the evening hours.4 As a
28 T. A. HENRY
result of these transformations, the number of people who visited

Ch’anggyŏng Garden during the yearly cherry blossom festival dramati-
cally increased from approximately 130,000 in 1924 to over 300,000 by
1934. On the other hand, Kim Hyŏnsuk has demonstrated that these
numerical increases, homogenized statistics produced by a foreign-
dominated state intent on substantiating the purported benefits of Japanese
rule, belie important differences in the consumptive practices of its multi-
ethnic users. Kim argues that Japanese expatriates approached the annual
blossoming of cherry trees as a representation of life’s inherent transience
and thus enjoyed them by extended singing, dancing, and drinking. By
contrast, colonized Koreans tended to view this natural phenomenon as a
matter of seasonal interest and thus considered it as one part of the gar-
den’s springtime entertainments (Kim Hyŏnsuk 2008: 139–62).5 A visit
to the zoo was an equally, if not more, popular attraction than flower view-
ing. In fact, annual attendance rose exponentially from just over 111,000 in
1910, the year after the zoo opened its gates to the public, to nearly 1.4
million by 1940, the year in which the Japanese Empire celebrated its
mythical founding 2,600 years earlier (Sŏ T’aejŏng 2014: 27).6
When the Asia-Pacific War ended in 1945, the city’s former palace
grounds remained intact, but late colonial mobilization had taken a serious
toll on the human spectators of these public spaces as well as the animal
and plant life that had once inhabited them. For its part, Ch’anggyŏng
Garden, although not targeted in wartime bombings like cities throughout
the Japanese archipelago, was the site of considerable destruction. Like
Ueno Park, home to the metropole’s most impressive zoo and other
national attractions, its counterpart in colonial Korea became a similarly
gruesome stage for symbolic violence.7 According to one Korean zoo-
keeper, his colonized staff—themselves eventually mobilized to serve as
subordinated manpower for the war—were ordered to poison 150 ani-
mals, whose iron cages were subsequently melted down and used for
weapons in the war.8 Following in the footsteps of their human counter-
parts, the garden’s popular creatures were “sacrificed in the service of total
war and of ultimate surrender to emperor and nation” (Miller 2013: 120).9
However, unlike Ueno where the so-called Great Zoo Massacre became
fixed in the master narrative of postwar Japanese victim consciousness
(with civilians cast as pawns of a rapacious military), the Korean authors of
this postwar narrative portrayed their former colonizers as engaging in
excessive, racialized violence. Such a harsh tragedy also befell the penin-
sula’s human species whose subordinated members were, like their Asian
counterparts, summoned to support and die for the Japanese empire.10
As in the former metropole where, by 1949, a nationwide chorus

demanded the undoing of Ueno’s wartime trauma by repopulating the
zoo with friendly creatures, the longtime director of Ch’anggyŏng Garden,
Mun Sihyŏk, led a similar mission to reestablish the animal (and plant)
community as part of the newly liberated country’s path to recovery and
development. Having won the support of occupation officials, Mun’s
three-million-wŏn plan proposed to use a piece of the Secret Garden
(Piwŏn), part of the neighboring Ch’angdŏk Palace, to build a science
museum and library, theater, and children’s park. Such attractions aimed
to transform Ch’anggyŏng Garden into what the title of one optimistic
newspaper report described as “the world’s best amusement facility” (segye
il ŭi yuwŏnji). Announced in early 1946, the plan also involved reestab-
lishing the ground’s popular zoo and garden by importing various animals
and plants. These included an elephant from India as well as lions, pumas,
rat snakes, and several thousand tropical plants from the United States and
throughout the world.11 Other officials submitted proposals to gather
native animals and domestic plants. The latter sought to teach citizens still
suffering from the ravages of the Asia-Pacific War how to grow the crops
necessary for their survival.12 Although most of these efforts never bore
fruit due to fiscal restraints and other material shortages, the zoo quickly
reopened in late January 1946 to jubilant crowds of liberated Koreans.
However, it was brutally destroyed once again during the Korean War
when its staff fled, leaving the animals to either starve or freeze to death.13
That at least some elites favored the continued and expanded use of this
colonial garden as a place of recreation suggests the extent to which for-
mer palaces like Ch’anggyŏng Garden remained desacralized after 1945.
For their part, the subaltern masses expressed similar, if not stronger, atti-
tudes toward this public site, opposing sporadic efforts by post-Liberation
leaders to limit their use of the garden. Indeed, before Kim Il-Sung’s inva-
sion in the summer of 1950, the Rhee government made several unpopu-
lar attempts to put its imprint onto Ch’anggyŏng Garden, largely to
legitimize its anticolonial credentials. As early as April of 1947, authorities
banned unsanctioned events at the garden, citing ongoing abuse of the
former palace as a cause for its deplorable status as an amusement park.14
After the establishment of the first republic in 1948, officials continued
their efforts to curb “illegitimate” uses of the popular garden. For exam-
ple, in the spring of 1949, the Bureau of Public Information outlawed
parties, shows, and other events it considered disorderly. The Bureau
Chief specifically indicted colonial policies as the source of the palace’s
destruction and, by extension, its ongoing desacralization by South
30 T. A. HENRY
Korean visitors.15 In 1950, Rhee personally intervened in this debate,

announcing a temporary closure of the garden to repair palace structures
that, according to his resentful rhetoric, Japanese officials had destroyed
to besmirch Korean dignity. Despite nationalistic sentiments condemning
this site’s desacralization, citizens did not necessarily acquiesce to such
paternalistic policies of anticolonialism. Instead, many expressed displea-
sure at Rhee’s decision to temporarily close the garden. They tended to
view this fiat as infringing on the city’s already limited public spaces and,
ultimately, on their personal freedoms as liberated subjects.16 Although
the North Korean invasion ultimately derailed Rhee’s plans to create what
one editorial criticized as a top-down vision of a “cultured state” (mun-
hwa kukka), popular opposition ensured that the garden’s colonial attrac-
tions would remain open to the public over the long term.17
Meanwhile, numerous dislocations and deaths associated with the Asia-
Pacific War and the civil strife leading to the Korean War encouraged offi-
cials to co-opt Ch’anggyŏng Garden for other nation-building purposes.
Rather than repairing or restoring the former palace, authorities responded
to these disorienting and violent conditions by seeking to reclaim the gar-
den as a way of “consoling” (wian) the hearts and minds of civilian and
military segments of an incessantly besieged population. Although most
infamously associated with the lower-class Korean women mobilized to
serve the sexual needs of male soldiers serving in the Japanese imperial
military, state-directed “comfort” for its own citizens remained an ongoing
feature of the interregnum between Japanese colonialism and the Cold
War.18 Such continuity across the 1945 and 1953 divides can be found in
government efforts to exploit popular energies surrounding yearly flower
viewing rituals and redirect them in the production of indigenized forms of
culture. During the spring of 1946, less than a year after Liberation, local
residents and city visitors gathered at Ch’anggyŏng Garden to appreciate
its well-known cherry blossoms. As before, flower viewing formed one part
of the various public amusements. However, from this year forward, these
attractions came to include native performances by 600 Koreans whom
organizers strategically “mobilized” (tongwŏn), a slogan recycled from the
Asia-Pacific War. Although surely transformed under Japanese colonial-
ism, these native performances, as newspapers reports described them for
readers, included akkŭk musicians, kisaeng entertainers, p’ansori singers,
and kŏmmu sword dancers.19 Similar amusements accompanied the
National Festival for Folklore, Art, and Farmer’s Music (Chŏnguk minsok
yesul nong’ak taejejŏn), a newly established celebration of “traditional”
culture also held at Ch’anggyŏng Garden every spring.20 These popular

attractions elicited as many as 70,000 daily spectators at the springtime
festival of 1946 and 100,000 in the years before and after the Korean War.
According to self-congratulatory reports, such attendance rates far sur-
passed crowds about which, until recently, only the Government-General
could boast.21
The Tonga ilbo and other newly reestablished media sponsors, them-
selves caught up in the intoxicating euphoria of liberation, actively high-
lighted novel features of colonial traditions now increasingly indigenized.
For enthusiastic reporters, the unprecedented flying of Korean (rather
than Japanese) flags constituted the most dramatic example of this trans-
formation, even as it substituted one national symbol for another. Drawing
on this mobilizing icon of anticolonial nationalism, newspaper accounts
emphasized how the Korean custodians of springtime festivals outper-
formed their former colonial overlords. According to one especially buoy-
ant report, the cherry blossom festival of 1946, scheduled to coincide with
the reestablished custom of observing Children’s Day on May 5, was car-
ried out even more extravagantly than during the wartime period. To sub-
stantiate such competitive claims, this account spotlighted neon lights
newly installed at Ch’undang Pond (once the site of a rice paddy person-
ally plowed by Chosŏn monarchs) to illuminate it during the evening
hours.22 Although popular among Korean flower viewers, such state-
orchestrated spectacles similarly took advantage of the desacralization of
this former palace in the promotion of anticolonial nationalism.
Although some media reports portrayed Ch’anggyŏng Garden’s spring-
time celebrations as a liberating break from a painful past, other accounts
revealed that recent dislocations caused by the Asia-Pacific War informed
how leaders sought to reclaim this powerful but unruly site to advance an
increasingly militaristic system of public welfare. To support organizations
assisting bereaved families and orphaned students, for example, authorities
donated 160,000 wŏn in proceeds from entrance fees garnered during the
cherry blossom festival of 1946.23 Similar efforts at using public finances
to promote aggressive polices of anti-communist militarism continued at
garden ceremonies commemorating the first anniversary of Liberation and
at future springtime festivals.24 Meanwhile, postcolonial leaders and their
media promoters struggled to police unsanctioned uses of a site that, in
the space of liberation, had become a dynamic stage for multiple agendas.
When entrepreneurs capitalized on Ch’anggyŏng Garden to pursue their
own personal profit, for instance, newspaper reports upbraided them for
32 T. A. HENRY
selfishly neglecting citizens in greater need of material welfare. Reflecting

the managerial concerns of the state, this critique assumed government
control over an inherently contested place. In similar fashion, an article
published in late 1946 excoriated a patriotic association for failing to
donate proceeds garnered from popular dog races it had organized at the
garden, which came under increasing criticism for its disorderly status as a
playground.25 Through these criticisms, postcolonial leaders and their
media supporters shamed citizens whose profit-making activities they
deemed unpatriotic and which undercut state-led strategies of pub-
lic welfare.
At the same time, government authorities also used Ch’anggyŏng
Garden to valorize an international community of soldiers that included
both South Korean and American GIs, whom they targeted with a conso-
latory program of anticolonial and anti-communist militarism. Indeed, at
the very moment that the springtime festival of 1946 entertained Koreans
with “traditional” amusements, the garden also became a transnational
stage to showcase the vital role of American forces. According to the patri-
otic rhetoric of one newspaper report, the US military had not only helped
“liberate the fatherland” (choguk haebang) by defeating the Japanese but,
in the new context of the Cold War, had also protected the country from
“red” infiltrations. To thank them for their patriotic service, Korean offi-
cials invited American soldiers to the garden to enjoy several performances
of classic song and dance, after which they presented each GI with a silver
ring.26 In years to come, authorities also hosted collaborative events pro-
moting anti-communist militarism, the most symbolic of which were box-
ing matches between Americans and South Koreans.27 Regularly showcased
at popular garden events, this aggressive sport encouraged spectators to
embody the fearless spirit of boxers in their everyday battles against
communism.
As the ideal of national reunification faded and the reality of joint trust-
eeship led to insurmountable differences between the US-backed south-
ern sphere and the USSR-supported northern sphere, Ch’anggyŏng
Garden came to play a pivotal role in promoting the former’s project of
emotional alchemy. Although still lacking a national cemetery capable of
permanently honoring military-related deaths, makeshift efforts quickly
began to convert the personal grief of bereaved Koreans into the s acrosanct
status of anticolonial and anti-communist heroes. This public project of
spiritual engineering, as Takahashi Testuya has described the ideological
function of Yasukuni Shrine, echoed state rituals recently conducted at
Seoul Nation-Protecting Shrine (Kyŏngsŏng hoguk sinsa; J: Keijō gokoku

jinja).28 Erected on the western side of Namsan in late 1943, this shrine,
one of two Yasukuni satellites on the peninsula, memorialized a growing
number of Japanese and Korean soldiers who had died in the Asia-Pacific
War. Highly publicized, such ceremonies encouraged audiences of ritual
participants and media consumers to make future sacrifices on behalf of
the Japanese empire.29 Although Shintō rituals ceased in 1945, newly lib-
erated Koreans experienced similar events as early as September of 1947,
when officials mobilized Ch’anggyŏng Garden to stage a three-day “com-
fort convention” (wian taehoe), as several accounts called it.30
Now conducted in Buddhist style with monks reciting sutras and other
prayers, this memorial service heroicized bereaved family members, espe-
cially women and children, whose male relatives were lauded as “patriotic
martyrs” (sŏnyŏl) in nationalistic reports published in national newspapers
and magazines. According to one account, these patriots included (non-
revolutionary) Koreans who, since the signing of the first Protectorate
Treaty in 1905, had sacrificed their lives in seeking to defend and, after the
annexation of 1910, to liberate their nation from Japanese rule. This (and
other) memorial service(s) staged popular forms of “traditional” enter-
tainment recently added to Ch’anggyŏng Garden’s cherry blossom festi-
vals. Such amusements not only included farmer’s music (nongak),
theatrical performances (ch’angak), and kisaeng dancing, but also featured
wrestling matches and, as before, prizefighting between American and
South Korean boxers.31 Together, these cultural attractions aimed to
soothe the souls of bereaved family members, while encouraging more
than 2,000 spectators of the 1947 ritual to offer their own lives in future
hostilities. So, too, did the presence of Major General Albert E. Brown
(1889–1984), who attended the September 11 ceremony as a substitute
for General John R. Hodge (1893–1963).32 Having landed with his troops
in Inch’ŏn on September 9, 1945, to receive the surrender of Japanese
forces south of the 38th parallel, General Hodge served until 1948 as the
commanding governor of the US Army Military Government in Korea.
Much as Japanese politicians (and members of Tokyo’s imperial family)
visited Yasukuni Shrine as part of joint enshrinement ceremonies, Kim Ku
(1876–1949) and Kim Kyusik (1881–1950), both leaders in the exilic
Korean government in Shanghai, as well as Kim Sŏngsu (1891–1955), the
bourgeois nationalist and founder of the Tonga ilbo and Korea University
in addition to approximately 100 other officials, played essential roles in
this (and other) ritual(s). The 1947 ceremony honored the 19 deceased
34 T. A. HENRY
members of the national police (many surviving soldiers of the colonial

military) and an emergent constabulary that, together, had become a coun-
ter-revolutionary force in the southern sphere.33 Offering eulogies at these
events, Korean politicians helped to enshrine anti-communist militarism as
state policy, recasting deceased officers as national heroes. One account
even likened their patriotic deaths to beautiful flowers, not unlike the
cherry blossoms that appeared on the grounds of Ch’anggyŏng Garden
every spring.34 Whatever the case, the participation of local elites in memo-
rial services aimed to transform the personal suffering invariably experi-
enced by bereaved family members into collective sentiments of happiness,
ones that would continue to justify aggressive polices of anti-communism.
To be sure, the new South Korean government, in whose name its citi-
zens were summoned to sacrifice their lives, more closely matched the
ethnic background of their bourgeois leaders. However, given the harsh
realities of national division and the fratricidal war that ensued as a result,
the project of emotional alchemy that began under Japanese rule as a strat-
egy to ensure multiethnic support for the Asia-Pacific War was quickly
rechanneled into what Dong Choon Kim has called “policide” as a way of
explaining intra-ethnic atrocities committed in the name of capitalism and
its ideological rival, communism.35 In late April of 1949, for example,
authorities staged another memorial service for fallen police officers,
whose numbers had already dramatically increased. The third event of its
kind held at Ch’anggyŏng Garden after Liberation, the service memorial-
ized 722 police officers, most of whom had recently lost their lives in the
Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Uprisings of October 1948. Although overwhelmingly
laudatory, one remarkable account of this ceremony could not help but
expose the personal suffering otherwise concealed by the postcolonial
project of emotional alchemy. Such pain was made piercingly audible by
hundreds of bereaved family members and their supporters whose cacoph-
onous wailing reportedly travelled well beyond the confines of the gar-
den.36 Even before a military trial ruled in favor of executing 410 people
and sentencing to life imprisonment another 568 of the 2,817 suspects
arrested during the Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Uprisings, police officers, like their
fallen predecessors lionized at the memorial service of 1949, had killed
many Korean civilians on charges of communist fomentation.37 Policidal
violence only accelerated when as many as 80,000 people were killed on
Cheju (nearly one-third of the island’s population) between April of 1948
and May of 1949. Although framed as an insurgency at the time, critical
scholars have since come to view these island protests as popular uprisings
waged against US occupation and its symbiotic relationship to state ter-

rorism—in sum, the joint forces of violence that memorial services glori-
fied in the name of anti-communist militarism.38
As hostilities increased on the path to the Korean War, such nation-
building ceremonies further normalized policide, as citizens were forcibly
recruited as agents of this state-led project. Just two months before Kim
Il-Sung’s invasion, South Korean leaders held yet another memorial ser-
vice that glorified another 562 individuals for suppressing allegedly pro-
communist elements between April 1949 and March 1950. Redeploying
a term often heard during the Asia-Pacific War, one nationalistic account
called these fallen officers “nation-protecting righteous subjects” (hoguk
ŭisin). Just as Yasukuni Shrine and its satellites had targeted bereaved fam-
ilies, transforming their personal loss into national joy, Korean rituals lav-
ished praise on the surviving kin of deceased soldiers, treating them to
special stage performances and martial arts events.39 As before, high-
ranking politicians, including Syngman Rhee himself, attended the cere-
mony of 1950, offering a panegyric that perpetuated fratricidal violence
on behalf of his warring state.40
Due to unprecedented damage caused by the Korean War, the role that
Ch’anggyŏng Garden played in the space of liberation became even more
important in the chaotic aftermath of that national calamity.41 In Seoul,
years of intense fighting across the 38th parallel had left the garden (and
other former palace grounds) in shambles.42 However, officials quickly
recognized its powerful function in consoling the hearts and minds of an
exhausted citizenry, whose need for a public space of solace they addressed
by reopening the popular garden less than a year after signing the Armistice
on July 27, 1953.43 Given the two Koreas’ relationship as perpetual ene-
mies, American military forces, now permanently stationed across the
southern half of the peninsula according to a mutual defense treaty,
remained an ongoing fixture of the garden’s Hot War symbolism. The US
presence was perhaps best exemplified by the Eighth Army, whose brass
band regularly aimed to palliate the suffering of bereaved citizens.44 To
advance the country’s cause in this ongoing confrontation, various
branches of South Korea’s own armed forces regularly appeared on the
grounds to comfort citizens with military music performances (simin wian
gunak yŏnjuhoe), occasionally alongside brass bands of their American
allies.45 For those innumerable families who lost loved ones during the war
(especially widowed women) or those left as impecunious orphans,
Ch’anggyŏng Garden continually sought to placate the personal grief of
36 T. A. HENRY
these individuals by heroicizing their deceased kin and offering them the
necessary conditions for employment and livelihood. Active soldiers on
temporary leave, the force with which South Korean leaders hoped to
reunify the peninsula under capitalism, also attended these public gather-
ings, creating a militarized community of citizens mobilized to advance
the ever-expanding Hot War in both the public and private spheres.46
As a final example of postcolonial spectacles that government officials
continued to stage at Ch’anggyŏng Garden, consider the strategic use of
exhibitions to promote militarized modernization. Perhaps the most nota-
ble of these public events was the Industrial Exposition of 1955, which
aimed to rehabilitate South Korea’s nascent industries and thereby out-
shine the productive power of its northern rival. This event marked the
tenth anniversary of Liberation and, to ensure his own political power at a
time of growing protests, celebrated the eightieth birthday of Rhee, who
was reelected to a third term in 1956.47 Although less well known,
Ch’annggyŏng Garden also became a frequent theater for anti-communist
exhibitions and youth rallies.48 While further normalizing the suppression
of individuals who criticized state policies, these spectacles glorified the
capitalist achievements of South Korea, while linking the allies of this post-
colonial regime against its communist enemies. In the fall of 1956, for
example, the army sponsored one such event—a month-long exhibition
that elicited more than 1.25 million people, including thousands of coun-
tryside visitors mobilized through travel discounts.49 Recalling tactics used
by Japanese authorities during the Asia-Pacific War, Korean officials dis-
played weapons used by Russian, Chinese, and North Korean armies, cap-
tured DRPK documents, and clothing worn by communist forces—all in
an effort to educate South Koreans about their red foes across the 38th
parallel and around the world.50 As one report unabashedly suggested,
officials aimed to promote anti-communist sentiments among garden visi-
tors, whom they called upon to fight against the “conspiracies” (hyungmo)
and “brutality” (manhaeng) of their developmentalist rivals in the North.51
The following year, the contents of this exhibit even travelled to South
Vietnam where they were displayed in a “Free” Korean Hall at the third
annual Anti-Communist Convention. Like Seoul, Saigon—the staging
grounds for this one-week event, attended by an estimated 200,000
visitors—functioned as the geopolitical nexus of anti-communism in a
postcolonial nation that had been similarly divided after 1945.52 From
1964 until 1973, Park sent over 300,000 troops to support this Southeast
Asian ally against its Vietcong enemies, becoming what Jin-kyung Lee has
aptly called a “subempire” of the US.53 As before, Ch’anggyŏng Garden

continued to play an important role in normalizing participation in this
Hot War, emerging as a state-sanctioned stage for mass mobilizations.
Closer to home, anti-communist exhibitions held at this public site in
1965, and again between 1968 and 1972, aimed to promote popular par-
ticipation in counter-espionage campaigns against the increasing frequency
of North Korean incursions, including one early 1968 attack aimed at
assassinating Park at the Blue House.54 To spread the message of anti-
communist militarism, these spectacles travelled to local cities, events sug-
gesting the repeated need to mobilize South Koreans for warfare against
the north. But, unruly participation in official spectacles hosted at
Ch’anggyŏng Garden, a site that doubled as a popular zoo and a boister-
ous place for flower viewing, meant that the bourgeois leaders of the post-
colonial state continued to compete with stress-relieving attractions to
capture the hearts and minds of “their” citizens.
Conclusion and Coda
As suggested above, the unlikely combination of ideological displays pro-
moting national industry and the austere reverence of fallen martyrs that
appeared on the grounds of Ch’anggyŏng Garden after Liberation under-
scores both the subjectifying power of this place and its inherent limita-
tions. First developed by Japanese officials as a showcase for colonial
modernity and a place of popular recreation, the garden was creatively
recycled to stage state ceremonies aimed at advancing South Korea’s
nascent formula of militarized modernization. However, precisely because
this postcolonial site embodied such overlapping agendas, it did not always
function in ways envisioned by its elite architects, who struggled to display
a potent image of a nation capable of promoting anti-communist defense
and capitalist development. As a result, the garden became a polysemous
stage upon which a wide range of aspirations and emotions were energeti-
cally projected. These passions reflected the multiple dislocations, intense
poverty, and competitive atmosphere that the country’s hurriedly resub-
jectified citizens experienced in the wake of both the Asia-Pacific War and
the Korean War.
The unruliness of this popular site, a product of both colonial and post-
colonial histories, stands in stark contrast to what has taken its place since
1986, a restored version of an austere residence from the Chosŏn Dynasty,
but one no longer inhabited by the royal family.55 By retuning this public
38 T. A. HENRY
garden to the imagined glory of its precolonial past, government officials

have transformed Ch’anggyŏng Palace (and other royal residences) into a
national and international symbol of South Korea’s proud and prosperous
present.56 However, such serene sites have virtually erased the turbulent
history of the twentieth century, silencing the dynamic activities, arduous
struggles, and myriad aspirations of crowds that once inhabited them,
whether as seasonal visitors of cherry blossoms or enthralled zoo- and
exposition-goers. To be sure, the separation of public space leading to the
restoration of Ch’anggyŏng Palace has allowed many of these activities to
continue in separate spheres, with each now serving the memorial, recre-
ational, and exhibitionary functions of South Korean modernity. This
gradual transformation can be seen in the creation of a military (later,
national) cemetery in 1955 (and 1965), the establishment of the Children’s
Grand Park and Seoul Grand Park in 1973 and 1983, respectively, and,
finally, the restoration of the palace between 1983 and 1986.57 However,
virtually lost as a consequence of this belated decolonization are the gar-
den’s lively interactions and their unpredictable combinations—in other
words, the energies that the bourgeois leaders of this postcolonial state
sought to tame in promoting a militarized form of capitalist modernity
during the Cold War.
Over the ensuing decades, Park Chung Hee and his authoritarian suc-
cessors managed to forcefully reorient these energies by recasting the gar-
den as a Japanese vestige and thus a psychological blight on the South
Korean nation.58 Nevertheless, the separation of public space that culmi-
nated in the palace’s restoration in 1986 did not completely expunge ear-
lier practices and memories of the diverse citizens that this powerful site
claimed to represent. After its opening in 1973, the Children’s Grand
Park, although boasting larger grounds and newfangled attractions,
became a frequent target of criticism. For example, detractors condemned
its inconvenient location in the newly developed area of Kangnam and the
financial burden it created for taxpayers and visitors.59 Even after officials
relocated the zoo to Kangnam in 1983, animal enthusiasts attempted to
recall the pitiful fate of 150 creatures that had died during the twentieth
century. To this end, they proposed to erect an animal cenotaph near
Ch’anggyŏng Garden which, at the time, was beginning to undergo its
historic restoration.60 Although the spatial specificity of this proposal fell
on deaf ears, officials belatedly responded to citizens’ irrepressible memo-
ries of the garden by relocating them to Seoul Grand Park, where a memo-
rial tower was constructed in 1995.61
Perhaps the most controversial “end” to Ch’anggyŏng Garden

involved the 1,300 cherry blossom trees, all of which were eventually
removed and replaced with pines (sonamu), elms (nŭt’i namu), Siberian
alders (murori namu), royal azaleas (ch’ŏr tchuk), and other greenery
deemed indigenous to the peninsula.62 Beginning in the late 1970s,
many citizens followed government officials in expressing belated out-
rage that the cherry blossoms, increasingly considered Japan’s national
flower, continued to dominate Ch’anggyŏng Garden, even after 30
years of liberation. Rather than expressing natural beauty or offering
viewers personal pleasure, these “foreign” trees (half of which likely
hailed from Cheju) were strategically reconnected to colonial policies
of assimilation.63 To overcome this Japanese legacy and restore what
they proudly referred to as their “national spirit” (kukhon), pro-extir-
pation advocates passionately called for the replacement of all remain-
ing cherry blossoms with trees bearing South Korea’s national flower,
the mugunghwa (Hibiscus syriacus).64
Although this nationalist view gained considerable currency during the
1980s and 1990s, not all citizens supported the extirpation of colonial
flora. Still hoping to save Ch’anggyŏng Garden’s cherry blossoms, Kim
Changsŏm, a resident of Pusan, for example, published an editorial in the
spring of 1986, just months before officials reopened a site they hoped
would continue to function as a citizen’s park.65 In this post-nationalist
editorial, Kim reminded the public that South Koreans still recalled and
cherished their collective spirit in spite of the palace’s colonial desacraliza-
tion. Although this critic did not explicitly oppose restoration, Kim favored
preserving the garden’s cherry blooms because, according to a logic of
indigenization, the trees had become an integral part of Korean territorial-
ity. Writing from the perspective of a parent, Kim also expressed concerns
about how caregivers would explain to their young children the decision
to eradicate cherry blossoms that had long entertained Seoulites and visi-
tors alike.
Even after officials relocated flower-viewing practices to the Children’s
Grand Park and other sites throughout the city, some citizens continued
to appear at the former garden for springtime festivities but were cal-
lously turned away from the resacralized palace grounds.66 As a result, a
place that had once garnered as many as 200,000 daily visits during
cherry blossom season, only elicited 58,000 people during the entire
month of May (1992). According to one morose newspaper account,
this statistic revealed that the public no longer adored this site.67 Indeed,
40 T. A. HENRY
the media were still trying to boost attendance at Ch’anggyŏng Palace

by the turn of the century. One admonitory report published in 1999,
for example, claimed that the solemnity of the restored palace surpassed
the chaos of its former cherry blossoms. To promote the former, this
account reminded readers of the ten 2.5 ton garbage trucks deployed to
make disposals of trash accumulated during cherry blossom season, thus
recalling the sullying effect of the latter.68
Even as this report sought to sanitize memories of the former garden to
boost attendance at Ch’anggyŏng Palace, its citation of erstwhile visitors
suggests that the popular energies once animating this unruly site remained
alive nearly 15 years after its restoration. For example, one Seoul woman
in her fifties recalled the gustatory pleasure of visiting the garden while
attending middle school. As she explained,
Although [officials] removed the cherry blossoms because they were [con-
sidered] a Japanese flower, the days of Ch’anggyŏng Garden remain a beau-
tiful memory…. The recollection of eating dark purple, sweet-and-sour
cherries in that area is [still] fresh in my mind. For some time after eating
them, the tip of my tongue and the area around my mouth became tinged
with a dark-jet crimson color.69
According to the same 1999 report, memories of past pleasures also led
to intermittent calls from citizens who, every April, inquired if authorities
planned to reinstitute the once-popular cherry blossom festival. Such
fondness for the garden reveals the tremendous work necessary for the
postcolonial state to tame dissident energies that, although increasingly
faint, still surround this contested site. As before, South Korean officials
regularly deploy the resacralized palace (and other royal monuments) as
powerful symbols of collective identity in a post-authoritarian era of
increasing, if uneven, prosperity. Meanwhile, at least some South Korean
visitors continue to recall its past as a popular garden, criticizing the gov-
ernment’s erasure of their personal histories in the creation and manage-
ment of cultural properties, itself a postcolonial legacy.70 Although
bittersweet, their memories suggest that the history of this contested place
may help a public to imagine and—together with or, if necessary, against
a bourgeois state—to enact evermore democratic and liberating projects
of decolonization.
Notes
1. On postcolonial monuments of this figure, see Yun Sŏnja (2009). For
more on the statuary practices of patriotism during the Park Chung Hee
era, see Chŏng Hogi (2008). On the postcolonial history of Namsan’s
Shintō shrines, see Henry (2014: 205–10).
2. On the changing meanings of this site, see Kim (2010: 75–95).
3. On the role that these two events played in promoting what I call “material
assimilation,” see Henry (2014: 92–129). See also Kal (2005).
4. For a brief chronology of this palace site during the Chosŏn Dynasty, see
Ch’oe Pyŏngsŏn (2007: 98–9). For a more detailed history, see Han’guk
(1993: 56–69).
5. On the political culture of cherry blossoms and their connections to the
Japanese Empire, see Ohnuki-Tierney (2002); and Takagi Hiroshi (1999).
6. For more on the history of the zoo and the garden’s other public facilities,
see, Han’guk (1993: 70–169). On the 1940 celebrations, see Ruoff (2011)
and Henry (2014: 170–81).
7. On the relationship between Ueno Park and Ch’anggyŏng Garden, see U
Tongsŏn (2009).
8. Han’guk (1993: 175–6).
9. For a discussion of the lions, bears, leopards, and other wild beasts killed in
Seoul, see “Chaegaedoen Ch’anggyŏngwŏn,” Tonga ilbo, January 26,
1946; and “Uri chikchang ŭi charang: Ch’anggyŏngwŏn p’yŏn,”
Kyŏnghyang sinmun, February 4, 1947.
10. For these stories, see Kratsoka (2005).
11. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn i segye il ŭi yuwŏnji ro,” Tonga ilbo, March 3, 1946.
On President Yi’s gift of two deer, see “Yi paksa t’aek noru Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
e,” Tonga ilbo, June 8, 1948; and “Kungmin changnae ŭi kilcho,” Chayu
sinmun, August 11, 1948. On the symbolic donation of a rare bear cap-
tured in a Mount Chiri cave during the anti-communist roundups of 1949,
see “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn e ch’ulgahan Chirisan ŭi p’oro kom,” Tonga ilbo,
April 12, 1950.
12. “Piwŏn do iyong kyojaewŏn sinsŏl,” Chayu sinmun, April 19, 1946; and
“Sidallin simin wiro k’oja,” Chayu sinmun, February 27, 1947.
13. For more on the fate of zoo animals during the Korean War, see Han’guk
(1993: 207–10). In 1950, there were only 20 poorly fed animals in the zoo
and approximately half of the botanical garden’s flora had already died due
to fuel shortages. As a result, yearly attendance rates hovered at around
only 2,000. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn e wigi kyŏngbi wa saryonan ŭro,” Tonga
ilbo, January 18, 1950; and “Meryŏk ŏmnŭn kogung!,” Chayu sinmun,
March 21, 1950.
42 T. A. HENRY
14. “Chŏllak hanŭn kogung,” Chayu sinmun, April 18, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
ŭi hŭnghaeng ilch’e kŭmji,” Chayu sinmun, April 19, 1947; and
“Ch’anggyŏngwŏn hŭnghaeng,” Chosŏn ilbo, April 20, 1947.
15. “Kongbo ch’ŏjangdam,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April 21, 1949.
16. “Mun tadŭn simin kongwŏn, Ch’anggyŏngwŏn konggae chungji,” Chosŏn
ilbo, May 15, 1950; and “Pohohagi wihae p’yesoe,” Chosŏn ilbo, May 20,
1950.
17. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŭn ŏjji toena?,” Chosŏn ilbo, June 12, 1950.
18. Although my discussion of the post-Liberation period does not include
sexual servitude, scholars of the “Comfort Women” system have discov-
ered ongoing forms of subordination toward lower-class Korean women,
ones that clearly connect the Asia-Pacific War to the Korean War. On the
sexualized underside of the country’s postcolonial modernization, see Lee
(2010).
19. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn pom maji kkot nori chugan,” Chayu sinmun, April 6,
1946. For future references to “(total) mobilization” ([ch’ong] tongwŏn) in
connection to the garden, see “Myŏngch’ang, yeindŭl ch’ongdongwŏn,”
Kyŏnghyang sinmun, March 29, 1947; and “Kkot p’inun Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
esŏ,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April 13, 1949. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn kkot nori e
600 myŏng yesurin tongwŏn,” Chayu sinmun, April 18, 1946; and
“Haebang kkot nori,” Chosŏn ilbo, April 19, 1946.
20. For early references to this event, see “Myŏngch’ang, yeindŭl
ch’ongdongwŏn” and “Chŏnguk nong’ak kyŏngyŏn taehoe,” Kyŏnghyang
sinmun, May 23, 1947.
21. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn kkot nori, chak’il 7 man i ipchang,” Chayu sinmun,
April 22, 1946; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ipchangja iryoil e 10 manmyŏng,”
Chosŏn ilbo, April 28, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn kugyŏng kkun haru e 10
manmyŏng,” Tonga ilbo, April 20, 1948; “Kkot e chwihan Sŏul sinmin,”
Tonga ilbo, April 17, 1950; “Kkot kwa iryoil kwa inp’a,” Kyŏnghyang sin-
mun, April 29, 1957; and “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn chŭlgŏn pimyŏng inp’a 10
man nŏmŭldŭt,” Tonga ilbo, April 24, 1961.
22. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŭi yagan kwanhwahoe,” Tonga ilbo, April 20, 1946.
Children’s Day (originally celebrated in 1922 on May 1, Labor Day)
gained attention from Korean students and religious leaders of the March
1st movement, but colonial officials suppressed it until 1939. Although
enthusiasm for Children’s Day quickly reemerged and was celebrated from
1946, it did not become an official holiday in South Korea until 1961.
Since 1950, North Koreans have celebrated this holiday on June 2, which
coincides with International Children’s Day. On the importance of young-
sters in modern Korean culture, see Zur (2017).
23. “Popkŏ ŭi chejŏn,” Tonga ilbo, April 18, 1946.
24. “Haebang kinyŏm,” Tonga ilbo, August 14, 1946; “Pŏkkot nori suip
kaktanch’e e kibu,” Chayu sinmun, August 20, 1946; and “Kkot nori,”
Tonga ilbo, April 24, 1947. For more on garden events catering to orphans,
see “Karyŏnhan ŏrini e chŭlgŏun pom chanch’i,” Tonga ilbo, April 30,
1947; “Koadŭl e wŏnyuhoe,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, May 4, 1948; “Koawŏn
yuhoe, sangho 10 si Ch’anggyŏngwŏn,” Chosŏn ilbo, May 5, 1952; and
“Koadŭl undonghoe, Ŏ rini Nal Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ,” Chosŏn ilbo, April
30, 1954.
25. “Chŏnjaemin wŏnho e kibuk’ae toen kyŏnggyŏn taehoe iikgŭm e yokki,”
Kyŏnghyang sinmun, December 19, 1946. For attempts to stint the former
palace’s fall into an amusement park, see “Hŭnghaengjang ŭro chŏllak,”
Chosŏn ilbo, April 8, 1947; “Chŏllak hanŭn kogung,” Chayu sinmun, April
18, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŭi hŭnghaeng ilchŏl kŭmji,” Chayu sinmun,
April 19, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŭi hŭnghaeng kŭmhu pŭrhŏ
pangch’im,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April 19, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
hŭnghaeng,” Chosŏn ilbo, April 20, 1947; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŭl orakchang
ŭro,” Tonga ilbo, May 15, 1947; “Si esŏ Ch’anggyŏngwŏn kwallikwŏn
yogu,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, May 21, 1948; and “Kkot sijŏl ŭn purŭnda,”
Tonga ilbo, April 18, 1949.
26. “Migun ch’oedae wŏnyuhoe,” Tonga ilbo, May 1, 1946. For other events
catering to the US military, see “Tach’aehal Ŏ rini Nal,” Tonga ilbo, April
15, 1946; “Migukgun ŭl wiro haja,” Chosŏn ilbo, April 16, 1946; and
“Sugo mani hessŏ, Migun wianhoe,” Chosŏn ilbo, May 13, 1946.
27. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ch’usŏk nori,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, September 27,
1947. See also “Chomi ch’insŏn yesulche,” Tonga ilbo, May 9, 1947; and
“Aeguk chisa wianhoe 17, 18, 19 ilgan,” Tonga ilbo, September 20, 1947.
28. Takahashi (2006).
29. When this shrine was unveiled in late November of 1943, officials had
already installed 7,477 souls, including those of 549 newly recruited
Korean soldiers (Henry 2014: 186). For more on the Seoul Nation-
Protecting Shrine and its postcolonial fate, see An Chongch’ŏl (2011).
30. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ aeguk chisa wian taehoe,” Kyŏnghayng sinmun,
September 23, 1947; and “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ aeguk chisa wianhoe,”
Tonga ilbo, September 20, 1947.
31. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ aeguk chisa wianhoe,” Tonga ilbo, September 20,
1947; and “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ aeguk chisa wian taehoe,” Kyŏnghyang
sinmun, September 23, 1947.
32. “Sunjik kyŏngch’algwan wiryŏngje chaesik sanghwang,” Minju kyŏngch’al
4 (September 1947), 115. I thank Dr. Yi Yujŏng of the Korean National
Police University for providing me access to Minju kyŏngch’al.
33. “Sunjik kyŏnggwan wiryŏngje,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, October 3, 1947;
and “Sunjik kyŏngch’algwan wiryŏngje chaesik sanghwang,” Minju
44 T. A. HENRY
kyŏngch’al 4 (September 1947), 115. On the colonial origins of the

national police and its relationship to an emergent defense force in early
South(ern) Korea, see Cumings (1981: 160–78).
34. “Sunjik kyŏngch’algwan wiryŏngje chaesik sanghwang,” Minju kyŏngch’al
4 (September 1947), 115.
35. Kim (2004). On the racialized dimensions of wartime mobilizations across
the Pacific, see Fujitani (2011).
36. “Yujok ŭi aekkŭnnŭn t’onggok sori,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April 29, 1949.
37. Kim (2009: 155). For more on these uprisings, see An Chongch’ŏl (1998).
38. On the political consequences of contested representations surrounding
this massacre, see Kim (2000).
39. “Sunjik kyŏnggwan wiryŏngje,” Tonga ilbo, April 19, 1950.
40. “Chop’osŏng do ŏmsuk’i sunjik kyŏnggwan wiryŏngje haptongje
chiphaeng,” Tonga ilbo, April 26, 1950.
41. Ch’anggyŏng Garden was not the only public space used for such pur-
poses. Even after the establishment of a military cemetery in 1955, impor-
tant politicians, including President Rhee, used the Kwanghwa Gate Plaza,
located in front of Kyŏngbok Palace, to memorialize 170,000 souls who,
through their patriotic deaths from the signing of the first protectorate
treaty in 1905, made possible their country’s Liberation in 1945.
“Kwangbok sŏnyŏl haptong ch’udo,” Chosŏn ilbo, October 24, 1958; and
“Sŏnyŏl ŭi myŏngmok kiwŏn,” Chosŏn ilbo, November 16, 1958. Other
ceremonies were held at colonial theaters, including the newly renamed
sigong’gwan. For one example, see “Che 2 hoe mobŏm kungyŏng wian
taehoe,” Minju kyŏngch’al 90 (November 1958), 118–23.
42. On wartime destruction and plans for rebuilding, see, for example,
“Ch’anggyŏngwŏn e hwajae,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, January 1, 1952;
“Pokkwi Sŏul sosik (1): Ch’anggyŏngwŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April
10, 1953; “Yŏrŭm kkaji en puhwal,” Chosŏn ilbo, April 4, 1954; and “Sijip
on ‘horangi,’ yenmosŭp ch’anŭn tongmurwŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun,
March 3, 1955.
43. Even as his country was at war with North Korea, the popular custom of
springtime flower viewing, although temporarily discontinued in 1951,
resurfaced the following year, drawing President Rhee and his wife,
Francesca. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn ŏje kaewŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, April
18, 1952.
44. “Mip’algun kunaktae sŏ simin wian yŏnjuhoe,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun,
August 9, 1953. For other entertainments aimed at returning soldiers, see
“Kwihyang changbyŏng wian,” Tonga ilbo, September 18, 1953; and
“Haegun kyohyang aktan 23-il Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ yŏnju,” Chosŏn ilbo,
April 23, 1955. The US military solidified bilateral relations with South
Korea through ongoing donations of animals to the garden’s popular zoo.
On this phenomenon, see “T’aeillŏ changgun ‘kom’ Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ

kijŭngsik,” Tonga ilbo, April 19, 1955.
45. See, for example, “Onŭl Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ hanmi haptong yŏnjuhoe,”
Tonga ilbo, April 29, 1956; “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ simin wian gun’ak
yŏnjuhoe,” Tonga ilbo, June 5, 1974; “Kunmin ch’insŏn kunak yŏnjuhoe,”
Kyŏnghyang sinmun, June 9, 1978; and “6.25 30-chunyŏn kinyŏm yukkun
gunak yŏnjuhoe,” Tonga ilbo, June 14, 1980.
46. “Ŏ je Ch’anggyŏngwŏn sŏ wianhoe,” Tonga ilbo, October 26, 1953;
“Sinmin wian ŭmakhoe, onŭl konggun aktae,” Tonga ilbo, April 18, 1954;
“Ŏ mŏni nal sinnok hyangyŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, May 9, 1955; “P’aril
ŏmŏninal wianhoe tŭng kaech’oe,” Tonga ilbo, May 5, 1956; and
“Hyŭnggŏun wian chanch’i,” Tonga ilbo, May 9, 1957.
47. Approximately 70 percent of voters backed Rhee in 1956 against his rival,
Cho Pong’am. For more on the 1955 exposition, see Henry (2016:
18–25).
48. After the 1953 armistice, the garden was used each year to celebrate the
release of young war prisoners from North Korea. See, for example, “Onŭl
pan’gong ch’ŏngnyŏn sŏkbang,” Tonga ilbo, June 18, 1956.
49. “Ch’amgwanja 10 man tolp’a” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, October 30, 1956;
“Pan’gong chŏllamhoe wŏlmal kkaji yŏn’gi,” Tonga ilbo, November 9,
1956; and “‘Pan’gong chŏllamhoe’ p’yaemak,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun,
December 12, 1956.
50. “Chŏnjaeng tobalja ga nugu nya,” Tonga ilbo, October 23, 1956. For one
colonial precedent of the anti-communist exhibition, see Henry (2008).
51. “Yukkun pan’gong chŏllamhoe,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun, October 24, 1956.
For the exhibition layout, see “‘Pan’gong chŏllamhoe kaemak,” Tonga
ilbo, October 27, 1956.
52. “Wŏlnam sŏ pan’gong chŏnsihoe,” Tonga ilbo, April 4, 1957; and
“Kwallam 20 man tolp’a,” Tonga ilbo, May 1, 1957.
53. Lee (2010: 37–78).
54. “Changgyŏngwŏn sŏ pan’gong yŏnmaeng chuch’oe ro pan’gong chŏnsi
kaemak,” Chosŏn ilbo, May 12, 1965; “Kongbi nohoekp’um tŭng chŏnsi,”
Tonga ilbo, April 8, 1968; “Pan’gong chŏnsihoe 7 il put’ŏ Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
sŏ,” Chosŏn ilbo, June 6, 1969; “Kogung kaŭl maja haengsa tach’ae,”
October 2, 1970; “Sangch’un chaebi,” Maeil kyŏngje, March 14, 1971;
and “Changgyŏngwŏn tŭng kogung hwaljjak,” Maeil kyŏngje, April 14,
1972. On the use of another public space in Seoul to promote anti-com-
munism under Park, see An Ch’angmo (2005).
55. On the ill fate of the royal house after Liberation, see Kim (2010). For a
documentary chronicling this history, see Yi Sanghyŏn (2006).
56. The restoration of Ch’anggyŏng Garden coincided with the Tenth Asian
Games (1986) and, two years later, the Seoul Olympics (1988), both of
46 T. A. HENRY
which served as engines for global tourism. On the transformation of

Seoul’s symbolism, see De Ceuster (2000).
57. On the development of the national cemetery, see Chŏng Hogi (2005:
209–44). For the establishment of the Children’s Grand Park and Seoul
Grand Park, see Yi Hyemin (2010); and Im Hyŏnsŏk (2000). On the gar-
den’s historic restoration, see Song Hŭiŭn (2007); and Ch’anggyŏnggung
(1985).
58. After Park assumed power in 1961, the Royal Household Properties
Agency (Kuwangsil chaesan samu ch’ongguk)—the forerunner of the
Cultural Properties Administration (Munhwajae kwalliguk) and the
Cultural Heritage Administration (Munhwajaech’ŏng)—launched a long-
term restoration project, which began by repairing the former palace’s
main gate, Honghwamun. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn Honghwamun yenosŭp ŭro
tanjang,” Tonga ilbo, June 24, 1961. During the early 1970s, this repair
was followed by more extensive “purification construction” on (and higher
admission prices to) the neighboring Secret Garden (Piwŏn) and Ch’angdŏk
Palace to alter the consciousness of former royal palaces from raucous play-
grounds dominated by the people to a state-controlled system of cultural
properties. Later in the same decade, Park allocated 300 million wŏn for
further repairs of Seoul’s five palace grounds. “Ch’angdŏkkung, Piwŏn,
chŏnghwa kongsa wanggong,” Maeil kyŏngje, June 18, 1970; and “Sŏul-si
Ch’anggyŏngwŏn tŭng kogung 3 ŏk tŭrŏ posu silsi,” Maeil kyŏngje,
November 4, 1978.
59. See, for example, “Oeroun tosi,” Tonga ilbo, May 4, 1974.
60. “Mak nerinŭn 74 nyŏn,” Kyŏnghyang sinmum, October 10, 1983.
61. “Chŏngnyŏn t’oeim ap’dun Sŏul taekongwŏn pujang Kim Chŏng-man-ssi
37–nyŏn tongmurwŏn sarang hangil,” Han’gyŏre, September 16, 1995.
62. For a summary of the viewpoints on this controversy, see “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn
pŏkkot namgyŏduna … ŏpsaena,” Tonga ilbo, April 21, 1986.
63. “Chŏhanggam nŭkkinŭn ‘pŏkkot’ nori,” Tonga ilbo, April 25, 1977; and
“Ilche chanjae pŏkkot nori pŏr yŏhal tte anin’ga,” Tonga ilbo, March 25,
1982. For details on the ongoing controversy over the origins of the King
Cherry (wang pŏkkot), see “Cheju wa ilbon ŭl malhada,” Halla ilbo, March
23, 2015.
64. For early voices supporting this position, see “Ilche yumul pŏkkot nori
mugunghwa ch’ukje ro taech’e rŭl,” Han’gyŏr ye, March 26, 1989; “Pŏkkot
kunhangje nŭn chalmot mugunghwa ro minjokhon ŭl,” Kyŏnghyang sin-
mun, April 11, 1989; “Pŏkkot munhwa singmin munhwa,” Han’gyŏr ye,
April 22, 1989; and “Chinhae pŏkkot nori yugam,” Han’gyŏr ye, April 13,
1990. Although provoking some controversy, the Japanese-built
greenhouse, the largest of its kind in Asia at the time of its completion in
1909, remained on the restored palace grounds due to its Western features,
but this modern structure of glass and steel was expected to only display
indigenous flora.
65. Unless otherwise noted, the following discussion is based on
“Ch’anggyŏngwŏn pŏnnamu pojon toeya,” Tonga ilbo, May 15, 1986.
66. The relocation of some cherry blossoms to the area around the National
Assembly Building and other parts of Yŏido led to further protests promot-
ing extirpation at these national sites. See, for example, “Ŭ isadang chubyŏn
pŏnnamu mugunghwa ro pakkwŏsŭmyŏn,” Tonga ilbo, April 15, 1992.
67. “Kyŏngbokkung changnyŏn kwallam kaeksu ch’oeda,” Kyŏnghyang sin-
mun, March 21, 1993. Annual attendance rates plummeted from a high of
more than two million before 1983 to less than 780,000 by 1992. Seoul’s
most popular palace, Kyŏngbokkung, boasted nearly 1.3 million visitors
per year, whereas its least popular royal monument, Ch’angdŏk Palace,
only managed to attract 327,000 people.
68. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn i yŏyu, ‘pŏkkot’ poda chot’a,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun,
April 24, 1999.
69. “Ch’anggyŏngwŏn i yŏyu, ‘pŏkkot’ poda chot’a,” Kyŏnghyang sinmun,
April 24, 1999.
70. See, for example “Uri salm ŭn munhwajae anin’ga,” Chosŏn ilbo, September
22, 2013. On the postcoloniality of cultural property management, see Pai
(2001).
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Chosŏn ilbo
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Han’gyŏre
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Tonga ilbo
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———. 2014. Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in
Colonial Korea, 1910–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Korea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
CHAPTER 3
Women’s Redress Movement for Japanese

Military Sexual Slavery: Decolonizing
History, Reconstituting Subjects
Na-Young Lee
Introduction
Scene #1
On July 29, 2013, the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance proudly hosts
the “Korean Comfort Women Program.” After hearing Bok-dong Kim’s
short and relatively objective testimony, the host of the program juxta-
posed the personal memoirs of the comfort women with those of Holocaust
survivors and human trafficking victims, linking the experiences of Jewish
women with those of other oppressed groups of women. On the stage
were three women from Korea, Germany (originally), and the Philippines
to share their interconnected feelings as survivors—not just as victims—
and to express hope for international coalition to fight for justice and
human rights rather than simply representing the torments of the past.
N.-Y. Lee (*)

Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea
e-mail: nylee@cau.ac.kr

52 N.-Y. LEE
Scene #2
On September 26, 2013, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzō delivered a
statement at the Sixty-Eighth Session of the General Assembly of the
United Nations concerning women’s social status and sexual violence
without addressing the issues of “Comfort Women” at all. He pledged
financial and diplomatic support to United Nations Entity for Gender
Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), especially on
the issue of sexual violence against women and the protection of women
during natural disasters. Strongly condemning the conflict in Syria, he said
that Japanese people were shocked and angered by the use of chemical
weapons against civilians. As a matter of urgency, he said that his country
was calling for an immediate cessation of violence, initiation of political
dialogue, and an improvement of humanitarian conditions. He said that
Japan would continue to extend a helping hand to the internally displaced
persons and refugees, as well as to provide medical equipment and training
of medical staff. He noted that Japan would provide approximately $60
million in additional humanitarian assistance to Syria and its neighboring
countries (Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet 2013). It is reported
that the Korean government is critical of Abe’s failure to mention the
plight of the “Comfort Women” and plans to deliver a rebuttal statement
at the UN (Yonhaps News 2013).
Scene #3
On June 16, 2014, a group of former “Comfort Women” in South Korea
filed a lawsuit against Professor Park Yu-ha for allegedly defaming them
with her arguments in her book, Comfort Women of the Empire: The Battle
Over Colonial Rule and Memory (Park 2014). The group also requested a
provisional injunction to ban the publication and sales of the book and filed
a civil lawsuit for damages. The former Comfort Women argued that Park
disseminated the wrong notion in her book—namely, that the “Comfort
Women” were “prostitutes” who “collaborated with the Japanese mili-
tary,” thereby defaming them and causing emotional distress. The Seoul
Eastern District Court on February 17, 2015 sided with the plaintiffs and
imposed the injunction, saying publication of the book can resume after
the deletion of certain passages that undermine the honor of the victims
(Garcia 2016).
3 WOMEN’S REDRESS MOVEMENT FOR JAPANESE MILITARY SEXUAL… 53
Scene #4
On December 28, 2015 (the day of the so-called “2015 Verbal Agreement”),
the South Korean and Japanese governments announced that they had
agreed to a “final and irrevocable resolution” with regard to the Japanese
military and the “Comfort Women” issues. At the press conference held in
Seoul, the foreign ministers of the two countries presented the agreement
that included an apology from the Japanese government and a payment of
$8.3 million to provide care for the survivors. The Japanese government’s
public apology and the willingness to make a payment from the govern-
ment’s funds was an unexpected compromise for Prime Minister Abe who
had been unwilling to express contrition for Japan’s behavior during the
World War II.
Since the establishment of Chong-Tae-Hyop (Hankuk Chongshindae
Munje Taech’aek Hyopuihoe or the Korean Council for the Women
Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan, hereafter the Korean Council) in
1990 and the first-ever testimony of former Comfort Woman Hak-soon
Kim in 1991, the day before Korea’s National Liberation Day on August
15, who claimed, “I came forward because I could not just sit and watch
the Japanese government denying their Military Sexual Slavery crimes,”
the issues of Japanese military “Comfort Women”1 began to draw interna-
tional attention. Governments, activists, scholars, journalists, and the
media have begun to construct and reconstruct the issues, truths, histo-
ries, and even personal narratives of the “Comfort Women.” As Yoshimi
Yoshiaki (2000) indicates, broader historical and discursive conditions
shape the “emergence” of “Comfort Women” as an international subject
of cultural production, scholarship, activism, and adjudication. According
to shifting international politics and differing commentators as indicated
in the above-mentioned four scenes, the focus of debates and the national/
international emphasis on the issue continue to change.
The issues surrounding the Japanese military sexual slavery not only
reflect the complexity and specifics of Korean society and its history, but
also reveal the pervasive colonialized mentality embedded within the post-
colonial space of East Asia and the global neo-imperial politics. Therefore,
I argue that it is only when we see Japanese military “Comfort Women” as
a legacy of colonization still haunting the androcentric postcolonial states
that we can confront and transform the current political, social, and eco-
nomic conditions under which the “2015 Verbal Agreement” was made
54 N.-Y. LEE
possible. It is the colonial state infused by gendered nationalism and

colonialism that produced and repressed the body of the “Comfort

Women,” but it is the unmarked “I/we” who have played another large
role in reproducing its ghosts through perpetuation of epistemic violence
even after the official ending of the colonial era.2 Because everybody living
in Korea and Japan is implicated in creating and reproducing the mass
trauma of the victims and survivors, the past trauma cannot be disentan-
gled from other women’s experiences in the present. Everyone thus is
responsible for changing the violence-inducing structure (Kim and Lee
2017: 206).
Since Gayatri Spivak’s audacious question, “can the subaltern speak?”
(1988), many feminists have sought to learn to faithfully speak to, rather
than carelessly listen to or irresponsibly speak for, the historically muted
subject of the subaltern woman. Spivak argues that “between patriarchy
and imperialism, subject-constitution and object-formation, the figure of
the women disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent
shutting which is the displaced figuration of the ‘third-world woman’
caught between tradition and modernization” (306). She challenged
androcentric representation on women, either nationalistic or colonialist,
and asked for intervention into women’s ambivalent positionality and the
transformation of women’s material conditions. Many feminists inside and
outside Korea have shown how the body of “Comfort Women” became
an ideological battleground between Korean nationalists and Japanese
colonialists, silencing women and ignoring their own patriarchal practices.
They have challenged the problems of androcentric image, exploring the
relationship between gender and nation (Chung 1997, 1999, 2003; Kang
2010; Kim 2008; Kim and Lee 2017; Lee 1992, 2010, 2014; Song 2008;
Stetz and Oh 2001; Yang 1997, 1998, 2001, 2006). Yet some scholars
still depicted the Korean movement simply as “nationalist” and criticized
it for the absence of women’s diverse voices (Kim 2006; Park 2013;
Yamashita 2011; Soh 2008). What can explain the prevalence and accep-
tance of such criticisms by some scholars and even citizens? Partial under-
standings and partisan interests might be one of the reasons for such
misunderstanding of the “Comfort Women” movement.
This essay aims to suggest more ethical and epistemological under-
standing of the “Comfort Women” movement. I will explore the trajecto-
ries of major debates on “Comfort Women” activism from a postcolonial
feminist perspective. Drawing on a 15-year ethnographic field research,
including participant observation and in-depth interviews with activists
and survivors, I analyze the shifts in major discourses and activism. While
some scholars have reiterated the existing dichotomy of women and nation
under the name of “feminism,” activists concerning Japanese military sex-
ual slavery have created alternative discourses and changed material condi-
tions where subalterns finally could speak by navigating through ideological
conflicts and negotiating between woman and nation, as well as feminism
and nationalism (Lee 2014). I argue that reconstruction of the subject
identity from invisible others to vocal activists in-and-of itself is one of the
most important movement outcomes, for the ideational transformation
effectively debunks and deconstructs coloniality deeply rooted in Korean
society and its people.
What is the Postcolonial?
Postcolonial feminism is critical of the legacies of colonialism and imperial-
ism as well as the functions of androcentric nationalism against women,
and challenges western-centric knowledge that constitutes women as oth-
ers. Issues of race, class, sexuality, colony, empire, nationhood (national-
ism), and the global political economic system are the central concerns. I
argue that postcolonialism is not just a marker for a period coming “after”
the closure of a historical period of dependence. Instead, it is about ongo-
ing hierarchical relations of dominance through which the former colonial
states expand the political, economic, and military power over the other
nations, states, and peoples. As Rosemary Hennessy (2000: 159) points
out, “the ‘post’ of postcolonialism signifies the interrogation of the [ongo-
ing] hierarchy of colonizer-colonized as a structure of knowledge and
power.” Some people may argue that “imperialism can function without
formal colonies but colonialism cannot” (Loomba 1998: 7). However, the
current global order clearly shows that domination does not depend on
direct rule of control, and colonization can happen without imperial con-
quests. There are many examples of economic, cultural, and political pen-
etration of some nations by others. Neo-imperialism, without colonial
territories, has expanded its influence through the colonization of our
consciousness and subconsciousness, production and reproduction of
colonial imaginaries of the subjects, and cultural norms of relationships.
Even worse, direct military invasion of one nation over others is still preva-
lent around the world, creating colonies and new conflicts. Colonialism,
therefore, is an ongoing process which entails (direct and indirect) mate-
rial and territorial domination within the trajectory of western imperialism.
56 N.-Y. LEE
Both actuality (materiality) and symbolism are embedded in multiple lev-

els of culture, economy, and politics.
Therefore, I use the term postcolonial, because “colonialism has not
disappeared under late capitalism, it has merely taken new forms”
(Hennessy 2000: 159). Amid the current neo-imperialistic globalization,
it is our urgent responsibility to explore both changes in power structure
after the official end of colonialism and its continuing effects (Mongia
1996: 1–2). Postcolonial feminism is therefore relevant not only for the
exploration of colonial history, but also for the understanding of the pres-
ent global situation regarding women.
This understanding of the postcolonial calls for critical reflection on
coloniality embedded in the continuing international power imbalance
(McClintock 1995: 13). Coloniality is not just about the psychological
aspects of colonial subjects, but also about the “actualities” of colonial
history inscribed in our (sub)consciousness, bodies, and practices that
eventually lead to social injustice, inequality, and violence. As Mohanty
(1991a: 52) puts it, “colonization has been used to characterize every-
thing from the most evident economic and political hierarchies to the
production of a particular cultural discourse about what is called the ‘third
world’.” It also implies “a relation of structural domination and suppres-
sion—often violent—of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question”
(1991a: 52). Colonization, then, pertains to “how dominant systems of
representation produce and reinforce mental structures and images to
constrain, dehumanize, and disempower particular individuals and social
groups in both First- and Third-World cultures” (Heung 1995: 83). In
this sense, colonization takes accounts of ideas, attitudes, behaviors, and
intellectual practices that consciously and subconsciously reproduce domi-
nant ideologies of gender, race, and political hierarchies between/among
nations and peoples.
Hence, I argue that both the Japanese and Korean citizenry cannot be
free from a “colonial psychic terrain”—a postcolonial condition that has
been deeply inscribed in both the Japanese and Korean minds. What I
term the “colonized psychic terrain” refers to the “colonization of con-
sciousness” which entails practice, which is applicable both to the “colo-
nized” and the “colonizer.” According to Choi (1997: 462), the
“colonization of consciousness” refers to “the imposition by the dominant
power of its own worldview, its own cultural norms and values, on the
people.” Such internalized colonization is both a process and an effect of
colonization by which hegemonic stereotypes infiltrate and transform the
consciousness of others, which (re)produces the historical ghosts based on

the dichotomous relation between self and other.
Then how can we debunk the colonial psychic terrain in order to recon-
struct a decolonized condition for alternative knowledge and relations?
Emma Pérez (1999: 100) writes that “to remain within the colonial imag-
inary is to remain the colonial object who cannot be the subject until
decolonized. The decolonial imaginary challenges power relations to
decolonize notions of ‘otherness’ to move into a liberatory terrain.”
Therefore, without the process of self-reflective interrogation into ambiva-
lent consciousness and practices embedded within our subjectivity, decol-
onization would not be actualized in the postcolonial state of relationships.
Colonial History and Postcolonial Condition

to (Re)Create the Ghosts
From the onset of Japan’s imperialism, the colonial government devel-

oped red-light districts solely for military use both in Japan and in its colo-
nies (Lee 2007: 7). But it was not until 1937 that the Japanese government
and its Imperial Army began to construct the full-scale military comfort
stations (Song 1997: 147–8; Chung 1997: 222–3). In order to deal with
the frequent occurrence of wartime rapes particularly during the Nanking
(Nanjing) Massacre of 1937 and the outbreak of full-scale hostilities in the
occupied territories, the Japanese military considered the establishment of
military comfort stations (Yoshiaki 2000: 189; Lee 2007: 7). While some
military comfort stations were built after their civilian managers applied
for the permit, others were preexisting public brothels to be re-designated
for military use (Chung 1997: 226). By 1938, comfort stations were
established in China and other colonies of Japan, including Manchuria,
Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, French Indochina, the
Dutch East Indies, British Borneo, Burma, Thailand, Eastern New Guinea,
Koror, Saipan, Turk, Halmahera, Guam, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.
Two ostensible reasons for the establishment of so many comfort sta-
tions can be thought of: the prevention of civilian rape in Japanese colo-
nies or occupied areas and the protection of Japanese soldiers from sexual
disease. The very idea of comfort stations for the exclusive use of the
Japanese military in war zones and occupied territories would not have
been possible without the Japanese government’s androcentric perception
of women. And the system would not have been so easily disseminated
58 N.-Y. LEE
without the idea that the utilization of women’s bodies and sexuality is
indispensable to maintain military discipline and efficiency (Yoshiaki 2000:
189–91). Furthermore, without the pervasive system of state-regulated
prostitution and the widespread trafficking of Korean women under colo-
nial rule, imperial Japan could not have mobilized so many Korean women
so quickly (Yoshiaki 2000: 205; Lee 2007).
Notably, one of the strategic reasons why imperial Japan targeted
unmarried Korean girls as “Comfort Women” was the fact that they were
sexually inexperienced because of the traditional cultural emphasis on and
strict social enforcement of female virginity (Soh 2003: 170). Another
reason is that the Japanese empire wanted to exercise its colonial power
over Korean subjects as an articulation of racial and sexual superiority.
Furthermore, the comfort system could have been a telling evidence of
imperial Japan’s effective governmentality in controlling the subjugated
through ethnic cleansing and degradation of Korea’s national pride. As
Chung argues, the sexual slavery system mostly targeting young women
was a part of imperial Japan’s nationalist projects toward the colonized.
The physical and sexual violence against colonized women not only signi-
fies de-masculinization and feminization of the colonized (Tanaka 2002:
4–5; Lee 2007), it actually impeded the future of the colony as well.
Therefore, I argue that the “Comfort Women” system was a most power-
ful symbol for the colonizer to control the colonized, as binding as a range
of differences and discrimination that informs the discursive and political
practices of racial, sexual, and cultural hierarchization (Lee 2007).
Around 50,000 to 200,000 young Korean women were drafted as
“Comfort Women” to service Japanese soldiers throughout Asia and the
South Pacific. Confined in the organized rape camps, those women were
subject to daily “sexual abuse,” “repeated rapes,” “severe physical vio-
lence,” and “hard labor.” During the last month of the war, they were
mostly murdered or left to die by retreating Japanese troops.
Both Korea and Japan have had many complicated ironies from the
historical incident of “Comfort Women.” For the Japanese, it is ironic that
imperialist Japan constructed the system of rape in order to avoid random
rape (Varga 2009: 290). It is even more ironic that in order to avoid the
bad reputation associated with random rape, imperialist Japan instituted
the system of sexual slavery, leaving a long-lasting negative burden on
postwar Japan.
For Koreans, it is ironic that they had tried to repudiate their own his-
tory through the denial of the women’s existence and to suppress their
own memoirs through the oppression of their own women. It is because

“Comfort Women” were considered as not only a symbol of colonial his-
tory but also a signifier of the raped nation (Lee 2014: 79). More ironi-
cally, those undeniably painful memories, which have been deeply
entrenched in Korea’s national psyche, have long haunted Korean society.
The stories of “Comfort Women,” however, were erased from the national
history for a half-century, except for sporadic appearances. Along with the
Japanese government which long tried to conceal its criminality, the vic-
tims themselves and their countries kept silent under the East Asian geo-
politics of the unfinished Cold War. This perspective was officially raised
by the Korean Council in the beginning of the 1990s.3
Japan’s Responses and Shifting Debates

The Japanese government’s first official response was in June 1990 to the
continuous petition letters sent by the Korean Council asking for Japan to
take responsibility for making statements along the lines of “the Japanese
‘Comfort Women’ system was coordinated by private dealers.” However,
due to the Korean Council’s pressure on the Korean government to take
action and to unearth confidential documents in the USA and Japan,
along with the publications of scholars like Yoshimi Yoshiaki, the Japanese
government had no choice but to change its initial stance that the Tokyo
government was not involved in the recruitment process at all. Then on
August 4, 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei officially acknowl-
edged the partial enforcement suggesting “quasi compensation” as a pos-
sible solution. Though the so-called Kono Statement partially and passively
admitted the Japanese military’s involvement in sexual slavery, it had the
following limitations: first, it shifted the blame to private recruiters for the
forceful recruitment of women; second, it did not investigate the total
number of “Comfort Women,” citing lack of evidence; and third, it mini-
mized the scale of the crime and the Japanese military’s involvement by
not investigating postwar measures such as the 1953 San Francisco Peace
Treaty. Most importantly, the Kono Statement did not mention legal
responsibilities at all. The private groups, in particular, continued to express
their frustrations with the Kono Statement which acknowledged only min-
imal responsibility by the Japanese government. The Japanese govern-
ment, furthermore, tried to cover up the Comfort Women issue in order
to evade state responsibilities with the establishment of a private fund
called the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) in 1995. The Tokyo g overnment
60 N.-Y. LEE
argued that the war compensation was fully settled by the 1953 San
Francisco Peace Treaty and the 1965 Korea–Japan Treaty on Basic
Relations. Japan thus decided to provide the victims with “compensation”
(it was later renamed as the Tsugunai [Atonement] Fund) raised by private
citizens’ donations instead of government funds.
Many of the victims were angered by and stood against this fund. They
protested by saying, “Why are they giving us donations when we are the
victims of the state’s criminal act?” One victim shouted and collapsed: “I
am not a beggar!” Ms. Song Shin-do, a Korean victim living in Japan, also
dismissed the Asian Women’s Fund by saying, “Japanese people are already
looking down on us because we are living on the state’s basic welfare ben-
efits. If they hear that we have received the Japanese people’s donations,
we will be held in greater contempt than before. We will receive the money
only when the government apologizes and pays reparations. I would be
better off without the money. I can say what I want to say until the end
without receiving that kind of money.” Eventually only 60 out of 250
victims in Korea agreed to accept the funds because of their living condi-
tions. Most of the victims rejected the Japanese government’s compensa-
tion scheme. Thus the issue was not resolved. Moreover, Prime Minister
Abe has repeatedly released statements undermining and modifying the
Kono Statement. He keeps on denying the imperial invasion and the
Japanese military slavery system by arguing that “our country’s honor and
reputation is conspicuously damaged by unfair accusations that go against
the historical facts. The wrong information on the postwar reparation tri-
als and ‘Comfort Women’ issues are getting disseminated. We will chal-
lenge and rebut by utilizing new research.” The underlying intent of his
denials was finally realized through the 2015 bilateral agreement.
Interestingly, the work of a Korean female scholar (instead of a Japanese
one) reignited the debates on Korean nationalism. Park Yu-ha’s first book,
entitled For Reconciliation: Textbooks, Comfort Women, Yasukuni, Toku-to
(2005), was originally published in Korean and then translated into
Japanese in 2006 when the dominant conservative right wing intersected
with the strong emergence of Japanese nationalism. Even though some
scholars inside and outside Korea have long criticized androcentric Korean
nationalism and ambivalent government policy towards “Comfort
Women,” Park’s argument ignited the international controversy on
nationalism in the context of “Comfort Women.” According to her, the
solidarity between Japanese and Korean nonprofit organizations turned a
blind eye to Korean nationalism (9), and activists and feminist scholars
both in Japan and Korea closed the door on the prospect of “reconcilia-
tion” (79). Moreover, she argues that the movement for sincere “apol-
ogy” cannot “solve the problem but will bring more antagonism” (9).
Sympathetically responding to Park, Onuma Yasuaki, one of the most
influential scholars of international law in Japan, published a book in 2007
titled What Was the Issue of Comfort Women: Advantages and Disadvantages
of the Media, NGOs and Government. Agreeing with Park’s argument that
Japanese NGOs and feminist scholars have fueled the anti-Japanese nation-
alism in South Korea, Onuma’s main criticism is directed at Japanese activ-
ists, and Korean feminist scholars and activists who have contested the
Asian Women’s Fund or National (Koku-min) People of Japan Fund of
Asia’s Peace for Women by insisting on the “moral responsibility” superior
to “legal responsibility.” More importantly, Onuma’s book title (trans-
lated in Korean as Japan Wants to Apologize: The Military Comfort Women
and National Funds) implies that Korean feminists and activists are the
barrier for the historical progress despite Japan’s efforts to achieve “recon-
ciliation” between two countries and between the past and the present.
The intertwined characteristics of imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy,
and gendered nationalism were shifted to a set of much more simplified
dichotomies between “legal responsibility” vs. “moral responsibility,” “state
responsibility” vs. “civic responsibility,” “apology” vs. “reconciliation,” and,
even worse, “Korean nationalism vs. Japanese nationalism.”
Park Yu-ha’s second book, Comfort Women of the Empire: The Battle
Over Colonial Rule and Memory (Park 2013), triggered more controver-
sies among activists, scholars, and the ordinary citizens of the two coun-
tries. She unfortunately had to face legal action in South Korea. In the
book, she argues that “perceptions of Korean comfort women have been
polarized (i.e. prostitute vs. sexual slaves)” (6)—and because of the
“Korean nationalistic representation” in the “public memory” of South
Korean society, “200,000 girls were forcibly taken away” (107), because
“ideas about ‘girls’ and ‘prostitutes’ remain polarized, intergovernmental
ties between Tokyo and Seoul have come to a grinding halt” (204–9).
Park continues to assert that “the women were collaborators of the
Empire” (60, 62, 90) and that the Korean women’s movement (specifi-
cally the Korean Council) is so nationalistic that it oppresses the diversity
of the women’s experiences (112, 211, 296).
Park did correctly, however, point out that “Koreans, too, needed to
accept the responsibility for the comfort women” (in an interview with
YTN, Korea) and tried to show a bigger picture of “an empire and its
62 N.-Y. LEE
colony” (in an interview with Asahi, Japan, March 11, 2015). Her criti-
cisms of Korean male traffickers who recruited the women, as well as the
Korean “patriarchal system that subjugates the women” are not different
from the views of Korean feminists. Whereas one of the Korean feminist
community’s central arguments has been that women’s diverse experiences
should not be collapsed into one archetype constructed by androcentric
and ethnocentric nationalists, Park neither appreciates nor recognizes it in
her book at all.
It is disappointing that Park ignores the feminists’ efforts to decon-
struct the symbolism of “Comfort Women,” who have been arbitrarily
utilized depending on shifting national interests. This strategic calculation
leads to the “politics of inclusion/exclusion,” a characteristic of postcolo-
nial history. Park reiterates the argument in Comfort Women of the Empire,
by describing the “nationalist” Korean Council and “politicized” Japanese
NGO movement as the main obstacles in resolving the “Comfort Women”
issues and bilateral reconciliation. Movements, both in Korea and in Japan,
however, have never precluded the alternative voice in representational
politics nor claimed “Comfort Women” as a fictitious ground for historical
legitimacy. Rather, being situated in the “historical present,” the feminists
have critiqued the categorical identity of “Comfort Women” that hege-
monic power structures “engender, naturalize, and immobilize,” while
taking into account “the constitutive powers of their own representational
claims” (Butler 1999: 8–9). Since the dark days of the Comfort Women’s
silence, the transnational feminist movement began to pave a new path for
historical justice. With their persistent probe into past wrongs, we now can
imagine the meaningful reconciliation between Korea and Japan.
Moreover, Park exaggerates one Comfort Woman’s love story with a
Japanese soldier while neglecting many other women’s painful experiences
as sex slaves. This stance risks ahistoricism of Imperial Japan because her
main argument is that “the immediate cause of the crime against humanity
is not the state of Japan, but [Chosun] trafficking agents [dealers]” (Park
2013: 237). Through her (un)intentional ignorance of the functions of
colonialism in the production of “comfort women,” Park represses diverse
women’s voices, projecting them as a “ghost.” It is even more ironic that
Park Yu-ha, who has never engaged in the movement’s activism, neither
personally nor academically, argues that “to find a resolution” it is impor-
tant to “pay attention to the pains of individuals without turning the story
into an issue of national identity.” Her problematic methodology in aca-
demic practice leads us to question her command of “true voices.” Park,
for example, never tried to listen to the testimonies of Comfort Women in

person. Park’s ignorance of the ideational transformation of the survivors
and movement activism was one of the main causes of the “misunder-
standing” (on her part) and the “criticisms” of her (on the part of others).
Differing Movement, Speaking Subalterns

Over the 25 years of activism, the Korean Council has encompassed nearly
all issues pertaining to women’s lived experiences: sexual violence, sexual
exploitation, gendered nation, woman and colonialism, war crimes against
women, gender and peace, intersectional identities, women’s subjectivity,
women’s transnational coalition, and so on. At the beginning of the move-
ment, cofounder Lee Hyo-jae clearly stated that the “Comfort Women”
issue is a symbol of unsettled residuals of colonialism and war crimes
against humanity (Lee 1992: 8). Lee also indicated that the Korean
Council was founded to promote women’s interests in suffering caused by
colonial suppression and national division (10–11). Her idea that female
sexuality is inseparable from the issues of nationhood has been a primary
principle of the organizational commitment. Accordingly, the Korean
Council has long raised questions of ethnic nationalism, militaristic sexual
culture, colonial legacy, and sexual violence. The list indicates that Korean
patriarchy and androcentric nationalism was (un)intentionally complicit in
reproducing and reconstructing “Comfort Women.” The Council is also
equally critical of the Japanese imperial state which played a crucial role in
organizing, conducting, concealing, and normalizing the violence com-
mitted against “Comfort Women” in colonized Korea (Lee 2014: 88).
These feminist issues go hand in hand with the burgeoning of Korean
women’s movements in the late 1980s. As Korea’s women’s movement
emerged as an increasingly viable force for Korea’s democratization move-
ment, many women began to see gender justice as the basis for democracy.
The societal attention to gender equality and sexual violence grew accord-
ingly. As the women’s movement directed its attention to systematic sexual
violence such as sex tourism, the understanding of “Comfort Women” as the
victims of systematic sexual violence became possible (Kim and Lee 2017:
197). The causal understanding between patriarchy and sexual violence
made Japanese military sexual slavery a social issue, thus paving the way for a
widespread social movement in South Korea. The history of Japanese mili-
tary sexual slavery allowed the simultaneous rise of and cooperation with the
movement in Japan. Moreover, the Korean Council successfully induced
64 N.-Y. LEE
coalition-building with the NGOs in other Asian countries resulting in the

organization of the Asian Solidarity Network. Through the Solidarity
Network, Asian NGOs share information among themselves and hold the
annual Asian Solidarity Conference on the issue of military sexual slavery by
Japan. This coalition has further expanded to feminist NGOs across the
globe, which together with the Korean Council organize symposia and hold
transnational meetings for testimonies and petitions. The Council orga-
nized many other activities such as collecting survivors’ testimonies, hold-
ing the Wednesday demonstrations, and establishing a civic museum (the
War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul), just to name a few.4
Among the long list of activities, the Korean Council considers support
for the victims as the most important task. It continues to provide steady
and firm support to the former Comfort Women such as paying regular
visits, building them a shelter, assisting them with hospital visits, and orga-
nizing funerals for deceased victims. Indeed, the Council office has been a
safe haven where the victims can disclose their stories without fear of stig-
matization, meet other victims for camaraderie, and receive a variety of
support. Although the victims of the comfort system loathe to speak about
their experiences at first, they gradually open up their hearts to the Council
staff members. By communicating with others about the wounds, the sur-
vivors begin to heal. They start to realize that their stigmatized past was
not their fault. It was instead the workings of the government, military,
and patriarchal society. This epiphany worked like magic for the survivors,
transforming them from powerless victims to vocal activists. Realizing that
their lives were sacrificed by a tumultuous history, the women become
determined to do something for future generations.
Helping the victims to see themselves as important mediators who can
actually change and improve the world has been the most remarkable
accomplishment of the “Comfort Women” movement. Following this
transformation, the survivors start to educate the younger generations and
the visitors of the shelter about modern Korean history from their lived
experiences and share their insights to prevent repetition of unfortunate
histories such as colonialism, war, and Japanese military sexual slavery. The
Korean Council also provides assistance for their domestic travel in Korea
as well as overseas to speak about their experiences. The survivors respond
actively to interview requests from the international media as well.
One notable example of a convergence between the survivors’ solidar-
ity and their ideational change is the creation of the “Butterfly Fund.”
Established in 2012 with public donations, the Butterfly Fund is to sup-
port the victims of wartime sexual violence in countries like Vietnam and
the Democratic Republic of Congo. In her speech to a group of history
teachers in Canada in October, 2010, Won-ok Gil exclaimed, “You haven’t
suffered from the war. So you cannot know how horrible it is. That’s why
I am visiting places like this and speaking about the war. No more war like
that [Japan’s Asia-Pacific War] again. No more victims like me again.”
This strong sentiment was motivated by her own experiences as well as
similar stories like those of Rebecca Masika Katsuva, the Congolese woman
who was raped by the armed forces with her two young daughters. Katsuva
is now supporting the victims of sexual violence despite continued threats
of sexual violence and death. Moved by Katsuva’s story, Won-ok Gil and
Bok-dong Kim, who was also present at the Canadian meeting, decided to
donate their reparations money to women like Katsuva who suffer from
violence in the world’s conflict zones. Following Gil’s speech, Bok-dong
Kim announced her hope that “if we receive legal reparations from the
Japanese government, I would like to support the victims of sexual vio-
lence in conflict zones with all the reparation compensation.” As of 2015,
Bok-dong Kim has donated approximately $50,000 to the Butterfly Fund
with the message of peace and sincere apology to the woman victims of
Korean soldiers during the Vietnam War. And in 2017, the fund went to
the survivors of Japanese military sexual slavery in Indonesia and other
countries. The former Comfort Women grandmas, who have overcome
their own trauma, are spreading messages of peace to create a new wave of
movement by embracing other victims. Their scars from the past have
opened the door for a new kind of peace.
The groundbreaking idea would not have been possible had the
“Comfort Women” themselves not changed over time. Their activist
engagement has reached beyond the limited confines of nationality, race,
class, gender, language, and the “Comfort Women.” The once invisible
“ghosts,” the helpless victims and sexual slaves, gradually realized the sys-
tematic construction of women’s lived lives from the learning processes
(Lee 2014: 89–90).
Identity is neither monolithic nor static. It is continuously (re)con-
structed through relationship with the other. By sharing their traumatic
experiences with others, victims can acquire a different sense of self. By
listening to others’ stories, “Comfort Women” recognize the similar
agony and pain with other women (Lee 2014: 90). This new decolonized
imaginary allows us to recognize the differential parts of histories and
alternative points of identification.
66 N.-Y. LEE
Conclusion: For More Accountable and Ethical

Representation
Any attempt to tell the stories of “Comfort Women” constitutes a “poli-
tics of representation” in-and-of itself. This is because the identities and
experiences of “Comfort Women” have been continuously (re)repre-
sented and (re)constituted through competing discourses among imperial
“I/eye,” colonized nationalist “I/eye,” and (non-)representative organi-
zations’ “I/eye” within constant shifting international power dynamics.
In this regard, each one of us is involved in the “politics of representa-
tion.” I believe that more accountable representation is possible by paying
closer attention to the specific historical milieu. Mohanty (1991b), for
example, emphasizes the intersections of the systems of domination and
women’s positionality located at particular historical conjunctures.
Historical specifics on “relations of ruling” and the “dynamic oppositional
agency” of individuals and collectives, thus, interact with them. I argue
that the multiple intersections of power structures are embedded in the
processes of ruling which produce and suppress the ghost. The ways in
which we (re)construct women’s ontology beyond the postcolonial condi-
tion should, therefore, be the focus of feminist analysis. Humble engage-
ment in the activism and empathetic observation of women’s experiences
is necessary to constitute the decolonial images of women in academic
practice. The research process itself is an important site to confront and
debunk our own colonized consciousness. What we have to remember is
that we are not primarily here to help others, but to learn from the activist
experiences and to heal our own postcolonial traumas through survivors’
experiences. In fact, the dynamic antithesis of “Comfort Women” has
responded to the hegemonic thesis in order to explore an alternative way
to achieve historical reconciliation, navigating complex power dynamics
and ideational transformation.
Throughout women’s activism, subalterns finally could speak to each
other in order to go beyond the postcolonial conditions of ongoing con-
testations and state denials. By demanding peace and justice for women
across the globe, the survivors have shown the importance of transnational
coalitions based on embodied manifestations of the existing colonial
boundaries between/among us while simultaneously opening up the pos-
sibility of transcending these boundaries.
Despite the ongoing wrangling by the Seoul and Tokyo governments,
neither the survivors nor the Korean public have accepted the 2015
Korea–Japan Agreement on the Comfort Women. The survivors are artic-

ulating their clear discontent with the bilateral deal. Without official apol-
ogy and admission of legal responsibility by the Abe government, the 1
billion yen offered as reparations is nothing but a humiliation, they assert.
As the Director of Korea Council, Mi-hyang Yoon, points out, the
Agreement “did not adopt a victim-centered approach” for Japan did not
acknowledge the criminality of the sexual slavery system. Many researchers
have also pointed out the serious shortcomings of the “2015 Agreement”
such as “No admission of legal responsibility,” “No Compensation but
humanitarian aid,” “Reinforcing the 1965 Korea–Japan Agreement,”
“No fundamental consideration of historical justice and peace in East
Asia,” “Problems of the relocation of the Peace Monument (so-called
Comfort Woman Statue),” and even the illegality of the agreement itself
(Lee 2016). The most serious problem, I believe, lies with the neglect or
even the betrayal of the survivors’ long aspiration for the last several
decades. Both the governments neither reflected the victim-survivors’
voice nor heard the activists’ opinion in the negotiation process of the
“2015 Agreement.” In confronting the Japanese government’s continued
refusal to admit the historical facts, it was the women’s movements,
domestic and transnational, that dragged the Japanese government to the
negotiation table (Limon 2014).
Up until October 2017, the Wednesday demonstration5 continued
with the participation of survivors and citizens. Younger generations com-
ing from all around the world are learning the ongoing postcolonial injus-
tices and the hidden history of women from the site. With the stories of
resentment, sorrow, and aspirations now being told, an alternative history
is persistently told by the survivors to de/reconstruct the androcentric
history and postcolonial society. The survivors remind us of the impor-
tance of the transnational women’s movement. The boundaries are being
transcended and new doors are opening up with the bonding of victims
and survivors in the global community.
What, then, can we do in order not to think and act like colonized
intellectuals? I argue that it is our turn to listen to the victims, to get
involved in the movement, and to take responsibility for a better future.
Otherwise, subalterns cannot speak at all. Hopefully, we will be able to
produce a new space that offers a new insight into our presentist past with
a transformative recognition of the ghost.
Let me close this chapter with a victim-survivor’s words:
68 N.-Y. LEE
It still hurts to remember the past and tell the painful stories of my experi-
ence in public. Every night, I cannot sleep well because I am haunted by the
horrible experiences. By presenting my testimony, I regain my sense of self
and feel supported and connected with other women. By attending seminars
around the world, talking about my experiences, and meeting various peo-
ple, I have come to realize that there are many people who are suffering like
I did. Though I have many supporters, including the Korean Council and
ordinary people of all ages, nationalities, and genders, many are still left with
no assistance. Please do the right thing and work for justice, not just for me
but also for other women who are still suffering from violence and severe
discrimination all over the world and for the next generation. (Bok-dong
Kim, interview with Na-Young Lee, July 2013; author’s translation)
Notes
1. Here in this chapter I will use two terms to describe the victims. One is
“Comfort Woman,” which was used in other sources, including Japanese
military documents, and thus proves the existence of the crime. The other is
“(the victim or survivor of) Japanese military sexual slavery,” which describes
the essence and nature of the crime.
2. The term “ghost” is based on what Avery Gordon has defined: “the ghost
is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and investigating
it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life.
The ghost or the apparition is one form by which something lost, or barely
visible, or seemingly not there to our supposedly well-trained eyes, makes
itself known or apparent to us, in its own way, of course” (Gordon 1997: 8).
3. As Lee (2014) points out, there are three different reasons for the long
silence: international undesirability, Korean inability, and Japanese irrespon-
sibility, which symbolize the post/colonial condition. For further discus-
sion, please refer to Lee (2014).
4. The Korean council has demanded the truth and political responsibility
nationally and internationally, reconstructed international norms on sexual
violence during the armed conflicts, pushed states to work on recommenda-
tions, laws, and polices, and formed transnational alliances and coordinating
activities with international organizations. For the Korean Council’s activ-
ism and its dominant principles that shifted within the context of an
expanding political space brought on by ongoing negotiations and/or con-
flict with legacies of Imperial Japan and androcentric nationalism, please
refer to Lee (2014).
5. First staged by the Korean Council and survivors in front of the Japanese
Embassy in January 1991, the Wednesday Demonstration has been held
continuously every week to this day, becoming the longest protest on a

single topic around the globe. With participation by citizens from all walks
of life, the rally has served as an arena for education in peace and history,
even spreading abroad.
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PART II
The Cold War Residuals and the

Korean War
CHAPTER 4
Legacies of the Korean War: Transforming

Ancestral Rituals in South Korea
Heonik Kwon
Introduction
According to the sociologist Anthony Giddens, the Cold War confronta-
tion was not merely about different visions of ideal economic and political
relations, but also about separate ways of imagining the place of kinship in
modern society, which he identifies as the “rightist” idealization of the
traditional, patriarchal familial order versus the “leftist” view of the family
as a microcosm of an undemocratic political order. In this light, Giddens
argues that in the post-Cold War world societies require a new model of
family relations that goes beyond the old bifurcated view of family. The
new model has to synthesize the imperative of moral solidarity with the
freedom of individual choice, according to him, as a unity based on con-
tractual commitment among individual members. Calling the model “new
kinship” and “democratic family,” Giddens proposes that the new kinship
will respect the norms of “equality, mutual respect, autonomy, decision-
making through communication and freedom from violence” (1998: 90–3).
Giddens writes about family relations at length in a work devoted to the
political history of bipolar ideologies, because he believes that families are
H. Kwon (*)
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
e-mail: hik21@cam.ac.uk

76 H. KWON
a basic institution of civil society and that a strong civil society is central to
successful social development beyond the legacy of left and right opposi-
tions. Giddens’s “third way” agenda is based on the notion that new soci-
ological thinking is necessary after the end of the Cold War. According to
Giddens, political development after the Cold War depends on how soci-
eties creatively inherit positive elements from both the right and left ideo-
logical legacies. Its main constituents will be “states without enemies” (as
opposed to the old states organized along the front line of bipolar enmity),
“cosmopolitan nations” (as opposed to the old nations pursuing national-
ism), a “mixed economy” (between capitalism and socialism), and “active
civil societies.” At the core of this creative process of grafting, Giddens
argues, are the “post-traditional” conditions of individual and collective
life, an understanding of which requires transcending the traditional soci-
ological reasoning that sets individual freedom and communal solidarity as
contrary values (1994: 13). The “post-traditional” society, according to
Giddens, is expressed most prominently in the social life of what he calls
the “democratic family.”
This is a stimulating discussion that has considerable relevance for the
subject to be discussed in this essay. One issue stands out as having par-
ticular significance: the recognition that it is meaningful to consider a
large, apparently global political form such as the Cold War and its chang-
ing ramifications through a look at the intimate, small-scale milieu of
human lives such as family relations. Violent bipolar politics, such as
Korea’s civil war crisis, penetrated deeply into the fabric of communal life
and also made communal relations into a powerful tool for the creation of
an ideologically pure, cohesive political society. This means, logically, that
the understanding of how global bipolar politics actually shaped human
lives remains critically incomplete without grasping how communities
experienced the extreme ideological bifurcation in the twentieth century
and how today they strive to attend to the ruins and wounds left by this
turbulent history.
However, the problem is that Giddens’ idea about the post-Cold War
social order, although suggestive in some ways, is based on a parochial
understanding of the global conflict, exclusively addressing the specific
historical context of Western Europe. In his accounts, the correlative posi-
tions of “left and right” appear mainly as debating different visions of
modernity and schemes of social ordering. According to the Italian phi-
losopher Norberto Bobbio, “left and right” are like two sides of a coin, in
which the “existence of one presupposes the existence of the other, the
4 LEGACIES OF THE KOREAN WAR: TRANSFORMING ANCESTRAL RITUALS… 77
only way to invalidate the adversary is to invalidate oneself” (1996: 14).

This privileged experience of left and right oppositions as both being inte-
gral parts of the body politic, however, does not extend to the broader
historical realities of the global Cold War, in which taking the position of
one side meant denying the opposite side a raison d’être or physically anni-
hilating its existence from the political arena.
In the situation of an ideologically charged armed conflict or systemic
state violence, “left or right” might not be merely about antithetical politi-
cal distinction, but rather a question that has direct relevance for the pres-
ervation of human life and the protection of basic civil and human rights.
Against this historical background of the Cold War experienced as a “bal-
ance of terror” rather than as a balance of power, family or kinship rela-
tions may therefore take on a relevance in the general social transition
from the bipolar order that is different than how Giddens discusses
the issue.
Jeju Island
In April 2004, many places on Jeju Island on Korea’s southern maritime
border were bustling with people in preparation for their annual com-
memoration of the April 3 incident—a communist-led uprising triggered
on April 3, 1948 to protest against both the measures taken by the US
occupying forces to root out radical nationalist forces from postcolonial
Korea and the policies of the US administration to establish an indepen-
dent anti-communist state in the southern half of the Korean peninsula.
The commemoration also refers to the numerous atrocities of civilian kill-
ings that devastated the island following the uprising, caused by brutal
counterinsurgency military campaigns and the counteractions by commu-
nist partisans. The violent period was, in many ways, a prelude to the
Korean War (1950–53).
The April 3 incident has only recently become a publicly acknowledged
historical reality among the islanders, in contrast to the past decades dur-
ing which the subject remained strictly taboo in public discourse (Gwon
2006). The situation changed at the beginning of the 1990s, and nowa-
days the islanders are free to hold death-anniversary rites for their relatives
who were killed or disappeared in the chaos of 1948. Every April, the
whole island briefly turns into one gigantic ritual community consisting of
thousands of separate but simultaneous family- or community-based death
commemoration events.
78 H. KWON
During the month of April, it is now a familiar experience for visitors to

the island to find themselves inadvertently party to a ritual occasion that
the anthropologist Kim Seong-nae (1989) calls “the lamentations of the
dead.” Presided over by local ritual specialists, these occasions invite the
spirits of the tragic dead, offer food and money to them, and later enact
the clearing of obstacles from their path to the netherworld. A key ele-
ment in this long and complex ritual procedure is the occasion when the
ritual specialists’ speeches and songs relate the grievous feelings and unful-
filled wishes of the invited spirits of the dead.
In a family-based performance, the lamentations of the dead typically
begin with tearful narration of the moments of death, the horrors of vio-
lence and the expression of indignation against the unjust killing. Later,
the ritual performance moves on to the stage where the spirits, exhausted
with lamentation and somewhat calmed down, engage with the surround-
ings and the participants. They express gratitude to their family for caring
about their grievous feelings, and this is often accompanied by magical
speculations about the family’s health matters or financial prospects. When
the spirits of the dead start to express concerns about their living family,
this is understood to mean that they have become free from the grid of
sorrows, which the Koreans express as a successful “disentanglement of
grievous feelings” (Kwon 2004).
In a ritual on a wider scale that involves participants beyond the family
circle, the lamentations may include the spirits’ confused remarks about
how they should relate to the strangers gathered for the occasion, which
later typically develop into remarks of appreciation and gratitude. The
spirits thank the participants for their demonstration of sympathy for the
suffering of the dead, who have no blood ties to them and to whom,
therefore, the participants have no ritual obligations. Moreover, if the
occasion is sponsored by an organization that has a particular moral or
political objective, some of the invited spirits may proceed to make ges-
tures of support for that organization. Thus, the spirit narration from the
victims of a massacre may explicitly invoke concepts such as human rights
if the ceremony is sponsored by a civil rights activist group, and other
modern idioms such as gender equality if the occasion is supported by a
network of feminist activists. In this way, the lamentations of the dead
closely engage with the diverse aspirations of the living.
Several astute observers of Korea’s modern history have noted that
South Korea’s recent democratic transition, and the forceful popular polit-
ical mobilization since the late 1980s that enabled this transition, are not
to be considered separate from the esthetical power of ritualized lamenta-

tions (Kim 1994). During the 1990s, South Korea’s civil rights activist
groups actively disseminated the voices of the victims of state violence as a
way of mobilizing public awareness and support for their cause, and they
employed forms of popular shamanic mortuary processions to materialize
the dead victims’ messages. The lamentations of the dead have been,
according to Kim Kwang-Ok (1994), a principal esthetical instrument in
Korea’s “rituals of resistance.” The voices of the dead are considered both
as evidence of political violence and as an appeal for collective actions for
justice. Political activism in South Korea has been so intimately tied to the
ritual esthetics of lamenting spirits of the dead that even an academic
forum might include the esthetical form. The annual assembly of Korean
anthropologists chose the cultural legacy of the Korean War as the confer-
ence’s main theme in 1999, and that conference included a grand sha-
manic spirit consolation rite dedicated to all the spirits of the tragic dead
from the war era.
The lamentations of the dead constitute an important esthetic form in
Korea’s culture of political protest, and this aspect should be weighed
against the nation’s particular historical background, most notably, its
experience of the Cold War in the form of violent civil war and the related
political history of anti-communism. The proliferation of spirit narrations
of violent wartime death in the present time relates to the repression of the
history of mass death in the past decades. The rich literary tradition of Jeju
testifies to this intimate relationship between the grievance-expressing
spirits of the dead and the inability of the living to account for
their memories.
One such literary expression, for instance, is Hyun Gil-eon’s short story
“Our Grandfather” (1990), which deals with a village drama caused by a
domestic crisis when a family’s dying grandfather is briefly possessed by
the spirit of his dead son. The possessed grandfather suddenly recovers his
physical strength and visits an old friend (of the son) in the village. During
the April 3 incident, the villager had taken part in accusing the son of
expressing communist sympathies; these accusations had resulted in his
summary execution at the hands of counterinsurgency forces. The grand-
father demands that the friend publicly apologize for his wrongful accusa-
tion. The villager refuses to do so and instead, gathers other people in the
village to help in his plot to lynch the accuser. The return of the dead in
this magical drama highlights the villagers’ complicity in the unjust death
of the son and the long imposition of silence about past grievances. The
80 H. KWON
story’s climax comes when the son’s ghost realizes the futility of his actions
and turns silent, at which moment the family’s grandfather passes away.
Just as the silence of the dead was a prime motif in Jeju’s literature of
resistance under the anti-communist political regimes, so their publicly
staged lamentations are now a principal element in the island’s cultural
activity after the democratic transition. Between the past and the present,
a radical change has taken place in that the living are no longer obliged to
turn a deaf ear to what the dead have to say about history and historical
justice. What has not changed over time, however, is that the understand-
ing of political reality at the grassroots level is expressed through the com-
municability of historical experience between the living and the dead.
Since the end of the 1980s, the rituals displaying the lamenting spirits
of the dead have become public events in Jeju, and in the 1990s, these
rituals were used as part of the forceful nationwide civil activism. In Jeju,
activism focused on morally rehabilitating the casualties of the April 3
incident as innocent civilian victims, replacing their previous classification
as sympathizers of communist insurgents. The rehabilitative initiatives
have since spread to other parts of the country, and in 2000 they resulted
in legislation of a special parliamentary inquiry into the April 3 incident.
This step was followed in May 2005 by legislation for an investigation of
incidents of civilian massacres in general during the Korean War. This leg-
islation included an investigation of the roundup and summary execution
of alleged communist sympathizers in the early days of the Korean War,
which involved an estimated 200,000 civilians.
In subsequent years, these initiatives led to forensic excavations on a
national scale to uncover suspected sites of mass burial; in 2008, a memo-
rial park (Jeju Peace Park, see below) was also completed in Jeju. These
dark chapters in modern Korean history were relegated to non-history
during the previous authoritarian regimes under military rule, which made
anti-communism one of the state’s primary guidelines. By contrast, since
the early 1990s, the previously hidden histories of mass death have become
one of the most heated and contested issues of public debate. In fact, their
emergence into public discourse is regarded by observers as a key feature
of Korea’s political democratization. Jeju Province provided an excellent
example of this development when it initiated an institutional basis for
sustained documentation of the victims of the April 3 atrocities.
Throughout the province there are memorial events, and the island con-
tinues to excavate suspected mass burial sites, with plans to preserve these
sites as historical monuments. The provincial authority also hopes to
develop these activities so as to promote the province’s public image as

“an island of peace and human rights.”
The achievements of the Jeju islanders were made possible by their
sustained community-based grassroots mobilization, activated through
networks of nongovernmental organizations and civil rights associations,
including the association of the victims’ families. For those active in the
family association, the early 1990s was a time of sea change. Before 1990,
the association was officially called the Anti-Communist Association of
Families of the Jeju April 3 Incident Victims and, as such, it was domi-
nated by families related to a particular category of victims—local civil
servants and paramilitary personnel killed by the communist militia. By
current estimation, this category of victims amounts to 10 to 20 percent
of the total civilian casualties. The rest—the victims of government troops,
police forces, or paramilitary groups—were previously classified as com-
munist subversives or “red elements.” Since 1990, the association has
gradually been taken over by the families of the majority, relegating the
relatives of victims of the earlier era to minority status within the associa-
tion. This was “a quiet revolution,” according to a senior member of the
association, the result of a long, difficult negotiation between different
groups of family representatives.
During the transition from a nominally anti-communist organization,
the association faced several crises: some family representatives with anti-
communist backgrounds left the association, and some new representa-
tives with backgrounds that favored the communist side refused to sit with
the former representatives. Conflicts continue to exist, not only within the
provincial association, but also at the village level. Nevertheless, the asso-
ciation’s resolute determination to account for all atrocities from all sides,
communist or anti-communist, has been conducive to preventing the con-
flicts from reaching an explosive level. Equally important was the fact that
many family representatives (particularly from the villages in the mountain
region, which suffered both from the pacification activity of the govern-
ment troops and from the retributive actions from communist partisans)
suffered casualties on both sides of the conflict within their immediate
circle of relatives. The democratization of the family association was a lib-
erating experience for the families on the majority side, including those
who were members before the change. Under the old scheme, some of the
victims of the state’s anti-communist terror were registered as victims of
the terror perpetrated by communist insurgents. This listing was in part a
survival strategy perpetrated by the victims’ families and in part caused by
82 H. KWON
the prevailing notion that the “red hunt” would not have happened had
there been no “red menace.” The “quiet revolution” of the 1990s meant
that these families are now free to publicly grieve for their dead relatives of
1948 without falsifying the history of the mass death.
New Ancestral Stones

This development has affected the islanders’ ritual commemorative activi-
ties. Many communities have recently begun to introduce previously out-
lawed “red” ancestral identities into their communal ancestral rituals,
thereby placing their memorabilia in demonstrative coexistence with the
tablets of other “ordinary” ancestors, including the memorabilia of patri-
otic “anti-communist” ancestors. This process has resulted in the rise of
diverse, highly inventive new communal ancestral shrines across commu-
nities in Jeju and elsewhere in South Korea since the end of the 1990s,
erected with the specific purpose of community repair.
In February 2008, The New York Times reported a story from a village
in the southwestern region of Korea, under the heading “A Korean village
torn apart from within mends itself” (Choe 2008). The residents of this
village have recently taken a decisive initiative to come to terms with the
wounds of the Korean War, partly through a community-wide project to
erect a village ancestral memorial.
This village, named Kurim (“the forest of pigeons”) after an ancient
legend, is famous in the area for the conservation of traditional houses and
for the production of traditional earthenware. Maintaining a typical tradi-
tional village structure comprising a few lineage-based kindred groups,
Kurim’s elderly residents hold bitter memories of the war. Situated at the
mouth of a rugged mountain area, the village was vulnerable, even before
the Korean War broke out, to the reciprocal violence from the communist
partisans, who had taken shelter in the mountains, and from the counter-
insurgency actions by the national police. This precarious situation resulted
in incidents of vengeful violence within the village, between some indi-
viduals and households who suffered from the communist partisans and
those who lost relatives to the counterinsurgency actions. When the vil-
lage was swept into the changing hands of military occupation during the
initial phase of the Korean War, the violence magnified in intensity and its
brutality was radicalized, as it began to involve the armed power of the
occupying forces.
The Kurim villagers speak proudly of their long-held tradition of

daedong’gye (a type of village assembly), which in the past worked as an
informal local governing body. Consisting of representatives of the com-
munity’s six major lineage groups, the village assembly recently prepared a
book about the settlement’s past and present based on the local people’s
vernacular knowledge of its history. The book includes the history of the
village assembly over the last four centuries, the village’s folkloric tradi-
tion, and the turmoil it underwent during the colonial era and then during
the war. The last depicts a community left helplessly exposed to the war’s
violence. It includes several incidents of mass killing perpetrated both by
the northern and southern forces, which also instigated vengeful violence
among the locals. The publication of this book is part of broader efforts
among the residents of this village, spearheaded by the multi-lineage vil-
lage assembly, to come to terms with the destruction of war. The book’s
prologue says,
Bringing this book into light, the people of Kurim are preparing other works
in the hope of going beyond the wounds of modern history, which our
nation as a whole had to undergo with great pains. Our objective is to con-
sole the souls of those who fell victim to the violence of war and to bring
some comfort to the descendants of these tragic victims who had to conceal
their sorrows during the past decades. We plan to erect a memorial stone
that we hope will provide a means with which we forgive and reconcile with
each other. It will be to our great satisfaction if this book can contribute to
bringing about the spirit conducive to communal reconciliation and peace.
(Kurimjipyŏnchanuiwŏnhoi 2006: 7)
In addition to the village history book project, the Kurim village assem-
bly is also discussing the idea of erecting a memorial stone for the village’s
wartime victims. Many new ancestral shrines and memorials also arose
recently on Jeju Island. Most notable among them is the large memorial
site built at the center of the island, Jeju Peace Park. It was completed in
2010 and is intended to represent the history of the political violence the
islanders underwent between 1948 and 1953 on a province-wide scale.
The place consists of, among other things, a state-of-the-art museum
complex, beautifully conceived memorial sculptures and, above all, a large
chamber that contains thousands of names of victims inscribed on stone
tablets and arranged according to their village origins. The park attracts a
large number of visitors from mainland Korea and overseas and, in April
84 H. KWON
each year, holds a province-wide commemorative event in the presence of

notable guests, the media, and the families of victims. Although the place
is regarded as a public memorial complex dedicated to the victims of the
April 3 incident, this is not necessarily the case for the islanders. At the
annual commemorative gathering in April, when the place is packed with
visitors and commemorators, a number of islanders bring their household
utensils that are kept in their home exclusively for their ancestral death-day
rites. For these families, whether the ceremony is held at home or in the
public sphere, it is above all a rite for the living memory of their family
ancestors. Consequently, for the bereaved families (unlike how it appears
to outside visitors) the Jeju Peace Park is a shrine for ancestral memories
rather than simply being a public monument.
Also remarkable is the local ancestral shrine in the village of Hagui, in
the northern district of Jeju Island, which was completed in the beginning
of 2003. The residents of this village are proud of their 1,000-year-long
history of settlement as well as several prominent historical relics existing
in the environs of the village, particularly those relating to a historic resis-
tance by their ancestors in the fifteenth century against the Mongol inva-
sion. Close to the village are several well-preserved historic sites that, for
the locals, speak of Hagui’s distinguished role as “a frontier defender of
the island of Jeju against foreign invaders arriving from the northern sea”
(Aewŏlŭp 1997: 167). In contrast to these numerous monumental sites
for an old war, there is a relative lack of memorials for the Korean War in
Hagui, unlike some other places on the island. Elsewhere in Jeju, village
spaces are usually dotted with small, widely scattered memorial stones
dedicated to the memory of fallen soldiers of the Korean War from the
village. The Jeju youth provided a crucial labor force to the South Korean
Marine Corps during the Korean War, which played a formative role in the
war’s key battle in the Inchon landing. However, there is very little trace
of this history in Hagui, which the villagers explain by saying that there
were few adult men left in Hagui who could join the Korean War by the
time it broke out—so many of them had already fallen during the earlier
April 3 crisis. However, Hagui does have a prominent war memorial that
other Jeju villages do not. This neo-gothic memorial, called the Memorial
for Patriotic Spirits, is located at the center of a well-landscaped park cem-
etery, which, tucked away from the village houses, contains the graves of
131 fallen soldiers and combat police from the time of the April 3 crisis.
The graves include a number of fighters from “civil organizations”—
referring to the paramilitary anti-communist youth groups, which were

active in the April 3 counterinsurgency war.
The new ancestral shrine in Hagui arose out of the village’s particular
material landscape of war commemoration; that is, the presence of a
prominent memorial dedicated to the combatants of the April 3 counter-
insurgency campaign, and the absence of memorials for the villagers’ sac-
rifice to the Korean War. These two elements were closely interconnected,
as mentioned earlier, as the village had been hit so hard by the govern-
ment’s counterinsurgency anti-communist violence waged on the island
that it had few men to send to the country’s general armed struggle against
communism by the time the Korean War broke out.
The communal ancestral shrine in Hagui consists of a white vertical
stone located at the center on each side of which lie two horizontal stones
made of black granite. The white stone is inscribed, in Chinese characters,
“Shrine of spirit consolation.” The two black stones on the left commem-
orate the patriotic ancestors from the colonial era, the patriotic fighters
from the village during the Korean War and, later, from the military expe-
dition to the Vietnam War. The two black stones on the right side com-
memorate the hundreds of villagers who fell victim to the protracted
anti-communist counterinsurgency campaigns waged in Jeju before and
during the Korean War.
A complex history underlies the completion of this ancestral shrine. As
the villagers now understand, the division of the village into two separate
administrative units in the 1920s was a divide-and-rule strategy of the
Japanese colonial administration, and this division was further exacerbated
during the chaos following the April 3 uprising. Hagui elders recall that
the village’s enforced administrative division developed into a perilous,
painful situation at the height of the military campaigns of the counterin-
surgency. The logic of these campaigns set people in one part of the vil-
lage, labeled then as a “red” hamlet, against those in the other, who then
tried to dissociate themselves from the former. After these campaigns,
Hagui was considered a politically impure, subversive place in Jeju (just as
the whole island of Jeju was known as a “red” island to mainland South
Koreans). Villagers seeking employment outside Hagui experienced dis-
crimination because of their place of origin, and this attitude aggravated
the existing grievances between the two administratively separate residen-
tial clusters. People of one side felt it unjust that they were blamed for
what they believed the other side of the village was responsible for; and the
latter found it hard to accept that they should endure accusations and
86 H. KWON
discrimination even within a close community. Just after the end of the
Korean War in 1953, a group of Hagui villagers petitioned the local court
to give new, separate names to the two village units. Their intention was
partly to bury the stigmatizing name of Hagui and partly to eradicate signs
of affinity between the two units. Since that time, official documents
divide the village of Hagui into Dong-gui and Gui-il, two invented names
that no one liked but which were, nevertheless, necessary.
The historical trajectory resulted in a host of problems and conflicts in
the villagers’ everyday lives. Not only did a number of them suffer from
the extrajudicial system of collective responsibility, which prevented indi-
viduals with an allegedly politically impure family and genealogical back-
ground from taking employment in the public sector and from enjoying
social mobility in general; but some of them also had to endure sharing
the village’s communal space with someone who was, in their view, to
blame for their predicament. The community still reacts to the enduring
wounds of April 3; these feelings are caused by the villagers’ complex
experience with the government’s counterinsurgency actions and the
retributive violence perpetrated by the insurgents. These included, as the
story of “Our Grandfather” illustrates, coercion to accuse neighbors of
supporting the enemy side. These hidden histories are occasionally pried
open to become an explosive issue in the community, as when, for instance,
two young lovers protest against their families’ and the village elders’
fierce opposition to their relationship, without giving them any intelligible
reason for this opposition.
The details of these intimate histories of the April 3 violence and their
contemporary traces remain a taboo subject in Hagui. The most frequently
recalled and excitedly recited episodes are, instead, relegated to festive
occasions. Some time before the villagers began to discuss the idea of a
communal shrine, the two units of Hagui joined in a periodic inter-village
sporting event and feast, organized by the district authority. Though this
event had taken place on many previous occasions, on this particular occa-
sion, the football teams of Dong-gui and Gui-il both managed to reach
the semifinal, each hoping to win the championship. During the competi-
tion, the residents of Dong-gui cheered against the team representing
Gui-il, supporting the team’s opponent from another village instead; the
residents of Gui-il responded in the same way during the match involving
the team from Dong-gui. This experience was scandalous, according to
the Hagui elders I spoke to; they contrasted the divisive situation of the
village with an opposite initiative taking place in the wider world. (At the
time of the inter-village feast, the idea of joint national representation in

international sporting events was under discussion between South and
North Korea.) The village’s shameful collective representation on the dis-
trict football ground provided the momentum for the elders to consider a
communal project that would help to reunite the community of Hagui.
In 1990, the village assemblies of Dong-gui and Gui-il each agreed to
revive the original common name and to shake off their four-decades-long
separation. They established an informal committee responsible for the
rapprochement and reintegration of the two villages. In 2000, this
Committee for Village Development proposed to the village assemblies
the idea of erecting a new ancestral shrine, funded by contributions from
the villagers and from former residents. The idea attracted broad support
from the villagers, including those who had only recently settled there. It
also received strong endorsement from the village elders’ associations;
among the most enthusiastic supporters was the elder who had joined the
partisan group as a boy and whose older brother had been killed by the
insurgents. The donations to the project came from many elderly widows
who had lost their husbands to the counterinsurgency during the April 3
chaos, as well as from a successful businessman settled in Seoul, the oldest
son of a villager killed by the insurgents. When the shrine was completed
in 2003, the Hagui villagers held a grand opening ceremony in the pres-
ence of many visitors from elsewhere in the country and from overseas
(many people from Hagui live in Japan). The black memorial stones on
the left (from the spectator’s perspective) are inscribed with the names of
patriotic village ancestors, including 100 names from colonial times, doz-
ens of patriotic soldiers from the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and a
dozen villagers killed by communist partisans during the April 3 chaos.
The 100 patriotic ancestors from the colonial era include a few whose
dedication to the cause of national liberation was combined with a com-
mitment to socialist or communist ideals. The merit of these so-called
left-wing nationalists was not recognized before the 1990s. The 12 villag-
ers killed by the insurgents belonged to the village’s civil-defense groups
hastily organized by the police forces of the South Korean counterinsur-
gency, most of whom were forcibly recruited and had not been equipped
with firearms. Whether to place the names of these 12 individuals on the
side of patriotic ancestors or on that of tragic mass death was one of the
most complex and most contested questions during the three-year prepa-
ration of the shrine.
88 H. KWON
Conclusion
The democratization of kinship relations is at the heart of political devel-
opment beyond the polarities of left and right. The reason for this situa-
tion is not merely that family and kinship are elementary constituents of
civil society as Giddens describes it, but primarily that kinship has actually
been a locus of radical, violent political conflicts in the past century. By
extension, this means that social actions taking place in this intimate sphere
of life are important for shaping and envisioning the horizon beyond the
politics of the Cold War.
The end of the Cold War as the dominant geopolitical paradigm of the
past century has enabled people to publicly recount their personal experi-
ence of bipolar conflict without fearing the consequences of doing so, and
it has encouraged many scholars of Cold War history to turn their atten-
tion from diplomatic history to social history. These two interconnected
developments constitute the emerging field of social and cultural histories
of the Cold War. When examining societies that experienced the Cold War
in the form of vicious civil war, recent research shows how the violently
divisive historical experience continues to influence interpersonal relations
and communal lives (Kwon 2006; Mazower 2000; Park 2010). The rec-
onciliation of ideologically bifurcated genealogical backgrounds or ances-
tral heritages (“red” communists versus anti-communist patriots or, in
other contexts, revolutionary patriots versus anti-communist “counter-
revolutionaries”) is a critical issue for individuals and for the political com-
munity. In these societies, kinship identity, broadly defined as inclusive of
place-based ties, is a significant site of memory of past political conflicts; it
can also be a locus of creative moral practices. The experience of the Cold
War as a violent civil conflict resulted in a political crisis in the moral com-
munity of kinship. The consequent situation is one that Hegel character-
izes as the collision between “the law of kinship,” which obliges the living
to remember their dead kin, and “the law of the state,” which forbids citi-
zens from commemorating those who died as enemies of the state (Stern
2002: 140). The political crisis was basically a representational crisis in
social memory, in which a large number of family-ancestral identities were
relegated to the status that I have elsewhere called “political ghosts,”
whose historical existence is felt in intimate social life but can nevertheless
not be traced in public memory (Kwon 2008).
Hegel explored the philosophical foundation of the modern state in
part by posing ethical questions involved in the remembrance of the war
dead, drawing upon the legend of Antigone from the Theban plays of
Sophocles. Antigone was torn between the obligation to bury her broth-
ers, killed in war, according to “the divine law” of kinship on one hand
and, on the other, the reality of “the human law” of the state, which pro-
hibited her from giving burial to enemies of the city-state. After burying
her brother who had died as a hero of the city, she chose to do the same
for another brother who had died as an enemy of the city. Since the latter
act violated the edict of the city’s ruler, Antigone was condemned to death
as punishment. Invoking this epic tragedy from ancient Greece, Hegel
reasoned that the ethical foundation of the modern state is grounded in a
dialectical resolution of the clashes between the law of the state and the
law of kinship. Judith Butler (2000: 5) believes that the question pivots on
the fate of human relatedness suspended between life and death and forced
into the tortuous condition of having to choose between the norms of
kinship and subjection to the state.
Antigone met her death because she chose family law over the state’s
edict; many families in postwar South Korea survived by following the
state’s imperative to sacrifice their right to grieve properly and seek conso-
lation for the death of their kinsmen. The state’s repression of the right to
grieve was conditioned by the wider politics of the Cold War. Emerging
from colonial occupation only to find itself as one half of two hostile states,
the new state of South Korea found its legitimacy partly in the perfor-
mance of anti-communist containment. Its militant anti-communist poli-
cies included forging a pure ideological breed and denying impure
traditional ties. In this context, sharing blood relations with an individual
believed to harbor sympathy for the opposite side of the bipolar world
meant being an enemy of the political community. Left or right was not
merely about bodies of ideas in dispute, but also about determining the
bodily existence of individuals and collectives. Equally, the process
“beyond left and right” in this society must inevitably deal with corporeal
identity. If someone has become an outlawed person by sharing blood ties
with the state’s object of containment and exclusion, that person’s claim
to the lawful status of citizen requires legitimization of that relationship.
Thus, kinship emerges as a locus of the decomposing bipolar world in the
world’s outposts and as a powerful force in the making of a tolerant, dem-
ocratic society.
Giddens (1998: 70–1) writes, “If there is a crisis of liberal democracy
today, it is not, as half a century ago, because it is threatened by hostile
rivals, but on the contrary because it has no rivals. With the passing of the
90 H. KWON
bipolar era, most states have no clear-cut enemies. States facing dangers
rather than enemies have to look for sources of legitimacy different from
those in the past.” He then proceeds to chart what he considers to be the
new sources of state legitimacy; he highlights the political responsibility to
foster an active civil society—that is, to further democratize democracy. In
this light, Giddens paints the democratic family as the backbone of an
active civil society after the Cold War. As a new social form, the democratic
family is meant to structurally reconcile individual choice and social soli-
darity, and achieve a dialectical resolution between individual freedom and
collective unity.
In Giddens’s scheme, the social form of kinship has no direct associa-
tion with the oppositions of left and right. Its role for societal develop-
ment beyond the Cold War is mediated by the state’s changing identity
and the related reconfiguration of its relationship to civil society. The end
of the Cold War, for Giddens, primarily affects the state, in the sense of
losing the legitimacy of prioritizing external threats. The displacement of
the state from the dualist geopolitical structure forces it to build alterna-
tive legitimacy in an active, constructive engagement with civil society.
The challenge is to forge a constructive internal relationship with society
in place of hostile external relationships with other states. The idea of the
“democratic family” enters this picture as a constitutive element of civil
society—that is, as an important site of post-Cold War state politics.
The composition of “new kinship” presented by Giddens, however,
allows little space for kinship practices that arise from the background of a
violent modern history such as Jeju’s. His account of right and left unfolds
as if this political antithesis had principally been an issue of academic para-
digms or parliamentary organizations, without mass human suffering and
displacement. Giddens discusses social and political developments beyond
left and right on the assumption that the end of the Cold War is coeval
with the advance of globalization and that these two changes constitute
what he sees as “the emergence of a post-traditional social order” (1994:
5). If the end of the Cold War is at the same time an age of globalization,
as Giddens claims, and the vision of a third way speaks of the morality and
politics of this age, it is puzzling why this vision, claiming to speak for the
global age, draws narrowly on the particular history of the Cold War mani-
fested as a contest and balance of power, ignoring the war’s radically
diverse ramifications across different places. Moreover, Giddens blames
Hegel for advancing a teleological concept of history, which he believes to
have been sublimated in Cold War modernity (Giddens 1994: 53–9, 252).
From his history of left and right, it transpires that Hegelian historicism is
one of the notable philosophic ills that nations and communities should be
alert to in pursuing a progression away from the age of extremes toward a
relationally cosmopolitan and structurally democratic political and social
order. This essay argues to the contrary—that Hegelian political ethical
questions are crucial for historical progression away from the age of vio-
lent bipolar politics.
The world did not experience the global Cold War identically, nor does
it retain an identical memory of it. It is true that the period of the Cold
War was a “long peace”—the idiom with which the historian John Lewis
Gaddis (1987) characterizes the international environment in the second
half of the twentieth century, partly in contrast to the war-torn era of the
first half. Gaddis believes that the bipolar structure of the world order,
despite the many anomalies and negative effects it generated, was a factor
in containing an overt armed confrontation among industrial powers. As
Walter LaFeber (1992: 13–14) notes, however, this view of the Cold War
deals only with a half-truth of bipolar history. The view represents the
dominant Western (as well as the Soviet) experience of the Cold War as an
imaginary war, referring to the politics of competitive preparation for war
in the hope of avoiding actual fighting, whereas identifying the second half
of the twentieth century as an exceptionally long period of international
peace would be hardly intelligible to much of the rest of the world. As
LaFeber (1992: 13) points out, the Cold War era resulted in forty million
human casualties of war in different parts of the world. A crucial question
for comparative history and for grasping the meaning of the global Cold
War lies in finding a way to reconcile this exceptionally violent historical
reality with the predominant western perception of an exceptionally long
peace. Seen in a wider context, therefore, we cannot think of the history
of right and left without confronting the history of mass death. Right and
left were both aspects of anticolonial nationalism, signaling different
routes toward the ideal of national liberation and self-determination. In
the ensuing bipolar era, this dichotomy was transformed into the ideology
of civil strife and war, in which achieving national unity became equivalent
to excluding one or the other side from the body politic. In this context,
the political history of right and left should not be considered separately
from the history of the human lives and social institutions torn by it, nor
should the “new kinship” after the Cold War be divorced from the mem-
ory of the dead ruins of this history. Family relations are important vectors
in understanding the decomposition of the bipolar world, not merely
92 H. KWON
because these relations are an elementary constituent of civil society, as

Giddens believes, but above all because during the Cold War they were
actually a vital site of political control and ideological oppression. Seen
against this historical background, it is misleading to define the state in the
post-Cold War world merely as an entity without external enemies. Rather,
we must think of the state, as Hegel did, as an entity that finds it necessary,
after the state had condemned a significant part of society to an unlawful
status, to deal with internal hostilities and with reconciliation with society.
What has happened in Jeju since the early 1990s can be placed along this
hopeful trajectory of reconciliation, and the recognition of the right to
remember and console the dead has been a central element in this impor-
tant social progress beyond left and right.
Acknowledgement The research for this article received generous support from
the Academy for Korean Studies (AKS-2016-LAB-2250005).
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———. 1998. The Third Way: Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.
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———. 2006. After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and
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CHAPTER 5
Experience of the Korean War and the Means

of Subsistence of War Widows
Im-ha Lee
Introduction: The Korean War and Military

and Police Widows
The Korean War caused heavy military and civilian casualties, including
over 1 million deaths, missing and kidnapped persons, and 690,000
injured.1 The Korean War also left behind many war widows whose num-
ber is known to be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000. War widows’
experience of the war and their means of subsistence after the war have
greatly affected the power dynamics among family members and women’s
advancement in society.
The term “war widow” includes military and police widows whose hus-
bands were either soldiers, police officers, youth group members, or civil-
ian employees who took part in the war and were either killed or went
missing; regular widows whose civilian husbands died in the war but were
not associated with combat; the wives of men associated with leftist forces
who died or went missing; and the wives of men who were murdered by
American or Korean soldiers or the police. Although the term remains
ambiguous, the wives of men who were kidnapped thus faced the same
I.-h. Lee (*)

Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea

96 I.-H. LEE
harsh conditions, and in reality “the absence of a husband” must be

included in the definition of war widows.2
This essay takes military and police widows as its main subject. The
reason why the subject of this research is limited is that the experience of
war and the way of life of war widows differed for various reasons, not only
in terms of their social background, such as their area of residence and
social class, but also in terms of their relations with their community,
county, and social activities. The life of widows also differed by age, that is
depending on whether a woman was in her twenties or thirties; by area,
that is whether she lived in a combat zone or non-combat zone; and by
status, that is whether she was a Korean national or not, or what rank her
husband had held.
In the case of military and police widows, they were widowed in similar
ways and maintained their dignity concerning their husbands’ death in
Korean society, which is still heavily influenced by ideology. The fact that
they have formed and maintained an organization called the Korea War
Dead Military and Police Widows Association to represent themselves has
also been taken into consideration.
In fact, military and police widows have long been the subject matter of
novels, dramas, and movies; however, research on the issues facing military
and police widows is rare.3 This essay deals with their experience of war
and postwar life based on oral statements obtained via interviews with 17
military and police widows. The interviews record the stories of their life-
long feelings of rage. Through their stories, this research first aims to
examine war widows’ experience of war. In particular, it aims to describe
the Korean War based on the experiences of women and the significance
of their experience rather than through the prism of ideology. Second, this
research examines the change of women’s status after the war, within the
families of military and police widows. Through their relationship with
their in-laws in the absence of husbands and the issue of remarriage, this
research also aims to investigate the social status of military and police
widows, as well as war widows at large. Third, this research looks into the
economic activities of military and police widows. In fact, the work per-
formed by military and police widows was essentially a means of earning a
living rather than a social accomplishment. Their labor was a watershed
that led Korean women into the public arena. This research examines the
labor of war widows as individuals and also at differences in the work
undertaken by war widows and military and police widows.
5 EXPERIENCE OF THE KOREAN WAR AND THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE… 97
The Owners of Voices

For the purpose of this research, the author conducted interviews with 17
military and police widows, who were introduced by the Gangnam Branch
of the Seoul City Division of the Korea War Dead Military and Police
Widows Association, for which “the Korean War widow” is active as a
chairperson. Oral statements were dictated at the Gangnam Branch Office
of the Korea War Dead Military and Police Widows Association during the
period from January to February 2006.
The interview questions were prepared in advance, but the session
allowed the interviewees to feel free to speak about their life until the pres-
ent day. Most of the interviewees spent anywhere from 30 minutes to one
hour telling their life story, interrupted by frequent pauses as they cried or
sighed. This writer allowed each interviewee to speak first and then asked
questions if any items from the list of questions were missed out or if the
interviewee skipped any part while speaking. The personal details of the 17
interviewees who took part in this research are shown in Table 5.1.
Table 5.1 shows that the interviewees were scattered all across the
southern part of Korea. They were either living in their hometown or near
it when the Korean War broke out in June 1950, except for Jeong Hui-
tae, who was married to a man in Seoul, and Jo Geum-yeong who moved
to a new place following her husband’s work.
Table 5.1 also shows that only one of the interviewees completed her
middle school education and only six completed their elementary educa-
tion, while six dropped out of elementary school and four did not receive
any school education at all. The figures show that the interviewed women
were better educated than other women of their age in that period.
According to the national population census conducted in 1955, that is
the consensus closest to the time when they lost their husbands, 6.7 per-
cent of Korean women aged 25 to 34 either dropped out of middle school
or completed middle school or higher-level education, while 23.3 percent
completed or dropped out of elementary school. This means that around
70 percent of the women of their age did not receive any school educa-
tion. While education was not a major factor in determining whether
Korean women engaged in the public affairs of Korean society during this
period, it surely played an important role in their finding a stable job, as
suggested by the fact that two of the interviewed women were public
workers. None of them, however, had held a job before the Korean War.
When the war broke out all of the interviewees were in their early t wenties,
98 I.-H. LEE
Table 5.1 Personal details of the war widows (with aliases) who participated in
this research
Name Date Education Address before the Spouse’s occupation Children
of war
birth Before the Rank at
war time of
death
Kim 1926 None Andong, North Farmer Soldier 1 son, 1

Ki-bun Gyeongsang daughter
Province
Kim 1930 None Gyeongju, North Civilian Civilian 1 son, 1
Byeong- Gyeongsang employee employee daughter
sun Province
Kim 1931 Elementary Yeongcheon, Farmer Soldier None
Han- school North Gyeongsang
gyeong dropout Province
Yang 1930 Elementary Boseong, South Farmer Soldier 1 son
Seong- school Jeolla Province
eun
Yu 1927 Elementary Chilgok, North Carpenter Soldier 2
Nam-hee school Gyeongsang daughters
dropout Province
Yu 1927 Elementary Eumseong, North Head of Soldier 2 sons, 1
Hee-seon school Chungcheong youth daughter
Province group
Yun 1929 Elementary Jochiwon, South Soldier Soldier 1 son
Won-seon school Chungcheong
dropout Province
Yun 1927 None Jayang-dong, Seoul Farmer Soldier 3
Jeong- daughters
hee
Lee 1934 Elementary Yeongcheon, Farmer Soldier 1
Yeong-su school North Gyeongsang daughter
dropout Province
Lee 1928 Elementary Yangpyeong, Police Police 1 son
Jeong-rye school Gyeonggi Province
Lee 1924 Elementary Gimje, North Police Police 1 son, 1
Tae-sun school Jeolla Province daughter
Yim 1928 Elementary Naju, South Jeolla Farmer Soldier 2
Nam-ju school Province daughters
Jeong 1929 Middle Eumseong, North Soldier Soldier None
Na-won school Chungcheong (officer)
Province
(continued)
Table 5.1 (continued)
Name Date Education Address before the Spouse’s occupation Children

of war
birth Before the Rank at
war time of
death
Jeong 1929 Elementary Goryeong, North Farmer Soldier 1 son

Yeong-gi school Gyeongsang
dropout Province
Jeong 1927 None Goesan, North Soldier Soldier 2 sons, 1
Hee-su Chungcheong (cadet) daughter
Province
Jeong 1924 Elementary Jongno, Seoul Police Police 1 son, 2
Hee-tae school (Originally from daughters
dropout Cheonan, South
Chungcheong
Province)
Cho 1930 Elementary Cheongju, North Soldier Soldier 1 son
Geum- school Chungcheong (PO)
yeong Province(Originally
from Tongyeong,
South Gyeongsang
Province)
and in their second or third year of marriage, and all of them had one to
three children, except for two childless women.
On the Road as a Female Refugee
On the Road as a Refugee
For the military and police widows, the war started when they left home
and set out on the road or when their husbands died. To women who had
never left their hometown, sudden migration as a refugee came as a fear of
things foreign. Without the presence of their husbands, seeking refuge
was a fearful enterprise in itself (see Table 5.2).
In Table 5.2 the interviewed women are divided into two groups, com-
bat zone residents and non-combat zone residents, according to whether
they remained in Seoul, which was occupied by the North Korean People’s
Army, or fled from the city during wartime. Their experience of the war
100 I.-H. LEE
Table 5.2 Status of migration (refugee) of the interviewees

Case Name Period as a Route to refuge Travel Remarks
refugee companions
Case 1 (resident Yun December, Jayang-dong, Eldest Parted with

in area north of Jeong- 1950 Seoul → daughter in-laws while
the Han River) hee Jincheon, North seeking
Chungcheong refuge
Province →
Cheonho-dong,
Seoul
Lee June, Yangpyeong, In-laws Pregnant at
Jeong- 1950 Gyeonggi the time of
rye Province → seeking
Yeoju, Gyeonggi refuge
Province →
Yangpyeong,
Gyeonggi
Province
December, Yangpyeong, In-laws and
1950 Gyeonggi son
Province →
Gimcheon,
North
Gyeongsang
Province
Jeong July, 1950 Seoul → Her family
Hee-tae Anseong, and
Gyeonggi children
Province
December, Seoul → Her family
1950 Seonghwan, and
South children
Chungcheong
Province
Case 2 Did Kim
(resident not Gi-bun
of a seek
combat refuge
zone)
Kin
Han-
gyeong
(continued)

refugee companions
Sought Kim July, 1950 Gyeongju, In-laws and

refuge Byeong- North children
sun Gyeongsang
Province →
Ulsan
Yu July, 1950 Chilgok, North In-laws,
Nam-hee Gyeongsang husband,
Province → and
Daegu, North children
Gyeongsang
Province
Yu July, 1950 Eumseong, In-laws and Due to her
Hee- North husband pregnancy,
seon Chungcheong she parted
Province → with her
Cheongju, family and
North returned to
Chungcheong Eumseong
Province →
Eumseong,
North
Chungcheong
Province
December, Eumseong, In-laws’
1950 North family
Chungcheong
Province →
Boeun, North
Chungcheong
Province
Yun July, 1950 In-laws Sought
Won- refuge deep
seon in a
mountain
Lee Sought
Yeong-su refuge on a
nearby
mountain in
August,
1950
(continued)
102 I.-H. LEE

refugee companions
Jeong July, 1950 Danyang, North Alone Followed her

Na-won Chungcheong husband,
Province → who was an
Andong, North officer in the
Gyeongsang army
Province →
Busan, South
Gyeongsang
Province
January, Danyang, North 2 Husband
1951 Chungcheong brothers- injured and
Province → in-law hospitalized
Gyeongju, in Busan
North Military
Gyeongsang Hospital
Province →
Busan, South
Gyeongsang
Province
Jeong July, 1950 In-laws, Dug a cave
Yeong-gi husband, and hid in
and the
daughter mountain,
and then
sought
refuge
beyond the
Nakdong
River
Jeong December, Goesan, North In-laws and Pregnant
Hee-su 1950 Chungcheong children while seeking
Province → refuge
Sangju, North
Gyeongsang
Province
(continued)

refugee companions
Cho July, 1950 Cheongju, Alone Pregnant

Geum- North while seeking
yeong Chungcheong refuge
Province →
Masan, South
Gyeongsang
Province →
Tongyeong,
South
Gyeongsang
Province
Case 3 (resident Yang No
of a non-combat Seong- experience in
zone) eun seeking
refuge
Lee
Tae-sun
Jeong
Hee-su
should have been different—even between women in the same groups of

refugees—according to whether they were in Seoul during the summer
(June and July) of 1950 or during the period from September 28 of the
same year, when the capital was retaken by the ROK-UN forces, to January
4 of the following year when they had to leave it after the massive surge of
the Red Chinese Army towards the south of the Korean Peninsula. They
also had different experiences depending on the people they accompanied
during their time as refugees, as shown in Table 5.2. A more detailed
explanation is given below.
The experience of the women seeking refuge showed differences by
area, and especially among those who lived in the main combat zone and
those who lived in a non-combat zone. For the purpose of this research,
the area was divided by characteristic into the area north of the Han River,
the combat zone extending from Seoul to the Nakdong River, and the
non-combat zone, including Jeolla Province.
First, the war widows who lived in the area north of the Han River
were Yun Jeong-hee, Lee Jeong-rye, and Jeong Hee-tae, of whom Yun
Jeong-hee and Jeong Hee-tae could not leave and thus remained in Seoul
104 I.-H. LEE
at the beginning of the Korean War, only experiencing the arduous life of
a refugee after the January Fourth Retreat in 1951. Therefore, unlike the
others, their experience of war included memories of North Korean sol-
diers. Because Jeong Hee-tae’s and Lee Jeong-rye’s husbands were both
police officers, they were harmed by North Korean soldiers or leftists and
thus displayed a strong aversion toward them. Jeong Hee-tae recalled the
time when armed North Korean soldiers busted into her house in search
of her husband. As for Lee Jeong-rye, because she was from a police offi-
cer’s family she was kicked out of her in-laws’ home and ended up giving
birth in a stranger’s house in the countryside.
Seoul? That was just horrifying. Those bad people bust into all the houses
and went mad searching for some men. I cannot tell you how cruel they
were and how frightened we were. I cannot believe all that happened back
then. … They came into my house dragging their guns. My God, these
soldiers were this tiny [expressing how small they were using her hands].
These tiny men barged in dragging their guns along the ground. (From an
interview with Jeong Hee-tae, dated January 24, 2006)
However, in the case of Yun Jeong-hee, whose husband was a civilian,

the situation was different. Her husband was conscripted into a volunteer
army run by North Korean soldiers but he ran away. After the South
Korean Army recaptured Seoul on September 28, 1950, he was investi-
gated by the South Korean government on a compulsory labor case and
conscripted again, this time in the Territorial Army. While explaining the
process, she did not show any particular emotions and said, “We were
lucky,” “He was beaten to a pulp,” “We suffered, but we survived.” This
writer could read the pain of citizens who were unable to cross the Han
River and stayed behind in the city.
Conversely, most of the war widows who lived in the combat zone
extending from Seoul to the area surrounding the Nakdong River experi-
enced the hardships of seeking refuge right after the Korean War broke
out. Their memories of the war were related directly to scenes of the bat-
tle, which included indiscriminate bombing, people dying, men and cows
alike being wildly swept away by the current of the Nakdong River, the
Waegwan Iron Bridge being bombed, abandoned children, and so on.
Referring especially to the battle on both sides of the Nakdong River, the
procession of refugees along the roads, or the death of people, which the
women remembered vividly, they used daily expressions like “cold cucum-
ber soup” or “the heads of bean sprouts.” It is thought that this was the
result of their witnessing countless deaths in person.
Eleven of the interviewees lived in that area, but only two of them did
not seek refuge, namely Kim Gi-bun, who lived in a mountain village, and
Kim Han-gyeong, who lived to the south of the combat zone. Yun Won-
seon ran away to a remote mountain and returned home when the front
line moved south. In addition, the memories of Kim Gi-bun and Yun
Won-seon differed from those of the other eight war widows who experi-
enced the hardships of seeking refuge. Among their most intense memo-
ries are those about the North Korean partisans or their encounters with
North Korean soldiers on retreat. Because of such circumstances, in order
to avoid the partisans during the day and the army at night, most men did
not sleep at home and hid in bean patches or fields.
My brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law were all young, and my two children

were also very young … I didn’t go anywhere, telling myself, “I can’t take
all of them and flee somewhere. If I have to die, I will die right here.” So I
never left. Then the Reds came and sat me down and said, “Let’s go, let’s
go.” I said, “My little baby sons are clinging to me and crying, so I can’t go
anywhere. Just kill me right here.” When morning broke, they ate and then
they all left. I coped with those situations all by myself. (From an interview
with Kim Gi-bun, dated March 2, 2006)
Yang Seong-eun, Lee Tae-un and Yim Nam-ju, who lived in the non-
combat zone or the Jeolla region, experienced the Korean War without
becoming refugees. For them, the experience of the Korean War included
memories of their husbands or themselves (Lee Tae-sun) hiding to avoid
forced labor, the North Korean partisans shooting at the sky, the sound of
airplanes passing overhead or bombing, rather than the battle itself or
being a refugee. To them, memories of certain incidents before the war,
such as the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion or battles with the partisans, were
more vivid and stronger than those of the Korean War.
The Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion took place on October 19, 1948, just
two months after the establishment of the Syngman Rhee administration,
or the South Korean government. The Rhee administration ordered the
soldiers of the Yeosu 14th Regiment to suppress the Jeju Uprising on
April 3, 1948. However, the soldiers disobeyed the order and occupied
Yeosu and Suncheon. As the insurgents were joined by the provincial
leftist power, youths, and students, the force turned into a people’s army.
106 I.-H. LEE
A People’s Committee was established to get rid of the local administra-

tions, while male students seized arms and female students cooked meals
to support the insurgents. The Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion, which took
place after the respective regimes of South and North Korea were estab-
lished, did not recognize the ordinance of the Republic of Korea and
denied the separate governments. The rebellion was suppressed in one
week. The insurgents who were chased away by the counterinsurgent
army later became active as North Korean partisans around Mount Jiri.
The airplane flew by! Bullets rained down and things went crazy. In those
days, young people don’t know a thing about the big incident, the Korean
War. But the Yeosu Incident was so big. It was unbelievably big. (From an
interview with Yang Seong-eun, dated January 20, 2006)
In the case of Lee Tae-sun in particular, her husband, who was the chief
of a police station, died in a battle against the North Korean partisans. Her
memories of the circumstances were clear. She used expressions like “fire-
ball” or “naked body” to describe her experiences, and the source of her
expressions was from the Yeosu Rebellion. This writer could feel the fierce-
ness of the Yeosu Rebellion and the battle against the partisans.
The Boundary of a Family

The women’s experience of seeking refuge varied, but their hardships dur-
ing the war had much to do with the fact that most of them were young
women aged between 20 and 25. Some of them were pregnant (Yu Hee-
seon, Lee Jeong-rye, Jeong Hee-su, and Cho Geum-yeong) at the time,
while others had young children. On top of the pain that everyone had to
endure, their pain was multiplied by the fact that they were women.
I was 21 when I got pregnant … I had nothing on me except for the clothes
I wore that day, and I ran to Goman Camp. They got me into the truck …
It was raining non-stop at the time … I was on the truck for four days and
went all the way to Masan. They gave me a few hardtacks a day … But in my
third month, I had terrible morning sickness so I couldn’t eat the biscuits
and threw everything up … About half of me died … Then my time was
near and my stomach became huge. As I walked, a bullet hit the ground
about one meter ahead of me … I didn’t know whether North Korean or
South Korean soldiers fired it or if it was meant for me. I just kept on
alking … seeking refuge. I went to the shelter where my mother-in-law

w
was. (From an interview with Cho Geum-yeong, dated January 20, 2006)
Likewise, pregnancy caused the women to suffer even more deeply while
they were on the road. Of the pain, Jeong Hee-su said, “With my full belly
I walked a dozen kilometers, and nature would call only a short while after
… Oh my … I wanted to die there.”
The fact of having young children to care for inflicted as much pain on
the women as did pregnancy. The number of war orphans after the Korean
War was estimated to be around 100,000, many of whom had simply been
abandoned. Referring to the situation, Jeong Na-won explained, “On the
way to seek refuge at the time of the January 4th Retreat, a woman alone
could not handle it all. If I had two children, one had to be carried on my
back, and the other one had to be fed and covered. So if a woman had two
children, since people preferred sons, she abandoned the daughter in
order to be able to move on.” She also spoke about a war widow from
North Korea. “She was carrying a child on her back. The baby kept on
crying but she could not feed it because she had not eaten anything. She
was also carrying a big bundle of stuff. So the baby died, and you know
what she said? She said she felt so liberated.”
To make matters worse, a widowed daughter-in-law and her young
children were considered a burden by the in-laws. For young widows with
young children, the abuse heaped upon them by their parents-in-law was
more painful than hunger or exhaustion.
They would do their own things, and every day they would tell me, “Don’t
you know you should go somewhere else!” “Why are you following us?” My
god, where was I supposed to go? Where could I go? I had nowhere to go
… I walked for 14 days to get to Gimcheon, and wherever I went, I was told
to carry the child by myself. For 14 straight days! No one ever bothered to
help carry the child just once, and I had to carry the baby day and night.
They were all strong and well and walked so far ahead of me. I’d just had
another child shortly before and had to carry the baby on my back, through
heavy snow and rain. For 14 days I walked on my feet which hurt so much
that they bent like this, you know … My in-laws were so cruel, and the baby
never slept and kept on crying through the night. The mean old woman got
angry at me but I couldn’t say a word. I just grabbed my baby and cried my
eyes out. (From an interview with Lee Jeong-rye, dated January 19, 2006)
108 I.-H. LEE
In fact, the other side of this pain was the fear of being alone. Away
from the boundary of their home and hometown, abuse from parents-in-
law was a situation they would rather accept than suffer being alone.
I lost my family while I was on the road seeking refuge. I had lived like a
little fish inside a well in this town called Jamsil and only moved to the other
side of the river when I got married, so I was clueless about where’s where.
I had my elder daughter on my back and I lost my family, and so I had no
money … What could I do? I had to eat and live, so I begged for food … I
got a spoonful of rice, someone gave it me. So I had a little bit of rice and
fed my children. (From an interview with Yun Jeong-hee, dated
January 23, 2006)
Such memories of being left all alone (or being left with no one but their
children) left the widows fearful of an unfamiliar reality and a sense of
helplessness. The feelings of fear and helplessness became more serious
when they were nearly abandoned. The widow with young children who
experienced being abandoned by her in-laws could not complete her story
for a long while. Holding her baby on her back, she stood vacantly, hoping
her husband, who had left home, would return.
Upon hitting the road to find refuge, the war widows who had had
never gone outside the boundary of their hometown were no longer shy
brides. The experience of being pregnant and being on the road from
Cheongju to Tongyeong at first was like going on a picnic, but the excite-
ment soon vanished. The experience of losing one’s husband; the experi-
ence of losing one’s family and living day to day begging for food or
making food to scratch a meager living; the experience of enduring abuse
from one’s in-laws or of being abandoned by them when they left town—
all became a source of power for the women in their efforts to live a
changed life after the war. Such experiences helped them to overcome the
fear of a new world. They even demanded a bag of rice from the in-laws to
use as seed money and started to build an independent life, or they let go
of their expectations from the in-laws and became independent, or they
showed real toughness by walking 20 km to get food and educate their
children. Their experience of war differs from the war history we learn in
school. To them, their experiences of war as women were more vivid and
horrifying than the memories of war officially recognized by the country.
Identifying such differences will enable us to rewrite the official record
made by the nation, or the official war history.
The Absence of Husband and Family
The Absence of Husband and Moving Out

To the war widows, not all memories of the war were about seeking ref-
uge, fear of a strange environment, pregnancy or post-pregnancy. Their
memories of war often included memories from life after the war rather
than of the war itself, or memories of reality, being and living life as a war
widow, which were much more intense. In that regard, separation from
one’s husband was the war in itself.
The ways in which the husbands of military and police widows took
part in the war varied. They included professional soldiers and police offi-
cers, as well as those who passed through the normal recruitment process
or those who volunteered (in the case of Yu Hee-seon’s husband). There
were also three cases (Kim Han-gyeong, Yu Nam-hee, and Jeong Yeong-gi)
in which their men were conscripted by force directly from the street or
refugee camp. While the ways in which they took part in the war varied,
the ways in which they parted were very similar. Many parted without
knowing they would become widows and thus be separated from their
husbands forever.
I didn’t even get to see his face … I just heard he was gone. I heard he’d left.
(From an interview with Yun Won-seon, dated January, 17, 2006)
He came in when it was dark and said, “I’ll be back.” He left saying, “I’ve
got to go down to the village and hear the speech again.” He left at night …
I heard he’d gone to hear the speech, and the next day he’d gone to receive
training in Daegu. (From an interview with Kim Gi-bun, dated
February 3, 2006)
I walked up like this, and lots of people came down, filling the street. They
had been captured. In those days there were no arrest warrants. They were
too busy to write them up, so the men in the house were all taken away by
force … My husband came down, so I asked him, “Where are you going?”
He said, “To make a success of myself.” (From an interview with Kim Han-
gyeong, dated January 16, 2006)
I heard he went to the Yankee’s market to buy some cigarettes …. There he

was captured and sent to the war. He was captured like that … and never
came back. My husband never came home … after five days passed. After ten
110 I.-H. LEE
days passed, he never came home. (From an interview with Yu Nam-hee,

dated January 24, 2006)
He went to work during the day and came home. Then, at night, right out
of the blue, he received the draft and was taken away. He was taken away
without saying a word to me. He left just like that. (From an interview with
Yun Jeong-hee, dated January 23, 2006)
Since parting ways with their husbands was completely unexpected and
happened very quickly, it took a long time for the widows to fully realize
that they had lost their husbands. Their young age and short married life
also contributed to their misfortune. Most of the war widows who partici-
pated in the interviews were married before the age of 20, with some mar-
ried for as little as three months, or three years at the most. And, following
the custom of the time, a young bride lived with her in-laws-to-be,
depending on the in-laws’ living standards, before marrying; therefore the
women were separated from their men even before they got to know
them. Some war widows said they didn’t even remember their husband’s
face very well.
Parting from one’s husband immediately resulted in the creation of a
new environment characterized by “the absence of a husband” for war
widows. The absence of a husband brought forth a change of status within
the family. For the war widow, moving out was the most impending prob-
lem. As a woman’s moving out alone demanded not only personal but also
economic independence, it had a different kind of meaning and reality
compared to moving out with a husband from his parents’ house. In other
words, the fact of their moving out resulted in the war widows becoming
a fundamental cause in the change in women’s place in society; and in fact
it became a very important process during which the war widows secured
one axis of such social change. A widow’s moving out also took her out of
the range of control and surveillance by the patriarch, while allowing her
to independently start her own new household. The participants in the
interview who moved out can be classified into four types.
The first type concerns women who had already moved out before their
husband died in the war or the death of their parents-in-law. Lee Tae-sun
and Cho Geum-yeong moved out to follow their husbands, who worked
away from their hometown, while Jeong Hee-tae’s parents-in-law died
before she married. What the three women have in common is that, after
their husbands died, they lived with or near their own parents or siblings
and relied on them rather than on their in-laws. Jeong Hee-tae relied on
her parents from the time she sought refuge, and moved to Busan after the
war to receive protection from her elder brother. In the case of Lee Tae-
sun, after her husband died in the war in 1949, she returned to her home
in Gimje and settled down near her parents’ house. Cho Geum-yeong
returned to live with her in-laws for about one year around the start of the
Korean War, before starting her own household near her parents’ house.
The second type concerns women who started their own household
immediately after or within three or four years of the death of their hus-
band. Yang Seong-eun, Yu Nam-hee, Lee Yeon-su, Yim Nam-ju, and
Jeong Na-won belong to this category. What they all have in common is
that their respective husbands were not the eldest son of the family. As
such, even if their husbands were alive, they would have to have moved
out anyway, and it can be assumed that they could’ve moved out sooner
or later. Yang Seong-eun, Lee Yeon-su, and Yim Nam-ju moved out but
lived near their in-laws, and Yim Nam-ju had to live with her mother-in-
law for a while. Yu Nam-hee’s in-laws’ house was completely destroyed, so
she had to let her parents-in-law and brother-in-law live in her house,
which was partially destroyed, while she moved out to a house near her
parents’ home. Jeong Na-won got a job in Seoul and started her own
household there. What’s especially noteworthy in this case is that there
was a property-related complication with the in-laws when they moved
out. Yang Seong-eun and Yim Nam-ju’s in-laws were too poor to dispute
the family assets, but it was not so different from the situation of the other
women either. In the case of Yu Nam-hee, her house, though half burned
down, had to be given to her parents-in-law and brother-in-law. In the
case of Jeong Na-won and Lee Yeon-su, whose parents-in-law had already
died before they moved out, the inheritance they received from their
deceased husbands was lost to their husbands’ siblings. Likewise, it was
quite common that a husband’s brothers would take away the property of
a war widow. One example occurred in 1957 when a war window appealed
her case through a women’s magazine. “Straight after a notice announc-
ing the disappearance of my husband arrived, his brother’s attitude
changed completely. He would not let me touch the farmland owned by
my husband and even framed me for adultery so that he could kick me
out.” The facts in this case were confirmed during an interview for this
research.4 Such was the situation of war widows after the Korean War, as
they had no place to plead their case even if their property was taken
away by force.
112 I.-H. LEE
The third type concerns cases in which a woman moved out quite some
time after the death of her husband. Yun Won-seon, Yun Jeong-hee, Lee
Jeong-rye, and Jeong Yeong-gi belong to this category. In such cases, the
husband was usually the eldest son, so she would naturally support her
parents-in-law. It can be assumed that this was the reason why it took time
for her to move out. But these widows vividly remembered that they suf-
fered considerably from physical abuse or surveillance from their parents-
in-law. Upon reminiscing about life with their in-laws they paused several
times while telling their stories or expressed resentment toward their
deceased husbands.
I would be sewing until the middle of the night, like 1 o’clock in the morn-
ing. I would do my best, but by my mother-in-law always scolded me
roundly. She would yell at me, “Why can’t you do it faster, why do you do
it so badly?” Why in those days did I feel so sleepy? I had no idea why I was
so sleepy … So, I always apologized to my mother-in-law. I was so sorry
every time. Then every time she said, “I’m so sick and tired of your saying
sorry. Why do you do it so badly?” (From an interview with Lee Jeong-rye,
dated January 19, 2006)
In the countryside we weaved cloth, picked cotton and spun thread, that
kind of thing, in order to make a living. I had no time to feed my baby after
working so hard, because I got so sleepy … [In the early morning] a broom-
stick, yeah, with that, they would beat the heck out of the door … [I was
dozing off] but I would wake up, and [I would be weaving] then it sounded
like this, “Clunk, clunk!” If I didn’t hear that, it would mean that my
mother-in-law or father-in-law was scolding me. (From an interview with
Jeong Yeong-gi, dated January 16, 2006)
The women managed to start their own household without relying on

their in-laws or parents, and moved to a city to educate their children.
The last type concerns widows who did not move out. They lived to
support their parents-in-law until the latter’s death. Kim Ki-bun, Kim
Byeong-un, and Yu Hee-seon belonged to this category. What they all had
in common was that their respective husbands were the eldest son. In the
case of Kim Gi-bun, both her parents and her parents-in-law were firm
believers of Confucian doctrine, while Yu Hee-seon’s in-laws were the
head family of a major bloodline. In other words, strict family tradition
and its influence, combined with their sense of responsibility, prevented
them from moving out.
Another type, which differs from the four aforementioned types, applies
to Kim Han-gyeong and Jeong Hee-su. In the case of Kim Han-gyeong,
her older sister-in-law held all the power in the family, but after her parents-
in-law died, she sorted out the family property and left for a city. As a
result, Kim Han-gyeong had no choice but to move out. This case was
unique in terms of the power structure within the family, and she reacted
quite passively in the process of starting her own household. In the case of
Jeong Hee-su, she had to take care of her ill son first, and only moved to
a city about five years after her husband’s death.
Remarriage and Children’s Education

Another problem within a family that war widows faced along with start-
ing a new household was that of remarriage. The issue of remarriage
applied not only to military and police widows but to all widows. In real-
ity, many war widows remarried, and similar stories cropped up many
times during the interviews.
There were so many [women who became widows during the war]. In my
family, there were five who became widows … One had two sons, and one
was killed during the Korean War, and she remarried … One really had
nothing, and her parents took her and got her to remarry. (From an inter-
view with Yu Hee-seon, dated February 2, 2006)
[In the Tongyeong Widow Association] there were about twenty members,
but so many remarried; well, some were so poor and remarried. Some
women even married their neighbor … About twenty-eight women? No,
later some eighteen or twenty women were like that. Lots of them remar-
ried. (From an interview with Cho Geum-yeong, dated January 20, 2006)
In general the main obstacle to remarriage for war widows, including

military and police widows, was children. Concerning the remarriage of
war widows in the eyes of Korean society, children’s education was
considered a far more important issue, and the remarriage of war widows
with children was often negatively viewed.5 In the case of the women, too,
who participated in this research, if they had children, they put their life
into their education without considering remarriage.
Of course, everyone told me to get married again. But how could I marry
and leave behind my three daughters? I could not abandon them and
114 I.-H. LEE
remarry, and what would have happened if they’d been badly treated? (From
an interview with Yun Jeong-hee, dated January 23, 2006)
Why, I’ve got children. Children scare me, more than a husband! (From an
interview with Jeong Hee-tae, dated January 24, 2006)
In addition, the widows were hesitant to remarry because of the con-

servative attitude of their parents,6 or because they felt that “my husband
might still be alive and could come home tomorrow,” or that “he might
be alive in North Korea.” Due to such restrictions, many war widows did
not even consider remarriage; however, many war widows suffered from
being contemptuously watched over by in-laws suspicious that they
might remarry.
Every time my sisters came to visit my parents’ house, my mother-in-law

would tell them, “Why, you’ve come here to talk my daughter-in-law into
remarrying?” My sisters really hated to be accused like that, so they stopped
coming home. (From an interview with Lee Jeong-rye, dated
January 19, 2006)
I was always working at home. They wouldn’t let me go out. They left me
at home all alone, and if I ever went somewhere even for a short while, they
would prod me and scold me roundly, asking, “Where have you been?” …
They left the door open all the time and sat there in front of the door …
They had this wooden bench right in front of the door and sat there … No
one would come to visit me at home because they were scared of my father-
in-law. (From an interview with Kim Byeong-sun, dated February 2, 2006)
They would come home from working the fields and get mad for no reason
at all, you know, and ask me, “Has anyone been here?” Then, later they’d
make me go out to the fields to work together with them. (From an inter-
view with Jeong Yeong-gi, dated January 16, 2006)
Likewise, at home, many war widows suffered from watchful parents and
in-laws, while away from home they became the targets of sexual preda-
tors. The Korean novel The River of Seduction described a widow thus: “A
widow can be owned by anyone, for their existence is like an ownerless
mountain,” and to all men she is “a world of possibility, of hope, of plea-
sure.” Among the military and police widows who participated in the
interview, some said they were often treated as an object of lust.7
On my way home from work, some man would follow me … I thought this
had to stop, and was afraid that maybe the man would eat me alive, so I went
up to him and asked, “Why are you following me? Why are you following
me around?” … Then he said, “Let’s hook up.” So I said, “What does ‘hook
up’ mean? I don’t know of such a thing.” Then he said “OK, then let’s move
in together.” So I asked, “Do you have a wife or not?” Then he became
speechless … I ran away and cried my eyes out. I couldn’t say a thing, you
know. Sons of bitches, men treated women like that. I swear I am not lying
… I slapped at least two or three men in their faces real hard. Can you imag-
ine what a sad life it was to live like that? (From an interview with Jeong
Yeong-gi, dated January 16, 2006)
Many war widows suffered in and out of their home and led a tough life
with their children, who gave them the strength to continue. It was natu-
ral that the majority of the war widows who took part in the interviews
openly spoke about how proud they were of their children. Regarding
children’s education in particular, their aspirations were very intense. In
order to send her only daughter to a middle school in Daegu, Jeong
Yong-gi gave up the property she had made from ten years of farming and
weaving cloth and moved to Daegu. Kim Gi-bun, who supported her
father-in-law, barely managed to live other than by eating herb roots and
tree bark, but proved her toughness by sending her son and daughter to
study in Seoul. The case of Kim Byeong-sun was similar. Even when her
mother-in-law told her, “Don’t send your children to university! Why, you
are going to starve our ancestors? If we sell all of our land, we will not be
able to hold ancestral rites,” she still managed to send her son to univer-
sity. Most interviewees shared such toughness. The reason why they left
their hometown for a big city was to educate their children. The widows
who left home for this reason include Yang Seong-eun, Yu Nam-hee, Lee
Yeon-su, Yim Nam-ju, Jeong Yeong-gi, and Cho Geum-yeong.
The reason why the war widows who participated in the interview
invested everything in their children’s education was that they could only
rely on them. As a result, the children of most of the interviewees achieved
better academic results than the children of their relatives. But there was
another factor in addition to the high expectations the war widows had of
their children.
First of all, the level of education of the war widows who participated
in the interview was generally higher than that of other women of their
generation. Some 76.5 percent of the interviewees had a level of education
116 I.-H. LEE
higher than that of an elementary school dropout. Considering that only

30 percent of women of the same age group had a level of education
higher than an elementary school dropout, their education level was
very high.
Another factor is that the number of children the interviewees had was
smaller than that of average families from the same generation. In the case
of the same age group, women had four or five children on average,
whereas the interviewees had 1.87 children on average (except for two
women who had no children). This figure is close to the government sta-
tistics for 1952, which show that the average number of children for wid-
ows under the age of 40 was 2.07.8 Therefore, they were in an advantageous
position in terms of paying for their children’s education, compared with
other women of their generation.
Economic Activities of the War Widows
Occupations of the War Widows

Whether the war widows moved out or not, or had much or little prop-
erty, most of them had to work regardless of the type of occupation.
Table 5.3 shows the status of occupations held by all war widows from the
1950s to the 1970s according to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs.
There is some confusion surrounding the change of criteria in classifying
occupations, but the data reveal a few (interesting) facts related to the
economic activities of widows.
First, many widows were engaged in economic activities regardless of
the type of occupation. They worked to support themselves, their children
and their parents. According to the 1957 survey of women’s occupations
conducted in three areas (Hongeun-dong, Mullae-dong, and Gahoe-
dong) of Seoul on a total of 198 subjects, only 19 women (i.e. 9.6%) had
a husband and were engaged in economic activities, while 80 widows were
engaged in economic activities (i.e. 88.8%).9
Second, of the various occupations pursued, farming ranked exception-
ally high among the widows who worked. The number of women who
were engaged in agriculture steadily increased starting from the late 1960s,
and this phenomenon is believed to reflect the fact that widows who did
not move out following the death of their parents rose to become the head
of the family.
Table 5.3 Status of occupations of widows (Unit: Person)

1955 1959 1962 1966 1968 1974
Farming and fishing 227,912 255,479 237,951 328,532 331,794 347,187

Mining 480 1,177 2,828 4,083 3,550 4,592
Manufacturing 4,031 3,103 5,490 12,450 11,533 9,365
Electricity, gas, water, 20,493 4,966 3,660
sanitation
Electricity, gas, water 4,120
(Commerce), finance 35,676 39,666 12,404 7,932 8,110 7,590
Transportation, warehouse 1,190 639 8,280 2,671 3,134 3,496
Service, (commerce) 7,776 5,373 29,452 39,014 37,545 36,514
Others 63,387 46,506 187,979 200,772 174,625 194,091
No job 152,139 156,052
Total 492,591 507,995 504,877 600,411 574,951 606,955
Source: The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Annual (1957, 1959, 1962, 1966, 1968, 1974) Reports
Third, the percentages of widows who worked in commerce, finance,

and services were maintained at similar levels. The Korean War pushed
women in particular to enter the world of commerce. According to the
statistics, before the Korean War about 80,000 women worked in com-
merce; however, during the war, and particularly between 1951 and 1952,
the number rose rapidly to 580,000–590,000. Furthermore, after the war,
in the mid-1950s, about 200,000 women, most of whom were war wid-
ows, worked as merchants.10 Because of that, it was not out of the ordi-
nary to see tough-acting “women vendors” in regularly held markets. But
if we were to consider the number of women who simply peddled or
worked on street stalls and thus were not included in the official statistics,
it can be assumed that the figure may have been several times higher.
According to a survey of fifty widows conducted by the Seoul Women’s
Vocational Training Center, which functioned as an accommodation facil-
ity for widows in 1959, 38 percent, or 19 women, experienced working as
a peddler at one time or another.11 These peddlers traveled from village to
village all across the country, selling clothes, confectionaries, fruit, and
general goods. All these peddlers needed for their business was a large
basket in which to carry a few commodities, and, accordingly, peddling
was one of the few business activities in which one could easily engage
with just a small investment.
118 I.-H. LEE
Fourth, the ratio of laborers engaged in mining or manufacturing, or in

factories, increased many times over in the 1960s, thus reflecting the
change of job distribution following the overall change of industries.
Occupations and Labor Conditions of the Military and Police

Widows
The change of economic activities among all widows showed similarities
with the military and police widows who participated in the interviews
conducted for this research. Table 5.4 summarizes the status of economic
activities taken up by the military and police widows who participated in
the interview.
First, the majority of the war widows who lived in a farming region
took part in farm labor regardless of the work type. The war widows who
took part in the interviews also worked in rice paddies, which was once a
job reserved solely for men. This attests to the desperate situation of the
war widows while at the same time indicating that they became the fami-
ly’s breadwinner.
I worked at a farm; there was no work I didn’t do—except for plowing. I

weeded the rice paddies, pumped water, planted young rice plants, and
worked the fields … I had to go to a mountain to find wood. That’s why I
never go to any mountain now. It’s gross to me. (From an interview with
Yun Won-seon, dated January 17, 2006)
Back in the day, only men worked the rice paddies. Field work was for
women only. But to us, there was no difference. I gathered rice plants,
chopped, scrapped rice stalks, and so on. I worked on a million things. I
cooked all the meals; and to make a fire, I had to go to a mountain and find
wood myself … and later I cleaned toilets, you know, cleaned out septic
tanks. I had to clean all those things. That work, in the old days, I had to
carry water buckets on a yoke and pour it over the field. (From an interview
with Kim Byeong-sun, dated February 2, 2006)
Second, working as a street peddler or running a small sundries shop

was an important economic activity. Seven of the war widows interviewed
worked as peddlers (Kim Gi-bun, Kim Han-gyeong, Yu Nam-hee, Yun
Jeong-hee, Jeong Yeong-gi, Jeong Hee-tae, and Cho Geum-yeong), of
whom two (Lee Yeon-su and Cho Geum-yeong) ran a sundries shop.
About half of the interviewees worked as peddlers or ran sundries shops
Table 5.4 Details of economic activities of the interviewees

Name Living standard Economic activity after moving out
of in-laws
Before 1961 After 1962
Kim Gi-bun Low Farming/peddling Farming/peddling

Kim Low Farming Farming
Byeong-sun
Kim Low Farming → peddling Factory worker
Han-gyeong
Yang Low Farming → needlework Needlework
Seong-eun
Yu Nam-hee Middle Peddling Factory worker
Yu Hee-seon Middle Farming Farming
Yun Middle Farming Office work
Won-seon
Yun Low Peddling → restaurant Factory worker → day
Jeong-hee laborer
Lee Yeon-su High Farming Boarding house →
sundries shop
Lee Middle Farming
Jeong-rye
Lee Tae-sun Middle Needlework Needlework
Yim Nam-ju Low Farming → needlework Needlework
Jeong High Civil servant Civil servant
Na-won
Jeong Low Farming Paid work/peddling →
Yeong-gi factory laborer
Jeong Hee-su Low Farming → factory worker Day laborer
→ maid
Jeong Middle Peddling
Hee-tae
Cho Middle Peddling → sundries Shop Civil servant
Geum-yeong → civil servant
because the job was easily accessible to widows who had no special skills or
capital. In the case of Kim Han-gyeong, Yu Nam-hee, and Jeong Yeong-gi,
they managed to make a living from peddling at the beginning because
they had virtually nothing on them when they moved out.
I had to leave home at 3:30 in the morning … I had to pick vegetables in

the fields and take them to the car that went to a market in Seoul … Then
you’d get leftovers from under the car, you know. Water parsley or spinach
120 I.-H. LEE
or whatever … I picked them up and put them in a cloth bundle … I

brought them home, washed them, boiled them, and then sold them to
shoppers who came out in the afternoon to buy food for dinner. That earned
me quite a lot of money … Picking leftover vegetables and selling them.
From that I got to save some money. (From an interview with Jeong
Yeong-gi, dated January 16, 2006)
To travel some 30 kilometers to Daegu, I rode a commuter bus in the morn-

ing and came back home by the same commuter bus every evening. I sewed
up some clothes and found stuff like jeogori jackets and wrapped them up in
a big bundle, and I rode the commuter bus in the morning and came back
by the evening. Back in the day, in the countryside, we could buy and sell
whatever, rice for rice, barley for barley, scrap rice for scrap rice … Things
I’d got from working, and I wanted to sell them, so I took everything … I
brought all that stuff home … I carried all the bundles over my head, and
they were so heavy … (From an interview with Yu Nam-hee, dated January
26, 2006 1 24)
Peddling was a physically demanding job. In farming village in the 1950s

and 1960s, grains like rice, barley, or beans, rather than cash, were used as
a means of payment. So vendors had to carry around a large amount of
goods to sell in addition to the payment they received in grains, and by the
end of each day, they collapsed from pains in the back, neck, and legs. To
this day Jeong Yeong-gi and Yu Nam-hee suffer from the aftereffects of
the physical labor they undertook decades ago.
Third, women supported their entire family by working as seamstresses.
Seamstress jobs had some good points because, unlike peddling jobs, the
women didn’t have to travel a long distance and could stay with their chil-
dren, but they still had to work non-stop. A Korean author whose mother
was a war widow who worked as a seamstress described the situation as
follows: “With her hard-earned money my mother bought a manual sew-
ing machine and worked non-stop from dawn until midnight.”12 As
regards the military and police widows who were interviewed for this
research, the experiences of Lee Tae-un, Yang Seong-eun, and Yim Nam-ju
were very similar.
My younger sister gave me a room where I could work … so I could help

her with the house work and also with her tavern while sewing all day. Oh
dear, to sew all the clothes for the bar girls there, I was tired to death from
sewing that much … What I envied most was the other merchants who go
come home in the evening; at least they could lie down and rest, you know?
This seamstress job had no day or night. I wished I could rest by night …
Now I don’t even wanna hold a needle in my hand because it makes me feel
so sick. (From an interview with Lee Tae-sun, dated January 17, 2006)
Fourth, starting in the 1960s, the number of war widows who worked
as factory laborers increased. Two factors applied to them. First of all, as a
result of the government policy to industrialize the country, the number
of factories increased, which expanded the number of job opportunities
for widows in general. In addition, the Park Jung-hee regime established
Veterans Compensation Affairs (軍事援護廳) in 1961 and subsequently
enacted such laws as the Military Relief Recipient Appointment Law and
the Military Relief Recipient Employment Law, which assisted injured
military and police personnel and the families of deceased war veterans
with employment. As a result, between 1961 and 1962 alone, 32,032
relief recipients found jobs.13 At that time, some military and police wid-
ows found jobs at factories and the Monopoly Bureau. Of the military and
police widows who were interviewed for this research, Kim Han-gyeong,
Yu Nam-hee, and Yun Jeong-hee became factory workers. Jeong Yeong-gi
belatedly followed the same route and became a factory worker in the late
1960s. However, the government policy to offer employment services to
war widows in the 1960s showed considerable deviation by region.
According to the data, the government established employment service
centers for war widows in only two cities,14 Seoul and Daegu, and added
one more in Yongsan a few months later.15 Of the war widows who partici-
pated in the interviews, four women, that is three in Daegu and one in
Seoul, when classified by occupational area, found jobs in factories via
government introduction. It should be noted that these women had no
special skills and a low educational level compared with young, unmarried
laborers, so they were allocated to simple labor tasks such as packing or
moving goods.
[Working as a peddler] sometimes I had to sleep over … I thought I

shouldn’t be away, no way, and I had to get a job. So I got a job. I went to
work at a paper company … It was a factory called Murim Paper … I worked
there for nine years … Young people were sitting there all day long, sorting
and piling up scrap paper, and counting how many sheets there were. Then
they’d lay out a really big piece of packing paper, and we packed every single
day. (From an interview with Jeong Yeong-gi, dated January 16, 2006)
122 I.-H. LEE
I was the first to arrive at the rubber factory … I had no skills, so then my
hands hurt a lot. I couldn’t even close my hands like this, after scissoring all
day. There were lots of women and lots of men. The place was called the
Taehwa Rubber Factory. (From an interview with Yun Jeong-hee, dated
January 23, 2006)
Despite the intense labor, the war widows who became factory laborers
were at least guaranteed a regular and stable income. For war widows who
constantly feared economic insecurity, economic stability was a benefit
they wouldn’t trade for the world.16
In addition, there were cases of war widows, like Jeong Na-won and
Cho Geum-yeong, who became civil servants. The job required a certain
level of education, so it was not considered an ordinary economic activity.
Pension for War Victims and Exploitation

Regarding the economic activities of military and police widows, a discus-
sion on pensions must be included. A pension, in the form of a supple-
mentary living allowance for the recipients of the national relief, was issued
annually, or a fixed amount of money was given every month. Compensation
was a fixed amount of money given once to the family of a deceased person
of national merit under the pretext of a bonus or resettlement fund. But,
to the war widows who participated in this research, the pension, as they
univocally claimed, existed in name only until the early 1980s. In the
1950s, the set amount was supposed to be enough to buy a large straw
bag of rice (about 80 kg) once a year,17 but due to budget shortfalls pen-
sions were either not issued or were embezzled by civil servants. Even if a
war widow was the first-priority recipient of a pension or compensation,
the money was frequently confiscated by her parents-in-law or
brothers-in-law.
Something like compensation was issued to me, but my brother-in-law took

it away. He refused to give it to me. (From an interview with Cho Geum-
yeong, dated January 20, 2006)
I knew a woman named Ms. Yang. About three years ago, she said she was
going to get her pension [and took steps to receive it]. So, I asked her,
“Why are you only receiving your pension now?” She said, “My mother-in-
law used to receive it.” It sounded like her mother-in-law had died; and now
that she’s dead, the pension comes to her. (From an interview with Jeong
Na-won, dated January, 16, 2006)
As the Park Jung-hee regime settled in, the pension system changed to
issuing a fixed amount of money by quarter or month, but the amount was
still too small. Then, starting from the late 1980s, when President Roh
Tae-woo established a new regime, the system gradually became more
realistic. As of late 2005, the monthly pension amounted to 774,000 won
per person (see Table 5.5).
In reality, the pension provided military and police widows with finan-
cial and mental stability. In other words, to military and police widows, the
pension was a means of survival that helped them maintain a certain stan-
dard of living without constantly feeling constrained by their children.
Moreover, the pension gave the military and police widows who took part
in this research a sense of confidence.
The War History of Military and Police Widows

Hearing the wartime experiences of the war widows and their life before
and after the Korean War has made it possible to write a war history that
is rarely heard or repeated, for it recalls their memories of a fractured war,
as in the cases of other candidates who experienced the war. Until now, the
Table 5.5 Pension payment by year/month

Year Pension
1952 6,000 hwan/year

1956 24,000 hwan/year
1960 24,000 hwan/year
1962 700 won/month
1970 2,000 won/month
1975 4,200 won/month
1980 14,300 won/month
1985 23,000 won/month
1988 50,000 won/month
1989 120,000 won/month
1991 250,000 won/month
2005 774,000 won/month
Source: Lee (2004: 84), The Ministry of Veterans Affairs (1974: 188) and The Ministry of Patriots and
Veterans Affairs (1992: 800–5)
124 I.-H. LEE
war widows have been ignored, rather deliberately, and airbrushed from
the history of the Korean War.
The war history as told by the war widows is quite different from the
official descriptions of war as devastation and ruins, brutality, and the
courage of soldiers and generals, and so forth.
As regards the war widows, the Korean War was remembered through
their personal situations. Thus there was the story of the young pregnant
woman who was clueless about life on the road from Cheongju to
Tongyeong as a refugee. She was rather excited about it, as if she was
going on a picnic, but then she parted ways with her husband. There was
also the story of the woman who lost her own family, and thereafter lived
the life of a beggar; or that of the young bride who, while seeking refuge,
had to endure both physical and verbal abuse from her parents-in-law; or
that of the woman who was abandoned by her in-laws and left all alone.
Such stories do not appear in the official history of the Korean War.
Records of the Korean War only say that men were the soldiers that fought
each battle, while women remained protected in the rear. The official his-
tory prioritized the records of male-centered battlefronts and the decision-
making process behind policies. For the war widows who carried their
young children or who had just given birth, being a refugee on the road
was a vivid memory of the war. But their memories as widows only became
official after their husband left to fight in the war, followed by endless
waiting and exhaustion.
In fact, the tears shed by war widows were not directly caused by the
brutality of war or their life as refugees or their sorrow for the deceased
husband, but rather by their exhausting situation and the rancor they had
to endure after the war. In the process of putting together this research,
the war widows whom this writer met wept bitterly—without exception—
when speaking about their relations with their in-laws following the death
of their husband in the war. The women sighed as they recalled their tire-
less efforts to feed their children or send them to school. To the war
widow, the war did not start on June 25, 1950 but at the instant when her
husband vanished from her side or when she moved out of the in-laws’
home. From that moment on, the war moved to the fields, to the factory,
to the kitchen of a stranger’s house, or to the corner floor where she sat
face-to-face with her parents-in-law. To the military and police widows,
daily life was so overwhelmingly painful that they described it thus: “We
lived like death.”
The official duty of war widows was established with the launch of
National Memorial Day on June 6, 1956, when it was stated that they
“should fulfill the duty assigned to them and lead a patriotic life.” Syngman
Rhee, the first president of the Republic of Korea, stated in his speech
celebrating the first Memorial Day that “wailing, incense burning and
ancestral memorial ceremonies” were foolish customs by which even a
grave religious ceremony could easily be turned into bedlam, driving out
guests and mourners. With the president’s determination, the bereaved of
the war dead, including their widows, could no longer experience the tra-
dition of sharing their grief with their relatives, neighbors, and other
mourners through wailing and other activities expressing their sorrow and
uniting them as one. Now, the war widows were forced to become mere
spectators rather than the chief mourners in the events held to mourn
their husbands. The National Memorial Day commemorations had now
become not an event in which homage was paid to the war heroes and
comfort given to their loved ones, but rather an opportunity for high-
ranking government officials, including the president, to deliver grand
speeches and a series of empty formalities.
All of the military and police widows made a living on their own instead
of receiving help from their in-laws, which made them want to move out
to start their own household. In Korean society, a woman’s moving out of
the in-laws’ home was a way to break away from control and surveillance
by the patriarch, while allowing them to start an independent family unit,
for they were no longer a mere appendage of their in-laws’ family. In that
respect, gaining their independence and living alone should be regarded as
something extremely difficult because it presented a challenge to the patri-
arch of the in-law family. In other words, the experience of war and the
economic activities of the military and police widows allow us to peek into
the gap between their experiences of war and their experiences of the
patriarchy.
This research examines the experience of war and the means of subsis-
tence of Korean War widows through the life of military and police wid-
ows who shared a relatively similar sense of identity. By limiting the scope
of the interviews to military and police widows, the limits of this research
became clear. Military and police widows were one category of war wid-
ows among many, who were born out of the Korean War and received a
degree of protection from the Korean government. Therefore, in order
for a more constructive investigation into war widows, who had to endure
dire conditions or “the absence of a husband” in Korean society, research
126 I.-H. LEE
must be extended to include military and police widows who were inter-
viewed for this research as well as other types of war widows, including the
wives of defectors to North Korea or murder victims, the wives of abduct-
ees, and the wives of ordinary civilians who died in the Korean War.
Notes
1. National Defense and Military Research Center (1996: 33–85).
2. Lee (2004: 26–8).
3. There is a recent research, a published book containing oral statements of
the wives of murder victims and disabled veterans and the Vietnam War
widows, made between 2006 and 2008 (Lee 2010).
4. Yeowon Editorial Department (1957).
5. Lee (2004: 214–15).
6. But, in many cases, compared to the women’s in-laws, their own families
were active or favorable towards remarriage. As related in the interviews,
most widows were asked by their mother or siblings to remarry, and
according to them, many widows they had known were remarried because
their family members had come forward and helped.
7. Jeong (1958: 233).
8. The Bureau of Statistics of the Ministry of Public Information (1953:
29–30).
9. Kim (1959: 4–8).
10. Lee (2004: 90–1).
11. Yim and Koh (1959: 9).
12. Kim (1988: 14).
13. The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (1992: 121).
14. The Kyunghyang Shinmun, April 25, 1963.
15. The Kyunghyang Shinmun, July 6, 1963.
16. Most military and police widows with whom this researcher met expressed
favorable opinion towards the Park Jung-hee government, and one of the
more frequently mentioned reasons included the employment policy oper-
ated by the government.
17. The issued amount of pension as of the late December, 1956 was 24,000
hwan per year, when the price of rice in Seoul was 28,224 hwan per straw
bag (about 8 kg).
Bibliography
Newspaper
The Kyunghyang Shinmun
Books
Jeong Bi-seok. 1958. The River of Seduction. Seoul: Sinheung Publisher.
Kim Suk-ja. 1959. Seoul Women’s Occupation Survey. Seoul: The Bureau of
Community Development, United Nations Korea Economic Coordinators
Office.
Kim Won-il. 1988. House with a Deep Garden. Seoul: Munkak-gwa Jiseong-sa.
Lee Im-ha. 2004. The Women Rise Above a War. Seoul: Seohaemunji.
———. 2010. The War Widow Breaks Silence of the Korean Modern History. Seoul:
Chaekkwahamkke.
National Defense and Military Research Center. 1996. Statistics of Damage from
the Korean War. Seoul.
The Bureau of Statistics of the Ministry of Public Information. 1953. 1952 Korea
Statistical Year Book. Seoul.
The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. Annual Reports. Statistical Dynamics of
Health and Social Affairs.
———. 1957. Statistical Dynamics of Health and Social Affairs.
The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs. 1992. 30 Years of Veterans Affairs.
Seoul.
The Ministry of Veterans Affairs. 1974. 10 Years of Relief Affairs. Seoul.
Yeowon Editorial Department. 1957. My Pleas. Yeowon, January Issue.
Yim Byeong-hyeong, and Koh Gyeong-suk. 1959. Exploration Report by Seoul
Women Vocational Center. Seoul: Community Development Center of US–
Korea Economic Cooperation, Community.
CHAPTER 6
Memories of the Korean War among Rural

Communities: The Village Called
the “Moscow of Icheon”
Yong-ki Lee
People’s Korean War Experiences

What does the Korean War mean for the Korean people? We know quite a
bit about the war, yet this question sounds strangely unfamiliar. We still
know little about the Korean people’s experience of the war and the
wounds it inflicted upon them. One of the main reasons for this is that the
Korean government has allowed only its official interpretation of events,
that is “an unlawful surprise attack by North Korea,” and suppressed all
other memories of the war in the belief that remembering the Korean War
is unnecessary or even harmful to the state-led compressive moderniza-
tion. It took more than half a century after the tragedy to raise the ques-
tion, “What does the Korean War mean to the Korean people?”1 But,
sadly, there has been little in-depth discussion about this to date.
What, then, was the Korean War to the Korean people? Did the war
break out during the continuous struggles of the Korean people bringing
about the complete destruction of the revolutionary capability, or did it
happen abruptly, ruining the people’s lives and turning them into victims
Y.-k. Lee (*)

Korea National University of Education, Cheongju, South Korea

130 Y.-K. LEE
of history? Both views may contain elements of truth, but can easily lead
to the simplistic conclusion that, in the first case, the war was a class strug-
gle and the people were the subject of revolution or, in the second, the
war was a form of state violence and the people were its victims. As a
result, the war is often reduced to the binary opposition of “oppression vs.
resistance” or “state vs. people.”
In this study, I intend, as an effort to overcome these limitations, to
focus my discussions on the experiences of village communities during the
Korean War. I believe that their experience was not an average undertak-
ing of people in the abstract sense, and I hope to project the Korean War
from the perspective of “history from below” by looking at the actual
experiences of a specific group of people. I also believe that such a view
would help reveal the reality of the Korean War for ordinary Korean peo-
ple more vividly, which has long been suppressed and distorted not only
by the state, but overly simplified by the counter-historiography as well. As
such, the main thrust of this study focuses on the following meanings of
the microscopic space called “village” rather than giving a detailed descrip-
tion of the war experiences of Korean people.
First, a village is a space in which people lead their daily lives, forming
primary relationships. If we delve into the war experiences of a village
community deep enough, therefore, we can understand the various ways
in which a war intrudes into their daily lives and identify the internal logic
they develop to tackle the extreme situation facing them. Second, a village
is the lowest level at which the state faces the people. Prior to the Korean
War, Korean villages had a certain amount of autonomy although they
were under the jurisdiction of the smallest administrative unit, called a
myeon, and the state controlled the individuals by using their village com-
munity as a medium. The war provided Korea with an opportunity to
redefine the relationship between the state and the people through
repeated occupations of villages by the two conflicting state powers, South
and North Korea. The experience of the war in these villages could help us
to understand the way in which the state’s actions are intertwined with
people’s lived lives in its oppression vis-à-vis people’s resistance. It would
then help us to better understand the meaning of the Korean War in the
course of nation-state formation and the aspect in which the “vitality of
the people” is entangled with nation-building.
The specific village selected for this study is Odu-ri in Gapja-myeon,
Icheon-gun, Gyeonggi-do.2 Gapja-myeon was the area where the leftist
movement was most active in the entire county of Icheon; and of the
6 MEMORIES OF THE KOREAN WAR AMONG RURAL COMMUNITIES… 131
s everal villages under its jurisdiction, Odu-ri was particularly active in the
communist movement, which earned it the nickname “the Moscow of
Icheon.” Odu-ri was branded the “Red Village” after the war, which
brought its community many hardships, forcing a considerable number of
its 60 households to leave before the end of the war. It now appears to be
an ordinary peaceful village, yet a victim mentality lingers on in the minds
of many villagers. Although their memories of the difficult past made it
challenging to perform fieldwork, I nevertheless chose Odu-ri not because
the dramatic experience of the village qualifies it as a typical case, but
because the traditional view of binary opposition that the village was
regarded as a “Village of the Reds” by the one party and as a “Village of
Revolutionaries” by the other is very far from the truth. My essay will
show a much more complicated and multilayered reality of village life
which cannot be reduced to simplistic ideological assertions.
The fieldwork was conducted using the oral history method. I am fully
aware of the tendency to discredit oral history data as unreliable on the
grounds of human subjectivity vis-à-vis documental objectivity. Despite
this weakness, I believe oral history is a valuable tool not only because
there is little written material about the war experiences of the village, but
because the vivid voices of those who had direct experience of the war can
reveal hidden truths.3 What I needed to do first was to build trust with the
interviewees to uncover their repressed memories. Then I compared and
reviewed the memories of different individuals, and interpreted them in a
critical manner, trying to get closer to the reality they faced in the past. I
also focused on the similarities and differences in their testimonies, trying
to understand why the same event caused different experiences and what
made them remember the event the way they did. Oral history is a work
of collaboration by both interviewer and interviewee and, at the same
time, it can entail disagreeable interpretations. Therefore, I will try to
deliver the voices of the villagers as vividly as possible in the main part and
leave room for the readers to feel and interpret the narratives as they like.
For the fieldwork, I visited the village of Odu-ri about ten times
between June and October 2000 and again in February and March 2001.
I interviewed eight people who were living in the village during the war-
time period, and conducted more intensive interviews with Kim Cheol
and Kang Tae-yeon. I planned to interview all the members of the Odu-ri
community who lived in the village during wartime, but had to change the
plan as most survivors refused to be interviewed. My interviews were,
therefore, focused on some of the key figures of the village (see Table 6.1).
132 Y.-K. LEE
Table 6.1 Interviewee personal profiles (Pseudonyms, as of 2000)

Name YOB Size of Education Personal Life after the war
(age farm information
in during wartime
1950)
Kim 1921 Small None Land Committee Led a hard life because of
Cheol (30) member his collaborative activities
during wartime. Still
engaging in farming at
the time of interview.
Kang 1929 Medium Elementary Vice-chairman of Served in the military
Tae- (22) school the Youth Corps during the war and has
yeon been involved in farming
since then. Served as
village chief, Saemaeul
Movement leader, etc.
Chairman of the Village
Elders’ Association.
Choe 1933 Medium Middle Middle school The first person in Odu-ri
Gi-hong (18) school student (4th to attend a middle school.
grade); his father Served in the military
(village chief) was after the war and was a
abducted to public servant for 30
North Korea years. Retired and living
in downtown Icheon.
Park 1934 Medium Elementary Farmer Served in the military.
Yong-ho (17) school Settled in Seoul after
military service and then
returned to the village.
Engaged in farming.
Jeong 1938 Large Elementary Elementary Led a hard life in the
Ho-il (13) school school student postwar period due to the
(6th grade); his leftist activities of his
father (leftist) was father Jeong Cheol-hui.
killed Moved to Seoul in the
1960s. Living in Siheung
City.
Both were involved in the leftist movement during the war. However,
Kim Cheol was a poor, uneducated farmer whereas Kang Tae-yeon had
received an elementary school education and came from a medium-size
farming family—a contrast resulting in significant differences as well as
similarities in their war memories. I believe that readers will gain a
ultifaceted understanding of the war experiences of the Odu-ri villagers

m
if they keep in mind these points.
Odu-ri Village in the Prewar Period
A Poor Village
Odu-ri was a tiny, poor, multi-clan village whose residents “were all in a
similar situation, lived hard lives, without divisions between Yangban
[high class] and commoners.” An analysis of the land registry reveals that
land ownership in Odu-ri was in a very unequitable situation. Only 15
percent of the entire farmland was owned by the villagers, while about 70
percent belonged to landowners living outside Gapja-myeon. None of the
landowners in Odu-ri had enough land for lease, and only six of them
were mid-scale farmers who owned less than three hectares of land. The
great majority of Odu-ri’s farmers were tenants contracted with absentee
landlords. They considered resistance against the landlords a “nonsense”
because it would surely mean a loss of tenancy. Kim Cheol recollected the
helpless and miserable life of the tenants comparing with those of slaves.
We lived because we could not die. The haves lived comfortably enjoying
what they wanted to do. … The poor people were always like the slaves of
rich people. We didn’t have any choice but to be dragged around as they
pull. Only the voice of those with money was heard with regards to com-
munity affairs.
Establishment of power relations was an inevitable part of life even in a

poor village like Odu-ri, where “the haves” played the key role. As a great
majority of the Odu-ri farmers were tenants contracted with absentee
landlords, leasing agents (Mareum) who had the rights to manage tenant
farmers had more power and influence than other members of the village.
The most influential members of the village were Kim Myeong-deok, Yi
Jeong-man, Choe Hyeon-seong, and Jeong Cheol-hui, all of whom acted
as intermediaries between the tenants and the landlords, and three of
whom, excepting Jeong, took turns in serving as the village chief during
the colonial period. Among them, Yi Jeong-man is regarded as being par-
ticularly important as he exerted “exclusive power” in the village.
Yi Jeong-man was born in Seoul in 1894 where he received a middle-
school education before arriving in Odu-ri around 1930. Hired as a leasing
134 Y.-K. LEE
agent by several landlords who lived in Seoul and having owned a larger
part of the farming land around the village himself, he was given a right
that could affect matters of life and death for the local tenant farmers. He
was also the only person permitted by the authority to run a mill in Gapja-
myeon, and was appointed to serve as the chief of Odu-ri. That is why the
villagers of Odu-ri remembered him as “the owner of all the rights” and
“the one who had nothing to envy in the world during the colonial
period.” It was only after Imperial Japan implemented the National
Mobilization Law in 1938 that he was appointed to the position of village
chief, whose main duties included allocating the human and material
resources imposed by the colonial authority to individual households in
the village. He fulfilled his duties in a dogmatic manner giving favors to his
personal friends, often placing a greater burden on poorer farmers.
The only person that could check Yi Jeong-man’s overbearing influence
was Jeong Cheol-hui, who would later become the chief of the Icheon-
gun branch of the People’s Committee during the Korean War. Born into
a poor family in Odu-ri in 1899, Jeong Cheol-hui was widely praised as a
child prodigy. He did not receive any formal education but grew into not
only “a man of high intelligence” but also a “man with guts” who acquired
modern knowledge and applied new techniques to agricultural activities.
He became one of the rare farmers in Odu-ri to accumulate wealth via
farming and was a leasing agent at a minor level, although his manner of
farm management and respectable character differed greatly from that of
Yi Jeong-man.
Everyone in the village regarded anything Jeong Cheol-hui said and did as
right. He had money but was modest, and wore plain clothes. He treated
old and young impartially. He worked as a leasing agent but tried to stand
by the farmers rather than the landlords. That’s why we respected him as a
great man. (Kim Cheol)
Even here he stood by the poor farmers when they were against the land-
lords, and borrowed rice to distribute it to the poor. He helped them greatly
… He was a man of noble spirit. He did nothing one could find fault with,
and never tried to serve his selfish interests and desires. He fought against
the strong people but never treated the poor farmers unfairly. (Kang Tae-yeon)
This contrast between Jeong Cheol-hui and Yi Jeong-man moved the vil-
lagers of Odu-ri to respect Jeong as “a great man” and a “man worthy of
respect.” At the village meetings he attacked Yi’s unfair management of

the village. Therefore Yi Jeong-man “relished the great power but actually
remained a loner.” If Jeong Cheol-hui won the hearts of ordinary farmers,
Yi Jeong-man seized real power. Jeong Cheol-hui, however, did not intend
to use the support of the villagers to destroy Yi’s despotic influence on the
villagers and seize it for himself. As Kim Cheol said, “The situation was,
then, just like that.”
Becoming the “Moscow of Icheon”

The end of World War II in 1945 brought the liberation of Odu-ri, too.
While there was no particularly violent conflict or drastic change in village
life, the effects of Liberation came from beyond the boundary of the vil-
lage. Ideologically driven activities outside the village began, including the
establishment of the People’s Committee of Icheon-gun as well as the
Youth Association and Farmers’ Union of Gapja-myeon. These organiza-
tions gradually influenced the villagers of Odu-ri to take tentative steps
toward a “new world.” Jeong Cheol-hui began to involve himself in leftist
activities.
Kim Cheol said in an interview that Jeong Cheol-hui turned to the left-
ist ideology during the colonial period and “worked secretively to affect
young people with propaganda.” He participated as one of the three del-
egates representing Icheon-gun in the inaugural ceremony of the
Federation of All Korean Farmers’ Union in December 1945.4 According
to the court ruling of the National Security Act Violation Case in 1949,
he joined the Korean People’s Party in December 1945 and the South
Korean Labor Party in July of the following year.5 Jeong Cheol-hui
remained a key figure in the leftist camp of Icheon-gun after the 1945
liberation, exerting a strong influence on the villagers of Odu-ri.
Jeong Cheol-hui was really busy participating in lecture meetings on current

issues. Whenever he returned from Seoul, we, the village people, gathered
together in his house to hear about the current political situation. I think
that’s why Odu-ri became left-leaning. It was all because of Jeong Cheol-
hui’s influence. Leftist thinkers talked about what farmers wished to hear
about, as you know. I often heard about Lyuh Woon-Hyung6 from Jeong
Chil-hui: that he was a great man, or that he supported the Three-Seven
crop-sharing system, things like that. (Choe Gi-hong)
136 Y.-K. LEE
Almost all the Odu-ri villagers I interviewed told me similar stories about
Jeong Cheol-hui where they often concluded that their village inclined
towards the left because of his influence. “We farmers followed Jeong
Cheol-hui because such a great man like him said, ‘This is right.’” It may
not be that the villagers followed him blindly, of course. They said that the
farmers of Odu-ri were particularly attracted to the Three-Seven crop-
sharing system which was, they assured themselves, “introduced to the
village since Lyuh Woon-Hyung advocated it.”7 In Odu-ri, where most of
the villagers were poor tenants, the leftist ideas didn’t sound too absurd.
As for why Odu-ri was dubbed the “Moscow of Icheon,” Kim Cheol kept
on saying, “because of Jeong Cheol-hui”—up until the third interview, in
which he gave me a more vivid description of the times.
From the farmers’ point of view, what the leftists or the Reds were saying
was right. “Eat equally and live equally.” Just think about it. People like us,
having nothing, living under the Japs and the rich, were treated so harshly.
We worked for them for six full days a week just to get a bushel of rice. All
those who went through such hard times thought Communism was good.
All were drawn to it, and hence they said, “In such and such a village they
are all Reds.” As for this village, they branded it “Moscow” because it is
where Jeong Cheol-hui lived. (Kim Cheol)
Despite the nickname, Odu-ri was far from being a “revolutionary” vil-
lage. The villagers tended to support the leftist camp and some of its
youths were quite enthusiastic, but “it was nothing extraordinary.” They
might have felt the new change more keenly from the collapse of the
oppressive system in the village represented by “Yi Jeong-man’s power”
and the hierarchy based on wealth and prestige.
The exclusive power Yi Jeong-man enjoyed during the colonial period
originated from the landlords’ monopoly over land based on the landlord–
tenant relationship and the colonial power that supported the village chief
in order to exercise effective control of the village. The liberation of Korea
in 1945, however, led to the loosening of government control with the
end of colonial rule and weakening of the landlords’ domination in the
implementation of the Three-Seven crop-sharing system and the rumor of
land reform. Massive social change affected Odu-ri and, accordingly, Yi
Jeong-man lost the material resources that had given him his exclusive
privileges. The changed situation led Yi’s sons, “who listened to the words
of Jeong Cheol-hui if not those of his father,” to join the leftist camp and,
eventually, Yi Jeong-man himself. For the villagers of Odu-ri, Korea’s lib-

eration from Japanese colonial rule was probably better represented by the
fact that Yi Jeong-man was “defeated by Jeong Cheol-hui,” who had long
been trying to build a new world supported by the villager’s trust and
cooperation.
After the Liberation, most of the villagers of Odu-ri followed Jeong
Cheol-hui, except for three or four Catholic families who were, as a result,
isolated from the village, although there was no tangible conflict. The
Catholics, though supported by the government, were unable to partici-
pate in right-wing activities because the great majority of Odu-ri’s villagers
openly supported the leftist camp. By the same token, the rest of the vil-
lagers didn’t feel it necessary to express hostility towards the Catholics
who had little influence upon village affairs.
As inhabitants of a poor village, the people of Odu-ri sympathized with
the leftist propaganda, “Eat equally, live equally!” For them, Jeong Cheol-
hui was a “great socialist leader” who would make their aspirations for a
new life possible. The solidarity of the villagers under Jeong’s leadership,
however, resulting in Odu-ri being branded a “Red Village” and moved it
to center stage of the “Riot of Gapja-myeon,” which is also known as the
“Dokcheong8 Disturbance” among the villagers.
The incident took place when the leftist camp of Gapja-myeon, which
had been the most active of all the leftists in Icheon, became the main
target of the right-wing youth group. The activists of Dokcheong fre-
quented the villages of Gapja-myeon, including Odu-ri, in order to hunt
down “the Reds” and “mercilessly beat those they caught and round them
up into groups of tens and twenties regardless of whether they had com-
mitted any criminal act.” As the violence of the Dokcheong intensified,
youths in Gapja-myeon realized that they could “no longer cope with the
situation” and decided to “confront them.” Hundreds of youths in Gapja-
myeon gathered together to stand against the Dokcheong, but the con-
frontation of both parties ended abruptly as the police interrupted to help
the far-right group and attack the rallying youths, opening fire and arrest-
ing some. The incident caused deep frustration among the farmers in
Gapja-myeon, shattered their dreams of a new world, and drove the local
leftist camp underground.
As for Odu-ri, “the Moscow of Icheon,” most of its young men were
involved in the “riot” and became victims of violence as a result. Even
today, there exist among the aged villagers strong feelings of hostility
toward the Dokcheong regardless of their ideological inclination in the
138 Y.-K. LEE
past.9 While they were in the same place at the same time and experienced
the same event, not all the Odu-ri villagers have the same memory of that
event. The memories narrated by Kim Cheol and Kang Tae-yeon provide
a clear example of this. Both joined the rally and were arrested by the
police. For Kang Tae-yeon, his experience of the incident appears to have
been something he didn’t want to talk about. His description of the inci-
dent was very simple. He “had to be there in order not to be ostracized by
the others because all the neighbors were gathered together.” He also
insisted that it was “only a few who acted voluntarily while many others
followed them rather reluctantly.” Meanwhile, Kim Cheol said that he
participated in the rally out of his own accord, “because others who knew
more than I did said it was the right thing to do.” He gave me a more vivid
description of the situation surrounding his arrest by the police.
There were a many great men in Gapja-myeon who had leftist ideas, and
were intelligent. … When I was arrested and taken to the Prosecutors’
Office in Yeoju, a man appeared, saying that he came from the Minjeon
[Democratic People’s Front, or Minjujuui Minjokjeonseon] in Seoul. As
they wanted an explanation from someone representing the leftist camp,
Park Chang-hwan [Chairman of the People’s Committee in Icheon] stepped
forward. He was a short man, and a very eloquent speaker. … The Minjeon
then had the lawful office in Seoul, in the leftist camp. (Kim Cheol)
He described detailed memories about the Minjeon, a federation of leftist

organizations established just after the 1945 Liberation, stressing that it
was a “lawful” organization. It seems to suggest that he neither partici-
pated in the resistance by allowing himself to be swept along by the gen-
eral mood among his neighbors, nor succumbed to the authority outright
even after the despair resulting from the “disturbance.” Kim Cheol’s
memories contrast sharply with those that Kang tried to recollect in a pas-
sive, reluctant manner, revealing that they did not share the same experi-
ence of the incident. This difference persists in memories about the war.
Solidarity and Division in Rural Communities during

the North Korean Occupation
Outbreak of the Korean War and Founding of the People’s

Committee—Reality in the “Class Struggle”
One day in the summer of 1950, Kang Tae-yeon, on his way home from a
nearby town, happened to witness a scene in which a group of about 70
people were taken to a secluded roadside area in two trucks and summarily
executed. It was later referred to as the National Guidance League
Massacre of Icheon.10 Three villagers of Odu-ri were also among the vic-
tims of the massacre. Their involvement in leftist activities is not clear as
the memories of Odu-ri’s villagers differ slightly from each other. The vil-
lagers’ conclusions, however, were not very different: “They were indis-
criminate about killing people, although we people are all the same” (Kim
Cheol); “A lot of simpleton countrymen were killed unfairly” (Kang Tae-
yeon); and “Such a genocide during the Korean War would have never
happened if the police hadn’t killed some members of the National
Guidance League” (Jeong Ho-il). Even someone like Choe Gi-hong, who
had a long career as a civil servant of ROK, severely criticized President
Rhee Syng-man regarding the National Guidance League Massacre, say-
ing, “Rhee Syng-man will never be able to wash away his sins of harsh rule,
not even after a billion years.” Although the Rhee government branded
the National Guidance League members “Reds,” to the Odu-ri villagers
they were simply “our neighbors” who were “innocent farmers.”
The wartime experiences of Odu-ri’s inhabitants began to shift rapidly
towards a crisis with the establishment of the People’s Committee. In
Odu-ri, the committee was established just after the occupation of Icheon
by the Korean People’s Army together with the Democratic Youth
Alliance, the Women’s Union, and the Farmers’ Union. As befits its nick-
name “Moscow of Icheon,” Odu-ri played an active role at the county
(gun) and sub-county (myeon) levels, and formed the village’s People’s
Committee according to the “class struggle” theory. That the committee
was to be chaired by a servant of the village’s administrative chief was
enough to convince Odu-ri’s inhabitants that the world had turned upside
down. The villagers must have felt that they had turned back time to the
days before the Dokcheong Disturbance because the entire community,
except for a couple of Catholic families, cooperated with the People’s
Committee either voluntarily or otherwise.
140 Y.-K. LEE
A closer look at the village during this period, however, reveals that the
general atmosphere among the village community was far from “revolu-
tionary.” The People’s Committee of Odu-ri was formed not by the
majority of villagers out of their own free will but by a few leftist activists
in and outside the village. Despite the nickname, “Moscow of Icheon,”
Odu-ri had only a few key figures who were either sacrificed during the
National Guidance League Massacre or involved in affairs outside the vil-
lage. The situation may also have been affected by the fact that Jeong
Cheol-hui, who served as the chairman of the People’s Committee of
Icheon-gun just after the outbreak of the Korean War, was killed by a
bomb. It seems that the People’s Committee of Odu-ri was operated not
by an inner driving force but according to commands sent by the upper
echelon. The villagers’ recollections of the wartime period, however,
revealed subtle differences in their attitudes towards the committee.
They [i.e., the leftist leaders] were interested in winning over unschooled
but strong-willed guys. … At that time there were quite a lot who were
inclined towards leftism even in rural areas like ours. They were active every-
where though they worked undercover in a secretive manner. That’s how we
were snared. … We supported the People’s Army because they said that they
would help poor people like us. (Kim Cheol)
They used poor people because they meekly followed instructions. … They
did as they were told because they didn’t know how not to … Those who
were educated instantly knew they were in trouble, pretending not to know
anything about what was going on, feigning stupidity, and always taking a
backseat. … There was one man in Gapja-myeon who had been dispatched
from the North as a task force member, involving himself in every issue of
our village. He had the power and used the village people as he pleased.
(Kang Tae-yeon)
Kim Cheol and Kang Tae-yeon worked as a member of the Odu-ri Land
Committee and vice chairman of the Democratic Youth Alliance, respec-
tively, during the People’s Army Occupation period. They were arrested
after the village was retaken by ROK forces, and only saved their lives by
the skin of their teeth. The two of them said that the People’s Committee
of their village was composed of poorer and less well-educated villagers
selected by outside forces. As for the characteristic features of the commit-
tee members, Kim Cheol said they were “men with a strong will” while
Kang Tae-yeon stressed that they were “people who knew nothing.”
Similarly, Kim described the outside forces as local leftist activists while
Kang believed that they were agents dispatched from North Korea. As for
the response of the villagers to the situation, Kim thought that “poor
people responded positively” whereas Kang believed that “anyone who
was educated pretended to be a fool.” The reason for such differences in
the memories of the two may lie in the fact that Kim was an illiterate, poor
farmer while Kang was a medium-scale farmer who had also completed
elementary school education. Their contrasting memories reveal that the
war experiences of Odu-ri were not the same for all the villagers.
While their memories varied, both agreed that the People’s Committee
of Odu-ri “just did as they were told.” One may wonder, then, whether or
not their memories were distorted by the red complex, and whether the
war experiences of Odu-ri are nothing more than what the times imposed
upon them. The following memories about recruitment for the People’s
Volunteer Corps and land reform during the People’s Republic period
may help us better understand the war experiences of Odu-ri’s people.
Recruitment for the People’s Volunteer Corps and Land Reform—

Measures to Cope with Pain and Hope
Ten local youths were recruited to the People’s Volunteer Corps from
Odu-ri. A rally was held in Gapja-myeon during the early phase of the
People’s Army Occupation period for the recruitment of soldiers, fol-
lowed by another that took place in a large open space in Odu-ri. There
were some in the village who remembered the latter, although their mem-
ories differ significantly.
There were many who were unable to attend school in the colonial period,
and it was usually these men who volunteered for the army. They heard that
they would be given an opportunity to learn, and might even be admitted to
Kim Il-sung University. That is why a group of about ten youths aged
around eighteen to twenty volunteered. Up until then recruitment had been
on an entirely voluntary basis. They discussed it freely. One of my friends
asked me to go with him, but I refused because I didn’t want to leave my
parents. (Park Yong-ho)
A sub-county [myeon] official urged us to send some of our village young-

sters. But who would want to serve as cannon fodder? So we had to vote.
Key agents, I mean the heads of the Labor Party, the Women’s Union, and
others, gathered together to vote, and took those youths they found suit-
142 Y.-K. LEE
able. … They were aged seventeen or eighteen, because they tended to

accept adults’ advice easily. It was not easy to point to anyone openly, so they
voted secretly and sent those who won the most votes. … But only sons
were excluded; those who had many brothers were chosen. (Kang Tae-yeon)
If you were named, you couldn’t say no and hence had no choice but to be
sent away. I didn’t see any such thing as voting. The villagers kept on urging
youngsters, “Join them! Join them!” Some volunteered just because their
friends had done, saying, “All right, I’m going, too!” and leaving it all to
chance. If someone decided to go, the villagers incited his peers, saying,
“You should go, too!” That is how they followed each other into it, leaving
everything in the hands of luck and chance. (Kim Cheol)
To sum up the recollections of the three villagers above, the leaders of the
Odu-ri People’s Committee selected candidates and urged them to join
the volunteer army following a process of discussion among the villagers
or the formation of local public opinion, although it is not certain whether
they held a secret vote. While there must inevitably have been an element
of structural coercion, the selected youths appear to have joined the vol-
unteer corps according to their own decision, which was, however, either
greatly affected by the urgings of the village elders or was perhaps just a
desperate decision to try their luck. Considering some of the expressions
used by the interviewees, such as “on a 100 percent voluntary basis,” and
“discussed freely” (Park), and “some volunteered just because their friends
had done” (Kim), the youths might have made some sort of collec-
tive decision.
Unlike decisions regarding the forced labor mobilization imposed by
the Japanese colonial authority, which were largely made unilaterally by
village chiefs, recruitment for the volunteer corps in this period involved a
process of assuming “joint responsibilities” and gathering “public opin-
ion,” which also took into account family situations, although the final
decision was up to the People’s Committee. Therefore, one may conclude
that new recruits for the volunteer corps were taken, at least ostensibly, on
a voluntary basis rather than by any form of coercion.11 The youths selected
to join the army accepted the situation rather willingly, due to the belief
that the decision was made by the entire village community represented by
the “village elders.”
As for land reform in Odu-ri, the interviewees agreed that it practically
did not happen because, while the reform was planned to take place on the
basis of the “expropriation of land without compensation and free redis-

tribution,” the People’s Army withdrew from the village before the har-
vest season of 1950. Even here, the memories of Kim Cheol, who was
actually involved in the implementation of land reform, and Kang Tae-
yeon, who had his own farm land, were somewhat different in the details.
They insisted that the land reform should be implemented without compen-
sation and free distribution. And then they took the land, first from the most
notorious leasing agents and then from those who owned large amount of
farmland. The confiscated land was then distributed to the farmers on equal
terms. … It was the Communist Party that tried to take the land from the
vile leasing agents who owned large tracts of land and distribute it fairly
according to the number of family members and the amount of labor
devoted to farming. (Kim Cheol)
They [i.e., the leftist camp] indeed took land without compensation and
distributed it free of charge. … It was okay to hear that they would give you
a paddy field for nothing, but the problem was they took more than the
landlords had done before. They counted the harvested crops right down to
a single grain of millet. It was the Three-Seven system, that is, if you har-
vested ten bags of crops you had seven and gave them three. (Kang Tae-yeon)
According to the Kang Tae-yeon’s recollections, people gaining the farm-

land for nothing had to pay even heavier taxes to the North Korean gov-
ernment. For Kim Cheol, however, the land reform took place on the
principle of “equal redistribution of land,” and the land was largely taken
from notorious leasing agents and given to landless farmers. The North
Korean land reform had been successful in that it helped the occupation
authority win the support of the poorest farmers, but its impact on Korean
rural communities during the war should not be exaggerated. Despite the
limited success, it would be unfair to conclude that the North Korean land
reform was only a “paper revolution”12 pushed forward unilaterally and
perfunctorily because the “autonomy of people” was functioning in the
course of its implementation, though in a limited manner. The activities of
the Village Land Committee, which played a key role in the implementa-
tion of the land reform, was a good example.
Unlike the People’s Committee whose members were appointed by an
organization at a higher level, the Odu-ri Land Committee was composed
of seven or eight members elected by the villagers. In addition, working-
level activities were conducted by the committee but the final decisions
144 Y.-K. LEE
were made by the village meeting, in which a representative from each

family participated. As the committee was responsible for handling crucial
issues such as the expropriation and redistribution of land, the entire com-
munity was keenly attentive to the responsibilities of the committee.
One interesting event took place with regard to the activities of the
Odu-ri Land Committee. Kim Cheol, who was then working as a commit-
tee member, was summoned one day to the myeon office of the People’s
Committee where he was severely criticized for “siding with a reaction-
ary.” As it turned out, his suggestion at a committee meeting that land be
distributed to a poor Catholic was reported to the People’s Committee,
where it was interpreted as an act of “favoritism toward a reactionary.” He
blamed the head of the local security police, who reported him to the
People’s Committee despite having been one of his close friends, saying,
“What do you want the reactionaries to do? Go up to the sky or be buried
in the earth? We are neighbors living in the same village, so don’t you
think that the land should go to them, too?” After the clash, Kim’s posi-
tion was accepted by the upper-level committee.
This individual case may not be enough to explain the entire political
and social situation of Odu-ri during wartime, but the relationship between
the myeon office (as the smallest administrative unit of the government)
and Odu-ri (as a space for the farmers’ daily life) shown by this episode
provides an important clue for our understanding of the relationship
between the state and the people. The state (i.e., the DPRK) dispatched
government advisors even to the smallest villages after considering the
importance of land reform. There was, however, a significant difference
between the position of the state and the response of the farmers.
Administrators in the myeon office felt that the Kim episode should be
dealt with according to political terms, while the villagers in Odu-ri
regarded it as a matter to be resolved by their own community in the belief
that “a village should help all its members to live and prosper together.”
That the myeon-level People’s Committee accepted the autonomous deci-
sion of Odu-ri’s people also suggests that farmers were not simply regarded
as subjects to be ruled or oppressed by the state. The state and the people
rather had an interactive relationship.
As suggested above, the villagers of Odu-ri living under North Korean
occupation led lives far from what one might expect for the inhabitants of
the so-called “Moscow,” and were able to maintain their autonomy,
though in a limited way. The autonomy of the village was based on the
principles of “togetherness” represented by the mottos like “Share Things
Together,” “Take Responsibilities Together,” and “Find Answers through

Discussions.” The principle of togetherness, however, did not apply to
every member of the community because while some of them “agreed
because it would help the poor,” others “had to pretend to be a fool,” and
the rest, like the Catholics, were “ostracized though not bullied.” It may
be argued, then, that the appeal for “togetherness” was a kind of over-
turned concept, or a people’s rhetorical ideology, created to paper over
the fractures and differences in the real world. The people of Odu-ri could
cope with the difficult times together without much internecine conflict
because most of the villagers were inclined to the leftist movement but, at
the same time, the village was also effected by the crisis.
New Relationship between the State and the People

in the Postwar Period
Fearful Oath of Loyalty to the State

The retaking of Odu-ri, nicknamed the “Moscow of Icheon,” created an
appalling scene. The military and the police units of ROK besieged the
tiny village of about 60 households, assembled all the villagers in an open
area, arrested 86 persons who were mostly men and took them to the
police station. Many villagers recollected, “It is no exaggeration to say that
all the villagers were taken to the police regardless of their involvement in
any wrongdoing, except for the Catholics.” Most of the arrested villagers
were released after severe interrogation, but about ten who were taken to
Icheon Police Station had yet to come home. The price paid by the Odu-ri
villagers for their collaboration with the Communists did not end there.
Branded as dwellers of a “village of the Reds,” the inhabitants of Odu-ri
endured harsh retaliatory treatment at the hands of the military, police,
and right-wing groups. The gates of the houses of the key collaborators
and defectors to the North were bolted by the right wing and their family
members became victims of violence on a daily basis. Some of them had
their land taken away, and many left the village.
Due to their experience of the alternate occupations of their village by
the People’s Army and the ROK forces, the villagers of Odu-ri became
keenly aware of the reality surrounding the political entity called “the
state.” Both states of the North and the South forced the villagers to take
a side and prove loyalty in a clear-cut manner. Under occupation by the
146 Y.-K. LEE
ROK forces, the villagers of Odu-ri were warned that those who forgot
their identity as an “ROK national” would “not be treated as human
beings.” Another opportunity given to the villagers to experience the
presence of the state was related to the mobilization of the Secondary
National Troops.13
A great majority of the youths in Icheon-gun were conscripted into the
Secondary National Troops and moved on to Miryang in
Gyeongsangnam-do by foot. It took them ten to fifteen days to reach
Miryang, and most of them returned home in April the following year. I
wondered how it was possible for such a large group of soldiers to endure
such a long march in such horrible conditions, and asked some of the vil-
lage elders who had experienced it: “How could you cope with the hard-
ships, why didn’t you desert the army?” Some said that they had to go
down because the government warned them to move south to escape the
Chinese Red Army that had just crossed the border; while others said that
they had no choice but to leave the village and obey the conscription
papers issued to them. If the first explains that the tragic march was a
simple attempt to be safe, the second provides a clue as to the new rela-
tionship between “the state and the people.”
It was during this wartime period that the villagers of Odu-ri received
attention from the state individually and collectively for the first time in
history. As for the various mobilization orders issued to them by the
Japanese colonial authority during the last phase of the colonial period,
the state allocated the duties and responsibilities to the entire village as a
unit, which were then subdivided by the village to be carried out by its
individual members. It was rare then for people of the same age group to
be summoned together at the same time and even when it did happen the
state’s orders were barely observed. There must have been some, of course,
who refused to enroll in the Secondary National Troops, while those who
accepted the conscription order regarded it as a good way to find shelter.
It is notable, however, that the ROK government in December 1950 was
able to mobilize such a large group of young men in their twenties and
thirties, although it is almost certain that its administration was no more
stable than that of the Japanese colonial authority. The experience of Kim
Cheol, who suffered badly from the terrible aftereffects of torture during
the interrogation concerning his collaboration with the Communist
North, and was later called up for service in the Secondary National
Troops, has important implications for this study.
Looking back, I was really stupid because I didn’t run away as I had done
before like when called up by the colonial government for forced labor
mobilization. I was scared because they had bullied me so much, accusing
me of being a commie.… Then my legs were badly hurt and I couldn’t move
after an exhausting two-day walk. I dropped behind but continued to crawl,
trying to catch them up and reach my destination. I should have given up
and hidden away in a remote village somewhere in Gyeongsang-do, working
for food. But I didn’t. I caught up with them after all. I couldn’t do other-
wise because I had been harassed too much. It just stuck in my head. Getting
there was all I had to do. (Kim Cheol)
Here we can see a clear illustration of the “fearful oath of loyalty” to the
state created by the alternate occupations of the village by the People’s
Army and the ROK Army.14 Now the state had ceased to become some-
thing awesomely powerful that existed far away, but now became some-
thing that “penetrated right into the head” and had to be obeyed “in
death as in life.” The fearsome state implanted itself in a place swept by the
whirlwind of war.
Reality of the Power Emerging from the Postwar Ruins

After the war, the people of Odu-ri had to endure “dark ages” during
which they “treated each other like strangers,” “showing neither affection
nor smiles,” with “no one talking to their neighbors.” Rumors circulated
outside the village, urging each other “not to go to the village,” and “not
to marry them.” Police inspectors became almost full-time residents of the
village, creating an atmosphere of terror in which “nothing could be
done” because there were “only women and the elderly,” as all the young
men had disappeared during the war or been conscripted into the army.15
The war ruined Odu-ri and heralded a new era in which the Catholic
households rose to “wield exclusive power.” Two Catholic families who
had long been estranged from their neighbors when Odu-ri was the
“Moscow of Icheon” were now given absolute power over village affairs,
monopolizing the village chief position and the village’s only mill. In the
village branded as a “red village,” only Catholics were able to gain the
trust of the state.
Their goodness was approved by the government, while the rest of the vil-
lagers were distrusted, so we couldn’t raise our heads to face them. …
Everyone took great care not to misbehave because you could easily get into
148 Y.-K. LEE
trouble if they felt that you “behaved strangely.” … They were close to the
police so we were scared of them. (Kim Cheol)
They had great power. Others lost power during wartime because they had
been inclined to leftism. There were two Catholic families in our village and
they were trusted by the government. Others were not trusted. … We had
to remain silent for several years after the war. That brought many villagers
to the Catholic Church. (Kang Tae-yeon)
Before the war there had been just three or four Catholic families in the
village, but the number quickly increased to over 20 after the war.16 A
symbolic event heralding the arrival of yet another new era took place
when Yi Jeong-man, who had once been one of the most powerful village
leaders but who came to be branded as a “red” due to his sons’ activities,
donated a large chunk of his fortune to the Catholic Church in a desperate
effort to keep his family from total collapse. The “exclusive power of
Catholicism” were secured solely by the “trust of the government,” while
those Yi had enjoyed earlier were based on the material resources he
owned and the landlord–tenant relationship. As such, the influence of the
Catholic families was unstable as it lacked an inner driving force. Naturally,
their power came to be challenged by the new generation in the village.
The young villagers of Odu-ri who had experienced army life during
wartime established the Veterans Association (Jedaegunin Dongjihoe)
with the aim of promoting friendships and boosting the vitality of the vil-
lage. Unlike the older generations, the new generation was confident
because they had acquired new knowledge of the world, accustomed
themselves to rigid discipline within a large organizational setting, and
shaped a progressive mindset, through military experiences. They strength-
ened their position in the village by launching a mutual-aid program and
promoting “communal discipline” in their village. They also raised money
to buy an automatic rice huller with which they began to compete with the
large mill operated by one of the Catholic families.
The Veterans Association was well organized and gained the support of
a majority of the villagers who felt they had been treated unfairly by the
Catholic families. The group kept on growing, overwhelmed the Catholics
despite the government support for the latter, and, finally, pressed them to
turn over the privately owned mill to the ownership and control of the
village cooperative. The first village chief election held in 1966 made Kang
Tae-yeon, the first chairman of the Veterans Association, the first popu-
larly elected administrative chief of Odu-ri, effectively ending a 15-year

period during which the village was dominated by the Catholics.
The case of Odu-ri may seem dramatic but it is not exceptional.17 It
should not be underestimated, however, that the “dynamics of the peo-
ple” which destroyed exclusive power in the village were closely connected
with the movement to realign the relationship between the state and the
people. Again, the Odu-ri’s Veterans Association provides a fine example
of this observation.
It is worth noting how the veterans were received among the Odu-ri
villagers. Kim Cheol and Jeong Ho-il regarded them highly because they
united to “reform the village.” On the other hand, they recollected that
the villagers could not touch the veterans because “they had served in the
army and there were wounded men among them,” and felt that “they
were no longer naïve, young, rural men.” They supported the young vet-
erans but, at the same time, found something alien in them.
The power of the Veterans Association was not only in the fact that it
was a group of well-disciplined, united young men who had the support
of the majority of villagers: they were also the war heroes and so could
effectively defy being branded as “commies”18 and gained the trust of the
government.
We had been close to death many times on the battlefield during the Korean
War, and so even the government respected us when we revealed that we
were members of the Veterans Association. … We acted justly while the
Catholic families tried to use exclusive power. It was only our Veterans
Association that could stand up to them. The others had to remain silent to
avoid conflicts. Even police officers were nothing as far as we were con-
cerned. We just didn’t care about their coming and going. War veterans had
power back then, so even the police had to take care not to bother us.
(Kang Tae-yeon)
This new generation of young people who emerged to form a new leader-
ship in the postwar period was born mostly around 1930, so they became
the first generation to attend elementary school (i.e., Gungminhakgyo,
meaning “school for nationals”) which underwent major development
during the late colonial period, and they were the first group of young
men to join the army when the Republic of Korea established its national
army. They were “the first generation of ROK nationals” formed on the
basis of a modern system created by a modern state. Others who experi-
150 Y.-K. LEE
enced the war and swore the oath of loyalty to the state were also incorpo-
rated into the nation-state through the various administrative, educational,
and military systems established by the state in the postwar period.19 The
“dynamics of the people,” which were building a new order for the post-
war rural societies, were consolidated by the leadership of the first genera-
tion of nationals who experienced the modern educational and military
system, combined with the state’s efforts at “nation-building.”
The relational dynamics of the Korean people and the systematic estab-
lishment of their modern nation-state, symbolized by the efforts of the
Veterans Association of Odu-ri, could have been interwoven with or run
counter to each other. It is interesting to note in this regard that the key
driving forces behind the statist mobilization imposed by the Park Chung-
hee regime, and the compressed modernization policy represented by the
Saemaeul Movement, for which farmers were “voluntarily mobilized” in
particular, came from the generation of people who were “born
around 1930.”20
Experiences, Memories, and Oral History

of the Korean War
When I first contacted Choe Gi-hong, who was living in downtown

Icheon, to request an interview, he refused my request, saying that he did
“not want to recollect anything” about Odu-ri because it was the village
where his family was “ruined.” He said he never visited his home village of
Odu-ri because he “hates it so much.” It took a long time to persuade
him, and when I finally visited his home I saw a large photo of Odu-ri
hung on the wall of his living room. The photo was tangible evidence of
the love–hate relationship between him and his hometown. For him, the
Korean War was “the tragedy of the age” that blocked out even his “beau-
tiful childhood memories” and “sacrificed the unschooled and
unsophisticated poor farmers.” He said curtly after the interview, “You
can write anything you like, but don’t write that Odu-ri was a red village.”21
I agreed with him. My research assured me that Odu-ri did not deserve
its nickname as the “Moscow of Icheon” and was far from being a “red
village” or a “village of revolutionaries.” For some, the case of Odu-ri
might be a good example of social revolution theory as it contains all the
relevant elements, such as a poor rural community ruled by an evil power
represented by Yi Jeong-man, the existence of a great leader represented
by Jeong Cheol-hui, and eventually becoming “Moscow Village” through

the dialectical interaction between them. But the “dynamics of the peo-
ple” I found through the example of Odu-ri appear to have been con-
nected with its inhabitant’s aspirations towards autonomy and community
welfare to a level acceptable to the state power, rather than with the
Communist revolution. In addition, Odu-ri, rather than being a “totally
free space from the state” for the people, appears to have been something
considerably vaguer, a sort of space restricted by the power of the state,
sometimes repulsive, sometimes submissive, and at other times even vol-
untarily supportive of it. The term “Moscow of Icheon” represented a
concept which was too simplified or overly exaggerated by both leftist and
rightist camps.
I would like to make it clear that the war experiences recollected by
Choe Gi-hong cannot be the only truthful description of what happened
in his home village during the Korean War. There are two reasons for
asserting this: First, the memories of Odu-ri’s inhabitants, including those
of Choe, have probably been affected by the red complex that has dis-
turbed Korean society so profoundly and, second, the village’s war experi-
ences can never be described in monotones. The villagers of Odu-ri whom
I interviewed were unanimous in telling me that the stigma of “Red
Village” is unfair because they knew nothing about political ideologies,
and simply followed Jeong Cheol-hui because he was a respected, learned
man. Their response sounded to me not only a strong complaint about the
nickname but also a “strategic statement for survival” in the sociopolitical
milieu of the lingering Cold War.
While their memories were remarkably similar regarding specific events,
as if they had discussed the issue in advance, there were subtle differences
in the details that suggest that they had different experiences. I could
detect the truths from their memories which had long been suppressed by
the anti-communist ideology. The recollections of Odu-ri villagers were
imbued with deep-rooted anti-communist sensibilities, also with their
own aspirations and frustrations, both past and present. Their memories
were expressed not entirely with the language of the people, but by the
codes imposed upon them by the state or the ruling ideology of Korean
society. Despite the distortions and suppression, however, there are still
valuable fragments that reflect the voice of the people which will never
fade away.
If history is the “struggle over memories,” we should not make light of
the memories of people which have been suppressed and distorted by the
152 Y.-K. LEE
power of grand discourse. We also need to be very careful about the inertia
which urges us to treat “subjective” memories only in an objective man-
ner, thus impeding our dialogue in history. Even today, Jeong Cheol-hui
is widely respected among the villagers of Odu-ri, and various episodes of
his life circulate like legends. One might wish to research these episodes to
find out how much they are grounded in historical fact. I believe, how-
ever, that what is more important is to increase our understanding of the
aspirations of Odu-ri’s villagers for the new life represented by Jeong
Cheol-hui, the frustration caused by the fact that their aspirations had to
be justified only by his “greatness,” the struggle to survive hard times by
redirecting all the blame heaped upon them onto him, and to understand
the hardships they underwent in the course of fighting against the obliv-
ion imposed upon them by the state power. Odu-ri villagers’ Korean War
was enacted through remembering Jeong Cheol-hui.
Notes
1. Kim (2000).
2. The people and places (including Myeon and Ri) mentioned in this essay
are referred to by fictitious names in order to protect the privacy of Odu-
ri’s inhabitants, who are still strongly affected by their memories of the
Korean War. However, there is one exception to this, namely the leftist
activist Jeong Cheol-hui, whose name appears as it is written in this study
in several written materials.
3. On the theories and methods of oral history and their acceptance by
Korean historians, see Yoon and Ham (2006) and Lee (2009).
4. Secretariat of the Federation of the All Korean Farmers’ Union (1946),
Minutes of the Opening Assembly of the Federation of the All Korean
Farmers’ Union (Joseon Jeongpansa, Seoul), 11.
5. Seoul District Court (1949), Criminal Court Decision No. 4848 Issued in
4282 Dangun Era (filed in National Archives of Korea).
6. Lyuh Woon-hyung (1886–1947) was a freedom fighter during Japanese
colonial rule and was one of the most influential figures during the nation-
building process. He was assassinated by right-wing terrorists in 1947
amid acute ideological confrontation.
7. In the colonial period, the rent paid to a landlord was usually 50 percent of
the harvested crop. After the 1945 Liberation, the leftist camp initiated the
nationwide struggle for the Three-Seven System by which the rent had to
be lowered to 30 percent. Although it was the Communist Party that
played the crucial role in the struggle, most of my interviewees seemed to
believe that it was Lyuh Woon-hyung, leader of the center-left camp, and
chair of the Preparatory Committee for the Foundation of Korea, who
played the leading role.
8. Dokcheong is the abbreviation of Daehan Dongnip Cheongnyeondan (the
Great Korean Independent Youth Corps).
9. An old woman from a Catholic family said that Odu-ri suffered two distur-
bances, namely, the “Dokcheong Disturbance” and the “June 25th
Disturbance” (i.e. the Korean War). In her view, the incident was nothing
short of a war. Even Choe Gi-hong, who hated the leftist camp because his
father had been abducted to the North by the North Korean People’s
Army, blamed the Dokcheong, using such expressions as “police inform-
ers,” “bad group,” and “tools of terrorism.”
10. The National Guidance League was created with the aim of eradicating the
leftist camp, which was active even after the establishment of the ROK
government and of controlling leftist converts. In reality, however, the
organization was more interested in converting political dissidents and
even ordinary people who were not affiliated with the leftist movement, to
become its members. The government executed a large number (approx.
30,000 to 100,000) of the league’s members just after the outbreak of the
Korean War. On the topic, see Han (1996) and Kang (2004).
11. On the degree of voluntariness regarding the recruitment of the voluntary
army, see Bae (2000).
12. Park (2002: 282).
13. In December 1950, the South Korean government drafted about 500,000
men aged between 17 and 40 to form the Secondary National Troops.
Forming of the troops started without proper preparations and hence
ended in a tragedy in which over a thousand soldiers died from starvation,
cold, and disease during their southbound march. The troops were dis-
banded in May of the following year.
14. According to Kim Dong-chun, swearing the oath of loyalty in Jeju-do after
the April Third Incident was something that happened by coercion rather
than voluntarily. The Korean War spread the practice of making oaths of
loyalty to the rest of Korean society. See Kim (2000: 83).
15. In Odu-ri, it remained a rule not to talk about the war for many years after
its end. This fact explains why there is no detailed information regarding
the people who went missing during wartime. My interviews with the vil-
lagers of Odu-ri suggest that at least 30 people lost their lives during and
after the war, including two ROK soldiers, two rightest activists, three
National Guidance League members, one civilian, Jeong Cheol-hui, killed
by bombing, about ten People’s Army soldiers, seven or eight people who
went missing or defected to the North, and ten who were killed after the
war.
154 Y.-K. LEE
16. It was during this period that Kim Cheol became a Catholic, though he
was no longer one by the time the interview took place in 2000. It seemed
that the religious commitment had been a kind of survival strategy for him.
17. Lee Man-gap, who surveyed many Korean rural communities in the 1950s,
pointed out that these young discharged soldiers attempted to carry out
various projects for the development of their home villages and frequently
visited civil organizations and government agencies. See Lee (1973:
111–12).
18. Kang Tae-yeon, who was treated as a collaborator for awhile due to his
participation in the Youth League, decided to join the ROK army when he
received his call-up papers that he should “serve the military and lead a
clean life.” If Kim Cheol became a Catholic to throw off the label of “com-
mie,” Kang tried to use his military service for the same purpose.
19. Kang In-chul regards the Korean War as the most important moment in
Korean history for the creation of the “Korean nation,” and cites the rou-
tinization of war, compulsory military service, and the compulsory educa-
tion system as evidence. See Kang (1999: 204–12). While accepting his
view, I argue that it is necessary to extend the subject of “the formation of
the nation” to the later colonial period. The policy of the Japanese colonial
authority for the “Japanization of Koreans” in this period, for example, was
intended to annihilate the Korean nation by incorporating them into impe-
rial subjects of Japan, though they would remain “secondary nationals.”
Considering that one distinctive aspect of modernity is the binary distinc-
tion of discrimination/exclusion vs. unity/inclusion, one cannot easily
ignore the influence of the Japanization policy upon the formation of
Korean people as a nation.
20. The life of Kang Tae-yeon offers a fine example of this. Born in 1929, he
became one of the first inhabitants of Odu-ri to complete the six-year ele-
mentary education. He supported Jeong Cheol-hui from the 1945
Liberation until the establishment of the ROK government, after which he
became a leading member of a rightist youth organization, and then vice-
chairman of a leftist youth organization, the Democratic Youth Alliance,
when his village was under North Korean occupation. He said in his
interview with me that he was given the position mostly because there was
no one else but him who had received regular education. He played a key
role in forming the Veterans Association and developing the government-
organized National Reconstruction Movement, and became a popularly
elected village chief by ending the era of dominance by the Catholic fami-
lies. After that he saw long service as a Saemaeul leader, and is currently the
chair of the Odu-ri Senior Association.
21. I contacted Choe Gi-hong to hear about the victims of the leftist move-
ment during the war. He said that his father was branded as a “reactionary”
by the leftist camp and abducted by the People’s Army during the war,
while his uncle went missing. His grandfather died of despair and anger
after losing his two loving children. He was the first middle school student
in Odu-ri, and served as a public servant for over 30 years. As such, I
expected to hear from him a right-wing account of his wartime experi-
ences. He defied my expectations, however, because he said that he
respected Jeong Cheol-hui and hated the oppressive rule of the Dokcheong
and President Rhee Syng-man. He even said that he didn’t believe that any
of the leftist activists in Odu-ri were involved in his father’s abduction by
the People’s Army.
References
Bae Kyeong-sik. 2000. Understanding of War among the People and the People’s
Volunteer Corps. Critical Studies on Modern Korean History 6: 57–96.
Han Jee-hee. 1996. Organization and Persecution of the National Guidance
League. Critical View of History 35: 290–308.
Kang In-chul. 1999. The Korean War and Changes in Social Consciousness and
Culture. In The Korean War and Changes in Social Structure, ed. The Academy
of Korean Studies, 197–308. Seoul: Baeksan-Seodang.
Kang Sung-hyun. 2004. From Conversion to Monitoring, Mobilization and
Persecution—Focused on the National Guidance League. The Journal of
Historical Studies 14: 55–106.
Kim Dong-chun. 2000. War and Society: What Did the Korean War Mean to Us?
Seoul: Dolbegae.
Lee Man-gap. 1973. Structures of and Changes in Korean Rural Society. Seoul:
Seoul National University Press.
Lee Yong-ki. 2009. Historiography Meets Oral History. History and Reality
71: 291–319.
Park Myung-lim. 2002. The Korean War, 1950: A Reflection on War and Peace.
Seoul: Nanam Publishing House.
Yoon Taek-lim, and Ham, Han-hee. 2006. Oral History Research Methods for New
History Writing. Seoul: Arche Publishing House.
CHAPTER 7
Forgetting Korean Agency

in the Transnational Cold War
Robert Oppenheim
The transnational Cold War involved a host of knowledge projects linking

the United States, South Korea, Japan, and sometimes other locations in
a variety of complex ways. The argument of this chapter is that at several
important moments over the course of this long history the participation
of Korean actors in these projects has evinced a tendency to be forgotten
or obscured. The causes and hence significance of this forgetting are sev-
eral; here I centrally explore two dimensions: the first, a “conspiracy of
amnesia” concerning Cold War Korean agency, and the second, the inter-
nally multiple character of the projects in question and the objects that
they centrally addressed.
As a specific example illustrating these larger phenomena, this chapter
focuses on the practice of propaganda in the Korean War by allied US and
South Korean forces, as well as one of the more famous social science
projects of the conflict that was undergirded by a desire to orient its use.
In December 1950, during a dynamic phase of the war between the first
and second North Korean occupations of Seoul and areas south, a team of
social scientists under contract to the US Air Force’s Human Resources
Research Institute (HRRI) was dispatched to Korea in order to study
R. Oppenheim (*)
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
e-mail: rmo@austin.utexas.edu

158 R. OPPENHEIM
modalities of the (ostensible) “Sovietization” that had taken place in parts

of South Korea temporarily under North Korean military control. They
were met by Korean helpers, glossed in official depictions of the project as
interviewers or research assistants. Yet in both the organization of propa-
ganda practice and in the social science that guided it, a close reading of
internal documents reveals that this Korean participation contributed not
only data and translation but aspects of the conceptual framing of the
results in ways not fully acknowledged. In Bruno Latour’s (2005: 39)
terms, Korean agents thus were “mediators” and not simply “intermediar-
ies”; their action served to “transform, translate, distort, and modify the
meaning or the elements they [were] supposed to carry.”
Over twenty years ago, in the course of a larger argument, Henry
H. Em described the tendency of much then-prevalent historiography of
the Korean War to fragment around the question of the causes of the con-
flict. Various perspectives emphasized the role of international actors, pri-
marily the United States and Soviet Union, or that of domestic groups in
creating the conditions for division and war; relatively few seemed able to
reckon with the interaction of actors and dynamics at different scales. The
result, in Em’s view, was a scatter pattern of explanations that seemed
unable to grasp (or seemed to refuse) the complexity of agency at the core
of the issue, in favor of one or another version of a politics of historical
memory centered on the question of blame (Em 1993). Despite the
ascendance, at the time Em was writing and since, of historical writings
that more adequately address this complexity for the war as a whole, a
parallel partiality and fragmentation continues to affect understandings of
the Cold War and its forms of knowledge (cf. Cohn 1996), and for similar
reasons. Considering the same 1950–51 HRRI study I bring into focus
here, for instance, Christopher Simpson (1994: 64–5) takes it as exem-
plary of the cooptation of the US academy by military and intelligence-
related interests in the formation of the field of communications as a
“science of coercion,” while Ron Robin (2001: 75–93) locates its assump-
tions within a broader behavioralist paradigm of US social science in the
period. Notwithstanding the differences in their analyses, both thus see
the project as wholly determined by sovereign metropolitan US agents,
interests, and frameworks. Returning the simultaneous presence of Korean
agency to view within such projects is a step toward replacing the scatter
that Em diagnosed with a more articulated understanding of the global
Cold War (cf. Kwon 2010). It also throws into relief the question of why
the scatter has been present in the first place.
7 FORGETTING KOREAN AGENCY IN THE TRANSNATIONAL COLD WAR 159
The amnesia surrounding Korean agency is, indeed, a problem of

memory. But it is also a problem, I argue here, of the internal architecture
of projects and objects themselves. Because of this architecture, there was
a propensity for the occlusion of Korean agency to begin with—it was
“forgettable” as a matter of its original enfolding. This chapter thus also
argues against a strictly social constructionist theory of memory, in favor
of a closer attention to the objects to which social memory attached and
in which it is anchored. Finally, it takes issue with assumptions—prevalent
then and now, that is, in the moment and in retrospect—that Cold War
modernization across the anti-communist world constituted a unified
conceptual and temporal field defined by an ideology of ideology’s eclipse
(cf. Gilman 2003), in favor of an emphasis on its own fragmented or even
fractal quality.
Leaflets, and the Lessons They Teach

The Korean War was, among other things, a leaflet war. Although psycho-
logical warfare operations were conducted by all parties to the conflict
through a variety of media, including for instance radio and loudspeaker
broadcasts, leaflets were the dominant material form that propaganda
took. Sources estimate that UN forces alone distributed some 2.5 billion
leaflets over the course of the war, targeting North Korean and Chinese
forces as well as civilians and guerrillas on both sides of the 38th parallel
(Pang 2000a: ii; Chung 2004: 95–6). Techniques for propagating leaflets
over large areas included the use of specialized artillery munitions and
leaflet bombs, with the latter method reflecting the air superiority that the
United States enjoyed through most phases of the war (see Fig. 7.1). The
North Korean and Chinese militaries also employed leaflets against UN
armies, albeit with a greater reliance on direct distribution and in lesser
quantity overall (Chung 2004: 105–6).1
Systematic studies of the content of Korean War leaflets and their
deployment in the course of different military operations catalog and clas-
sify hundreds if not thousands of individual types (Pang 2000b; Chung
2004, 2005). Here I will focus on two, inventoried as serial numbers 8141
and 8289 by the Psychological Warfare Section (G3) of the Eighth US
Army in Korea (EUSAK), in the service of a particular historiographical
argument. In preview, it might be said that one lends itself to a familiar
story of shallowness, the other to an occluded depth. One returns us to
the well-trodden ground of American agency, (mis)understanding, and
160 R. OPPENHEIM
Fig. 7.1 M105 A1 leaflet bomb (United States Army 1955: 24a, in AGBC Box
6, Folder 5). Courtesy of the NDSU Archives
blindness in the lead-up to and course of the war, while the other leads to
a messier past of overlapping and conjoined but not perfectly aligned proj-
ects and epistemologies.
According to the information sheet that accompanied reference copies
of undated leaflet 8141 in the EUSAK files, its specific intended target was
former South Korean army soldiers who had defected or been impressed
into the (North) Korean People’s Army (AGBC, Box 1, Folder 47;
Fig. 7.2). Like most leaflets, it relied on a mix of visual imagery and text.
Its obverse featured only a single exhortation, t’aegŭkki arae mungch’ija
(“let us unite under the t’aegŭkki [flag]”), along with a large image of that
flag—used throughout the Korean Peninsula before the official establish-
ment of separate governments in 1948 and retained by the Republic of
Korea (ROK) after that date—and a picture of the building in Seoul that,
at the outbreak of war, served as the ROK capitol, the meeting place of its
NDSU Archives
National Assembly. The reverse offered a longer textual passage, which

promised former ROK soldiers that “we know you have been forced to
fight for the Communist aggressor,” and called on them to “return to
your true flag,” under which they might “live and work for a Free, United,
Independent Korea.”
Leaflet 8289, dated June 1, 1952, directed a different sort of national-
ist appeal to North Korean soldiers themselves, inviting them through
historical analogy to turn against their Chinese allies (AGBC, Box 2,
Folder 21; Fig. 7.3). Under the boldface heading “let us repulse the
162 R. OPPENHEIM
NDSU Archives
(Chinese) barbarians (orangk’ae),” it showed a bearded figure in ancient

armor struck in the eye by an arrow. Further text on both the obverse and
reverse sides explained that in the year 645 Li Shimin (Korean: Yi Semin),
Emperor Taizong of the Chinese state of Tang, had invaded the northern
Korean kingdom of Koguryŏ, only to be defeated by the Koguryŏ general
Yŏn Kaesomun and wounded in the process.
Both leaflets were ideological in every sense of the term, but that is not
the point. I juxtapose them here to outline some aspects of a multidimen-
sional problem of historical memory. It is impossible to determine the
effect that each leaflet individually had on its intended audience. But a
historically informed reading of the first leaflet (à la Barthes 1972), num-
ber 8141, is enough to suggest the dangerous ambivalence of one of its
key symbols. The “Seoul capitol building,” though used for Syngman
Rhee’s inaugural ceremony and for sessions of the ROK National Assembly
at the outbreak of the Korean War, had been constructed by the Japanese
colonial authority from 1916 to 1926 and used as the headquarters of its
Government General; it would be torn down in 1995, fifty years after
Liberation, in the name of eliminating remnants of the colonial past. Even
at the time of the leaflet’s creation, one of its two main icons, meant to be
evocative of home and nation for wayward South Korean soldiers, was just
as liable to backfire in offering a visual metonym for an ostensible continu-
ity between the US-supported ROK state and the Japanese colonial
regime—a contention that North Korean propaganda was (and is) itself
trying to drive home (Ceuster 2000: 74–5, 89–93, 96–8). Since there is
no reason to believe that leaflet 8141 was anything but the product of US
psychological warfare expertise, at a second level it is easy for a modern
historian to read its cluelessness as representative of the obliviousness or
unconcern that US authorities more generally displayed in substantively
and symbolically failing to distance themselves and the ROK government
they supported from their colonial predecessors—by promoting an ROK
national police force largely staffed by personnel who had served in the
hated colonial police (Kuzmarov 2012), for instance, or by locating the
main US military garrison in Seoul on the same site in the Yongsan district
that the Japanese military had used.
One might wonder as well whether the targeted recipients of leaflet
8289 were moved by stories from the ancient past. But its creators clearly
possessed a reasonably detailed knowledge of Korean history, and a famil-
iarity more specifically with a reconstructed historical image of Yŏn
Kaesomun as among a rediscovered pantheon of Korean military heroes
promulgated since the turn of the twentieth century by such nationalist
historians as Sin Ch’aeho and Pak Ŭnsik (Tikhonov 2007: 1055–6). It is
hard to imagine this leaflet as emanating from the same agency that pro-
duced the first example, with its potentially counterproductive enlistment
of the Seoul capitol. And a brief glance at the information sheet that
accompanied 8289 in the EUSAK files is enough to provide and explana-
tion: it didn’t. Under the heading of “remarks,” the information sheet
notes, “art work and text by Psywar, ROKA”—psychological warfare spe-
cialists of the South Korean army.
164 R. OPPENHEIM
It is, on one hand, obvious that both US and South Korean personnel
were involved with many Korean War leaflets over the course of their life
cycles. Text generated by US propagandists required Korean or Chinese
translators; leaflets from all sources were catalogued by US psychological
warfare units and frequently disseminated by US-controlled technological
means, such as the M105 A1 leaflet bomb pictured above (Fig. 7.1).
However, an examination of leaflets and their associated documentation
reveals that, when taken as a whole and considered in more significant
terms of content and messaging, they were hybrid products of US and
Korean agency, with individual examples sometimes attributable to one
side or the other. Yet this is not the way that Korean War leaflets employed
by UN forces are typically regarded in scholarly accounts or in historical
memory. In such venues the sometime participation of South Koreans in
the making of leaflets is usually noted only in passing (e.g., Chung 2004:
106), when at all, and rarely granted analytic significance. This allows leaf-
lets as a Korean War phenomenon to be interpreted solely as manifesta-
tions of US propaganda practice, social scientific theory (Robin 2001:
94–123), and the self-delusions of “Cold War Orientalism” (Klein 2003)
rather than as conjoint products.2 Forgetting Korean agency here leads to
a simplified understanding of ideological economies of the period.
Knowing Occupation
What has been occluded in relation to leaflets themselves has been
occluded also in relation to one of the exemplary knowledge projects
designed to orient their use. In December 1950, after the Inch’ŏn landing
had driven back the initial North Korean advance and before the second
capture of Seoul, three US social scientists and a PhD-holding CIA and
US Air Force-affiliated psychological warfare specialist were hastily assem-
bled and dispatched to the peninsula to study the North Korean occupa-
tion of the South. By proxy, they hoped to understand the DPRK itself
and, in turn, a process of directed social transformation that they named
as “Sovietization” and regarded a priori as basically uniform throughout
the newly communist world. Within little more than a month the team
withdrew, but over the year that followed its members produced a series of
classified and unclassified reports on the “impact of Communism” and the
ostensible Sovietization process for their governmental sponsors, as well as
scholarly articles and a popular book on the occupation of Seoul, The Reds
Take a City, that would be promoted and distributed worldwide by the US
State Department as a staple anti-communist text. On its face, the study

and its products were redolent of the early Cold War US vision of a mono-
lithic global communism ideologically transmitted from Moscow, and
blind in familiar American ways to the intersection of local socialisms and
communisms with anti- and postcolonial nationalist dynamics. This, per-
haps, does not do full justice to the social scientific research that the study
contained, which at times offered a more complex picture in tension with
its simplistic framing assumptions (Cumings 1990: 683–5). Even less,
however, does it account for the substantive participation of Korean agents
in the project and thus in the making of transnational Cold War knowledge.
Of the US members of the team, the most prominent in secondary lit-
erature since has been Wilbur Schramm, founder and head of the Institute
of Communications Research at the University of Illinois and a central
figure in the postwar development of communications as an academic
field. Yet the team of 1950–51 was multidisciplinary in both personnel
and methodology: its other American academic participants were John W.
“Jack” Riley, Jr., at the time chair of the Rutgers department of sociology
and himself subsequently a participant in the growth of communications,
and the Harvard anthropologist John C. Pelzel, whose contribution to the
overall study, an ethnographic examination of two villages south of the
38th parallel that had undergone North Korean occupation, would set a
model for similar wartime research by other United Nations and US
researchers. While Schramm, Riley, and Pelzel were university contractors,
the fourth main team member sent from the United States was Frederick
W. Williams, at the time an assistant director and head of the Psychological
Warfare Research Directorate of the Human Resources Research Institute
(HRRI), an Air Force research organ attached to the Air University at
Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. After receiving his
PhD from New York University, Williams continued for several years to
hold a position as a research associate at Princeton University before
becoming Research Chief of the US Office of Military Government in
1945, joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 1949, and being assigned
to HRRI in April 1950 (ICRSF, Box 5 “Air Force Correspondence
1950–51,” HRRI 1951 annual report p. 42).
The Sovietization study came together under HRRI sponsorship in the
first months of the Korean War. Interest in the mission was generated at
the very highest levels of the military establishment. On October 16,
1950, the commandant of Maxwell, General George Kenney, wrote to Air
Force chief of staff Hoyt Vandenberg proposing an Air University–HRRI
166 R. OPPENHEIM
team of approximately ten people to be sent to the Korean theater “to

help extract some of its lessons” (ICRSF, Box 5 “Air Force—Korean
Mission Business 1950–51,” Kenney to Vandenberg October 16, 1950).
In his subsequent October 25 letter to George Stratemeyer, commander
of the Far East Air Forces (FEAF), Kenney was both pithier and more
detailed in what he hoped might be accomplished. He reached for sport-
ing metaphors to highlight the prevalent underlying assumption of the
Korean fight as a proxy war, the same assumption that underwrote
“Sovietization” as a unitary concept: “We know who coached the North
Koreans. The same coach is training other teams. In case we ever have to
take on some of these as opponents, it would be a good thing to study the
recent operations pretty thoroughly while there is yet time.” With respect
to psychological warfare in particular, Kenney remarked, “Korea is the
most available laboratory for the study of Communist military control and
the effectiveness of our own psychological warfare campaign. We have
dropped millions of leaflets. We should know how effective they were.”
This question would give birth to the Sovietization study (ICRSF, Box 5
“Air Force—Korean Mission Business 1950–51,” Kenney to Stratemeyer
October 25, 1950).3
Schramm, Riley, and Pelzel were assembled on short notice in mid-
November, and asked to arrive at HRRI headquarters in Alabama by
November 25. After a few days there, the trio traveled together to
California’s Travis Air Force Base, from which they were scheduled to
depart for Tokyo on Friday, December 1. Delayed by winds over the
Pacific, they apparently left early the next week. Throughout the planning
stages, there was much anticipation that the war situation would not actu-
ally permit research in Korea, but after receiving go-aheads from both
Seoul and Alabama, the three made their way to Korea on December 9.
Writing to the sociologist Matilda White Riley, his wife, Jack Riley noted
that they had traveled “in Gen. MacArthur’s plane with no less than three
generals” (CKP, Box 20 “Pelzel, John,” Pelzel to Kluckhohn December
17, 1950; JWRP, Riley to Riley n.d. “Saturday,” n.d. “Thursday,”
December 8, 1950, December 12, 1950 [quote]). Meanwhile, as the
HRRI overseer of the team, Williams had already traveled ahead to each
location to make logistical arrangements, as he would continue to do
throughout the study.
By December 1950, Seoul had already been occupied and retaken once
in the early stages of the war, and was again threatened from the north by
the advancing Chinese forces. The research team’s presence there was
rovisional from the first, with an eye ever cast towards the possibility of
p
“any significant deterioration farther north” (JWRP, Riley to Riley
December 12, 1950). Pelzel described a city “packed” with refugees, with
“nights black with people indoors and noisy with jumpy guards; days with
emergence outside, pretending to go about their business, worried but
under tight personal discipline,” adding, “I admit the terror became very
clear to me” (CKP, Box 20 “Pelzel, John,” Pelzel to Kluckhohn December
17, 1950). Williams had spent the week prior to the arrival of the other
three “lin[ing] up most of the known social scientists in Korea whom we
are trying to turn into interviewers.” They also met, interviewed, and were
entertained by a series of ministerial and cabinet-level officials of the
Syngman Rhee government (JWRP, Riley to Riley December 12, 1950,
December 14, 1950).
With refugees also again flowing south, on December 15 the team
moved to the outskirts of Pusan. Schramm and Riley, and initially Pelzel,
set up their research operation in the squad room of an Air Force base—
“the south is so crowded,” Pelzel wrote, “we can’t do any better” (CKP,
Box 20 “Pelzel, John,” Pelzel to Kluckhohn December 17, 1950). They
were meanwhile housed in an old church mission building. While noting
that their research had already contributed to the understanding of some
“tactical problems,” Jack Riley was generally pessimistic about its larger
prospects, but concluded it was “better than nothing.” Pelzel, he wrote to
Matilda White Riley, “calls it ‘pooping and snooping’ and I can’t think of
a better description despite the fact that we have lined up the cream of
Korean social scientists to work for us” (JWRP, Riley to Riley December
16, 1950).
Schramm, Riley, and for a time Pelzel as well spent the research period
reviewing transcripts of interviews with refugees and interrogations of
North Korean prisoners of war, sometimes making their own trips to refu-
gee camps (JWRP, Riley to Riley January 1, 1951). In his December 17
letter to his Harvard colleague Clyde Kluckhohn, Pelzel explained that, as
anthropologist of the group, he “want[ed]—if guerillas let us—to spend a
week or more in a village outside the old [Pusan] perimeter” (CKP, Box
20 “Pelzel, John,” Pelzel to Kluckhohn December 17, 1950). It is unclear
exactly when he left Pusan, or whether any of the Korean staff accompa-
nied him, but he was joined in his rural research by Air Force major, old
Korea hand, former OSS officer, and later historian of Korea, Clarence
N. Weems (see Cumings 1981: 510). Pelzel, Weems, and whatever Korean
members of the team there were spent time in two villages, Kŭmnam-myŏn
168 R. OPPENHEIM
and Kach’ang-ni,4 both northwest of Taejŏn and thus uncomfortably close

to Seoul—especially after the new year brought a renewed offensive by
Chinese and North Korean forces and a recapture of the southern capital.
On the eve of the return of the “rural team” to Pusan on January 8, Riley
reflected, “we’ll be glad to have them back because things don’t look any
too bright” (JWRP, Riley to Riley January 7, 1951).
The researchers spent their last week in Korea primarily on preliminary
data analysis. Schramm, Riley, Pelzel, and Williams left on January 15, pes-
simistic that they were abandoning Korean colleagues to their fates. After
presenting oral reports to General Stratemeyer in Tokyo and General
Kenney at Maxwell, they returned to their respective homes (JWRP, Riley
to Riley January 12, 1951, January 14, 1951). Through correspondence
and several meetings in Alabama, Schramm, Riley, and Pelzel collaborated
to write up the results of the study through the spring and summer of
1951. The main product of their work was an unclassified report submit-
ted to HRRI in May and designated as “Psychological Warfare Research
Report No. 1,” entitled “A Preliminary Study of the Impact of Communism
Upon Korea” (Schramm et al. 1951). Schramm had main responsibility
for three of its five chapters, including a general summary, a chapter on the
“Sovietization of Seoul” covering its months of occupation, and a chapter
on North Korea that drew on refugee interviews. Pelzel’s chapter (pre-
pared with the help of Weems), “The Sovietization of Two South Korean
Rural Communities,” was the longest, while Riley wrote a final chapter on
the “Flight from Sovietization” drawing on survey research with Southern
refugees in Pusan. A second report submitted simultaneously, originally
classified Secret, extended the main study to provide operational sugges-
tions for psychological warfare targeting the vulnerabilities of ostensibly
Sovietized states like North Korea (Human Resources Research Institute
1951 in AFHRA reel 33584 Iris 1028945). Meanwhile, Riley and
Schramm also began work on a popular book that mixed findings from the
portions of the main report relating to Seoul with firsthand accounts of its
occupation, which would be released widely in October with an introduc-
tion by Williams and the title The Reds Take a City (Riley and Schramm
1951). It was dramatic by design, telling in Riley’s words, “a general story
that the public needs to know” (ICRSF, Box 5 “Air Force Correspondence
1950–51,” Riley to Schramm April 30, 1951). As the book was in final
preparation Schramm wrote Williams with the news that it was “going to
be so anti-Communistic that Riley, Williams, and Schramm will be ele-
vated to high priority in the Moscow hierarchy of future business” (ICRSF,

Box 5 “Air Force Correspondence 1950–51,” Schramm to Williams
August 1, 1951).
Double Vision
The HRRI study was motivated by Air Force concerns and conducted
using US social scientific techniques of sampling, survey, and participant
observation, but a closer look at its conduct and the assembly of its results
reveals the extent to which it was also framed by dialogues with English-
speaking educated Koreans and government elites. While still in Seoul
between December 12 and 14, the American team had audiences with
Korean ministerial officials and the Korean scholars who would subse-
quently interview for them. “They all have dramatic stories to tell,” Jack
Riley remarked, of their own experience of the first North Korean occupa-
tion of the city or narrow escape southwards (JWRP, Riley to Riley
December 12, 1950). The “cream of Korean social scientists” recruited to
work for the study were “some of the most prominent men in Korea”:
“the director of the national museum, two deans and seven professors
from the University of Seoul, a leading authority on internal medicine, a
prominent publisher, a successful banker, the outstanding authority on
Korean agricultural problems, etc.” (JWRP, Riley to Riley December 16,
1950, December 25, 1950). Two of this group would contribute appen-
dices to the unclassified version of the Sovietization study report. Kim
Chewŏn, the museum director, wrote comparing North and South Korean
organizations for writers and artists. The longer contribution, more salient
to the overall purposes of the study, was entitled “Political Re-Orientation
Campaigns in North and South Korea” and written by Yu Chin O (Yu
Chino), a comparative legal scholar and professor at Korea University
who, in 1948, had been the main author of the first constitution of the
Republic of Korea. In short, the Korean “interviewers” employed by the
US social scientific team were rather more than the term usually implies.
They were not potted plants; they had every capacity to act as mediators
rather than intermediaries, to impose transformations upon the meanings
of the study.5
Thus, the Sovietization study, far from being simply an interventionist
application of paradigmatic American social scientific assumptions and
techniques to various populations within wartime Korea, was also filtered
through and enmeshed with statist South Korean elites’ own projects of
170 R. OPPENHEIM
national self-production, with consequences for its conduct, conclusions,

and forms. The effect of their mediation can be seen most clearly in the
dual conceptual basis of the study’s ultimate recommendation to target
propaganda at intellectuals, one prong of which was in turn subtly
grounded in the divergence of the South Korean version of anti-
communism or anti-communist nationalism from that prevalent in the
United States. American anti-communism of the period ideologically
insisted upon its own non-ideological character. As Roland Végsö (2013:
53) writes,
According to this asymmetrical definition of Cold War enmity, the funda-

mental conflict was not between two rival ideologies, but between an evil
ideology and the neutralized universal concept of human nature and a gen-
eralized concept of freedom. For anti-Communist liberalism, “ideological
politics” represented one of the most odious developments of modernity.
Consequently, political opposition to Communism meant the rejection of
ideology as such.
In contrast, state-promoted South Korean nationalism of the period valo-

rized the need for a positive, indeed constitutive, national ideology, a
response to what might be termed a crisis of truncation attending national
division. In the post-1945 moment, the ethnoracial anticolonial Korean
nationalism that had been dominant in opposing Japanese rule threatened
to become too inclusive, to make Koreans also of Northern communists,
internal rebels, and others inimical to the Southern state. In response, stat-
ist Southern elites forwarded an intertwined, more exclusive nationalism
of ideas, which made ideological adherence a second necessary basis for
the very claim to be Korean (Im 2004: 29–72; Shin 2006: 98–109,
152–6).6 The need for a “nation-building ideology” (kŏn’guk inyŏm),
preferably one with roots in the hoary Korean past, became an explicit
concern of many texts in this period, with candidates including hongik
in’gan, a humanist principle supposedly promoted by the Korean national
founding being Tan’gun; hwarangdo, the “way” of the youthful warrior
elite of the first millennium kingdom of Silla; and the ilmin or “one peo-
ple” principle promoted by President Yi Sŭngman (Cumings 1990:
208–12; Chŏng 1999, 2006: 14–19; Hong 2012: 298–300; for an exem-
plary work see Yi 1954).
A further consequence of this ideological and intellectualist orientation
was an acceptance and theoretical articulation of the place of state elites
and allied intellectuals in promoting national will in a situation in which

the people in their concrete multiplicity could not be trusted or relied
upon. An emphasis on the leading ideological role of elites was thus inde-
pendently built into the South Korean statecraft of 1950. Ron Robin
(2001: 83), placing the main Sovietization report within the conceptual
development of the field of communications, contends that it rather
uncritically expressed contemporary “American-derived models of opin-
ion and personal persuasion” that, against earlier theories of the unmedi-
ated operation of propaganda upon a mass object, highlighted the
intervening role of “opinion leaders” who might then influence others.
What the considerable intercourse of the American researchers with
Korean state officials and intellectuals instead suggests is that the elitism of
the Sovietization study was itself a hybrid construction. Yu Chin O himself
may have done a good deal to educate the American educators about per-
suasion. His contribution to the report appendix stated that because of the
“cultural juniority of the Korean people,” who had not had democracy
under Japanese rule or (a telling admission) Syngman Rhee’s ROK gov-
ernment—“they may have gotten self-indulgence,” Yu quipped in pass-
ing—mere criticism of communism would not be enough to win them
over, that additionally “we must give to them a definite, planned-in-
advance, and decided guidance.” With respect to North Korea, he advo-
cated targeting the “intelligentsia” for “conversion” (Yu 1951: 314, 316,
318). There are also indications that Yu’s perspectives overflowed his
appendix. Shortly after the HRRI team’s return to the United States, in
late January or February 1951, Schramm circulated to his colleagues an
informal working paper entitled “Thoughts on Psychological Warfare
against a Sovietized State like Korea” that contained, in blueprint, many of
the eventual report conclusions (ICRSF, Box 5 “Air Force Correspondence
1950–51,” Schramm memo to Pelzel, Riley, and Williams “Subject:
Current Business,” and “Thoughts on Psychological Warfare against a
Sovietized State like Korea”). He quoted Yu’s “penetrating comments,”
newly arrived in the mail, extensively. In approaching the majority of the
North Korean populace, for example, Schramm noted that
They don’t have the freedom to debate. They don’t have access to a wealth
of information from which to decide. They want, in a sense, to be led.
Intelligent leaders like Yu say this themselves: “It is difficult to expect free
creative activity from Korean people who have been oppressed under the
Communists. Guidance must be given them.”
172 R. OPPENHEIM
The pinnacle of intertextuality was Riley and Schramm’s eventually

popular book on the occupation of Seoul, The Reds Take a City.7 Reds
interspersed findings from the HRRI survey research with “eyewitness
accounts” of the occupation by professional-class Koreans; Robin (2001:
88) describes them as “overtly Western Korean informants” and notes that
“representatives from the laboring classes and other Koreans of unfamiliar
backgrounds [to a literate American readership] were conspicuously
absent.” Yet it is inaccurate to state that these were “selected from the
original HRRI report”—even in Reds itself, it is noted that the accounts
were drawn and translated from two Korean-language compendia of nar-
ratives of the first occupation of Seoul, This is the Way I Survived (Na nŭn
irŏk’e saratta [Ŭryu Munhwasa 1950]) and Ninety Days of Ordeal (Konan
ŭi 90-il [Yu et al. 1950]). Riley’s notes record the moment of his assisted
discovery of the first book. He wrote down its publication date of
December 1, listed the professions represented by the 12 first-person
accounts within, and underlined that they were “all well-known people”
(JWRP “I Escaped the Communists in Seoul,” n.d.). Amidst his conversa-
tions with ROK ministerial officials on their own experiences, it must have
seemed the mirror of what he was already hearing. Ninety Days, mean-
while, carried a brief Korean introduction that set out its purpose in align-
ment with the South Korean project of state nationalism, with its positive
conception of national ideology. It dedicated itself to the “improvement
of national culture,” “the political enlightenment of the masses,” and a
“‘destroy Communism’ holy war.” To the American and international
readers of Reds, the accounts within might have seemed generic and uni-
versal, with class familiarity serving to overcome potential cultural dis-
tance, but the editors of Ninety Days, towards a Korean audience they
themselves conceived as needing to be led, had deliberately chosen
“famous people” (Yu et al. 1950: 3–4). Perhaps unsurprisingly, an account
by Yu Chin O himself led off both Ninety Days and Reds.
Conclusion
One goal of this chapter has been to excavate moments of Korean agency
within Korean War knowledge projects in a way suggestive of the larger
problem of the occlusion of Korean agency in the Cold War period. But
why does this need to be done? Why has Korean agency tended to be for-
gotten? In the narrow cases examined here, there were certainly a host of
contingent reasons at play. With US psychological warfare officers in
verall charge of leaflet operations, and with the Air Force’s HRRI spon-
o
soring and organizing the “Sovietization” study, institutional tendencies
to overstate the capacity of American experts and the rationality of their
own bureaucratic apparatuses probably had a role. Quite apart from any
specific modalities of the Cold War, it would not be the first or last time
that the crucial contribution of “assistants” has been ignored or obscured
in reports written by those bureaucratically positioned above them. With
respect to these projects of which Americans were in charge, it was, and
has been in secondary literature on these projects since, difficult to see
agency as assembled rather than a simple effect of top-down decisions.
Yet it is possible to point to structural reasons as well, indeed, to a “con-
spiracy of amnesia” concerning Korean agency that has articulated both
US and (South) Korean perspectives, interests, and self-understandings.
On the US side, the early Cold War tendency to see countries of the social-
ist world simply as Soviet puppets, their strings pulled by Moscow, had its
mirror image in a tendency to overestimate the degree to which the USA
itself directed its own allies and clients and initiated action. In South
Korea, meanwhile, there is a strong and persistent myth of innocence that
understates the role of the Korean state and social elites in the dynamics of
division and war. At the conjuncture of these two forces lies the scatter
pattern of historiography concerning the Korean War as analyzed by
Henry Em at the beginning of this chapter. To both narratives, the active
participation of Korean agents in the ideological formulation of the con-
flict verges on matter out of place.
Moreover, this conspiracy of amnesia had later resonances beyond the
era of the Korean War itself, refracted in still other scatter patterns in pub-
lic memory. One example is the disarticulation of the connected history of
the Vietnam War, South Korean development, and South Korean humani-
tarianism. US memory of the war tends entirely to forget South Korea’s
provision of large numbers of allied troops out of general historical solip-
sism, but when it is remembered this provision is seen as simply responsive
to US demands—in critical framings, the word “mercenary” makes fre-
quent appearances (Baldwin 1975; Blackburn 1994). Critical South
Korean historical memory likewise tends to recall this past as a simple
“troops (or blood) for money” transaction entered into by President Park
Chung Hee. Meanwhile, official recollection of the South Korean “success
story” of economic development, and then the turning of its development
expertise to humanitarian development assistance for other countries
within an overall narrative of Korea’s transition from “recipient to donor”
174 R. OPPENHEIM
nation, tends to purge any connection with Vietnam entirely.8 That Park
or other South Korean planners may have had agendas for providing
troops that went beyond a simple quid pro quo, that there were deeper
connections with the building of industrial and social capacity for develop-
ment than a simple transactional frame implies, that even important early
moments of South Korea’s own overseas humanitarianism were entangled
with its involvement in the war—all of these points, which require Korean
agency to be seen more clearly, tend to be obscured from view.9
But from structural conditions of amnesia, let me return finally to the
closer analysis of Korean War projects that I have undertaken in the bulk
of this chapter. There was still another way in which multivalence perme-
ated transnational Cold War projects and objects at the moment of their
original existence, and, besides showing Korean agency itself, this has been
the point of peering into the inner workings of leafleting and the milita-
rized social science that helped steer it. Anti-communism was a shared
goal of US and South Korean state elites that simultaneously allowed a
subtle internal difference of purpose. For its US proponents, anti-
communism was, conceptually, a project against ideology. For its South
Korean architects it was (or was also) a project of national ideological
construction in the contested ideological space of national division (Pak
1996), which resulted in both texts on the kŏn’guk inyŏm and leaflets from
ROKA Psywar being filled up with positive historical content of the sort
that nationalist Korean historians had been rehearsing for decades. An
emphasis on the stories, leading role, and sympathies of intellectual elites
as targets of persuasion was similarly a common effect of overlapping
agendas. These projects or objects (if one considers anti-communism an
object that organized activity) were at once unitary and multiple, one and
more than one—they possessed what John Law (2004: 59–62) calls “frac-
tionality.” Indeed, some amount of internal fluidity or variability is pre-
cisely what allowed them to exist as transnationally coherent things; their
coherence was because of their fluidity, not despite it (Mol and Law 1994:
659–64). They conjoined practitioners while allowing different meanings
to persist (see Star and Griesemer 1989). But this internal complexity was
also one that could allow Korean agency to be obscured, masked by the
ascendance in certain instances of the unitary façade of such projects.
As a theoretical consequence, attention to such variable and partial
modes of coherence of Cold War projects themselves mitigates against a
resolutely “presentist” account of how they are remembered (see Schwartz
and Kim 2010: 7). Studies of social memory in the vein of Halbwachs
(1992), or of Nora’s lieux de memoire—and Nora (1996: xvii) was eventu-

ally explicit that these should be understood as more than “places” or
“sites” taken literally—tend to assign such lieux the role of neutral points
or anchors to which social understandings attach. I have invoked consid-
erations born of conceptualizations of the complexity of objects in the
sociology of science to suggest what is limiting about this approach: it fails
to make room for the ontological fuzziness that things and projects can
possess. As exercises in transnational anti-communism, leafleting and the
“Sovietization” study, I argue, possessed such fuzziness to begin with—it
is not merely an effect of retrospection, of perspective. One reason that
Korean agency in the transnational Cold War has thus lent itself to forget-
ting is that it was sometimes enfolded within projects that were fluid in
their very construction, in which divergence could be hidden under a
common name.
Attention to such issues buttresses the claim that anti-communism in
the Cold War era was not a single, global chronotope (in the sense of
Bakhtin 1981), a teleological pointer to an ideology-free modernity, even
among countries in which anti-communist commitment was widely
shared. Writ large, Cold War modernity contained multiple futures as a
crucial aspect of its own fragmentation.
Acknowledgements A portion of this chapter appeared previously in “On the

Locations of Korean War and Cold War Anthropology,” Histories of Anthropology
Annual, vol. 4, edited by Regna Darnell and Frederick W. Gleach (copyright 2008
by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska) and is reused with permis-
sion of the University of Nebraska Press. I would like to thank Lucy Sallick for
access to and permission to use the John W. Riley, Jr., papers, and James Zobel for
his assistance with the MacArthur Memorial Archives. Use of the Institute of
Communications Research Subject File is courtesy of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign Archives; all other archival holdings are used courtesy of their
respective archives. I am grateful also to Kim Il-hwan for his insights into Korean
participants in the HRRI study.
Notes
1. As one reviewer noted, it would be equally valid to investigate the knowl-
edge economies within the production of propaganda on the communist
side of the conflict, with their consequences for how (North) Korean agency
was inscribed then and how it has been remembered, or not, since. That is,
however, a different project.
176 R. OPPENHEIM
2. Archival issues, and the processes through which archives are generated and
accessed, do have contributing roles here. I have had principal archival
access to leaflets through the Albert G. Brauer Collection (AGBC), whereas
most studies of Korean War leaflets have relied directly or indirectly on the
collection at the MacArthur Memorial Archives, which contains an inven-
tory of leaflets held by the headquarters of the Far Eastern Command itself
rather than EUSAK. On the microfilm version of leaflets from the latter that
I was able to examine (MMAM, Reel 629 [Theater Strategic Reconnaissance,
1947–51]), none of the information sheets associated with actual leaflets
makes explicit reference to the participation of South Korean psychological
warfare specialists in their creation, unlike the AGBC example (there are
others) I have documented above. Meanwhile, the main Korean compila-
tion of leaflets (Pang 2000b) reproduces only the leaflets themselves, strip-
ping them of their contextualizing information sheets.
3. As I document elsewhere (Oppenheim 2008: 224–5), aspects of the study
(including the participation of its anthropologist, Pelzel) were also affected
by the mediation of John W. Bennett of the Public Opinion and Sociological
Research Division of the Supreme Command for Allied Powers US occupa-
tion government of Japan and Clyde Kluckhohn of Harvard University,
where projects of the university’s Russian Research Center, also sponsored
by HRRI (see O’Connell 1990), were generating interest in Soviet “satel-
lites.” In this sense the Sovietization study had multiple progenitors.
4. Kŭmnam-myŏn is properly speaking a larger administrative unit within
which Pelzel found one village for his research. Kach’ang-ni is given as
Kachiang-ni (a Sinified pronunciation) in the text.
5. Since my initial drafting of this chapter, I have benefitted from fruitful dia-
logue with a research team at Seoul National University that has succeeded
in identifying some of the other Korean collaborators, including Lee Jin-
sook, a founding member of the Korean Psychological Association, and Kim
Du-heon, acting president of Seoul National University at the outbreak of
the war (Kim and Chŏng 2016: 127–8; Kim Il-hwan, personal communica-
tions [emails] June 12 and June 17, 2016).
6. As Shin (2006: 19–20) notes, this problem of truncation, relatively under-
explored in the general theoretical literature on nationalism, marks the spe-
cial relevance of the Korean case.
7. Reds, in turn, was broadly translated and widely circulated internationally by
the US State Department and other agencies as a staple anti-communist text
(see Kim and Ok 2016).
8. An example is the website of the Korean International Cooperation Agency
(KOICA); see “History of Korea’s ODA,” accessed May 31, 2016, http://
www.koica.go.kr/english/koica/koica_glance/history/index.html.
9. I have explored these themes more centrally in an unpublished paper; see

Oppenheim 2015. John DiMoia (2018) has also written a good deal about
the connections between Vietnam and the development of Korean engi-
neering and industrial expertise.
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CHAPTER 8
Korea’s Vietnam War and the Fall of Saigon:

Reconstructing the War Memories
of Detained Diplomats
Won Kim
Introduction
What was the significance of the Vietnam War to the South Korean people
during the Cold War which lasted from the end of the Second World War
to 1991? Until now, academic studies on Korea’s involvement in Vietnam
have mainly revolved around issues such as the reason for sending troops
to Vietnam, the international politics at play, the political-economic impact
of involvement, and the experiences of soldiers and technicians on the war
front. Many studies have identified the rationale for sending the troops
and its consequences since Korea sent a large contingent, totaling 320,000
soldiers, to Vietnam between 1964 and 1973.
Two aspects of the Korean involvement in Vietnam’s civil war are
especially intriguing. There is first a disturbing parallel with Korea’s own
civil war of only twenty years previously—memories of both disasters
The author thanks Professor Ross King for his invaluable suggestions and
comments.
W. Kim (*)
The Academy of Korean Studies, Seongnam, South Korea

182 W. KIM
inevitably intersect, playing on each other, augmenting anxieties. The

sense of a catastrophic history repeating itself would be enhanced by its
coinciding with what is sometimes termed the Second Korean War, the
heightened tension on the DMZ most notably between 1966 and 1969.
Second, there is the place of Korea’s insertion into the disaster of
Vietnam in the context of how the wider world remembers Korea’s place
in the twentieth century. One perception of Korea must be decidedly
dark, of colonial collaboration, aggression in Manchuria and genocide in
Southeast Asia (albeit in the service of Japan), then the fratricidal Korean
War, repressions and massacres of successive dictatorships, rampant capi-
talism and labor suppression. Insertion into Vietnam (into what would
in the present time be seen as the “wrong” side in that tragedy) fits a
pattern in a wider, globalist memory/imagining of an appalling, mur-
derous, fratricidal, vengeful Korea seeking defensive moral refuge in a
myth of victimhood.
The present essay aims to analyze a largely unexplored topic of Korea’s
involvement in the Vietnam War: the Korean detainees’ attitudes towards
that war and the Cold War more generally. What were their memories of
that earlier Korean civil war as they were now trapped in that other, Cold
War exercise to the south? How were older memories entering into a pres-
ent experience of catastrophe and personal destabilization?
There is very little known of the Korean diplomats and other Koreans
stationed in Vietnam who did not receive diplomatic protection and
were held by the (North) Vietnamese authorities after the 1975 fall of
Saigon. Such conditions lasted from 1976 until 1980. While some man-
aged to escape to a third country like Singapore, most of the Koreans in
Vietnam were imprisoned or threatened with deportation to North
Korea—the ultimate, dreaded threat. The Korean government main-
tained secrecy and covered up the crisis whenever they went about trying
to resolve the situation. Therefore, the situation was not reported by the
media for a long time.
Jo Dong-joon’s testimonial document formed the groundwork for this
research. Jo’s data focused mostly on the ensuing dialogue between South
Korea and communist Vietnam on the issues of evacuation and detention
that took place from early 1975 until April of the same year when Vietnam
fell completely to the communist forces. Despite the North Korean
threats, the remaining eight diplomats who were either detained or were
not repatriated to the North were released eventually. The first five detain-
ees were released in 1976 and the remaining three in 1980. Jo’s study
8 KOREA’S VIETNAM WAR AND THE FALL OF SAIGON: RECONSTRUCTING… 183
focuses on the successful negotiation strategy and decision-making which

made it possible (Jo and Ji-Hyun 2014).
This study aims to understand the feelings and the emotions of the
Korean embassy personnel and the Korean residents who were detained in
Saigon when Vietnam was overtaken by the communist forces between
April and May of 1975. It intends to shed a light on their experiences
through their oral testimonies. There was the detainees’ struggle for sur-
vival behind the government’s official war narrative of the war constituting
a second front against communism while also opportunistically presenting
the benefits of economic growth. This essay uncovers the little known his-
tory of Korea’s Vietnam War by examining the traumatic memories and
experiences of the detainees.
The primary material that I use for this study is the oral testimonies
collected by the National Institute of Korean History between
2008–09 in two rounds of interviews. The interviewees were high-rank-
ing diplomats, military personnel in charge of evacuations, and the
Korean residents of Vietnam. Because of the South Korean govern-
ment’s suppression of media reporting on the detention, there is no
record of the incident in the Korean newspapers and magazines during
that period. Publicity through media coverage can help the resolution of
kidnapping and detention cases. The ROK government, however, even
tried to block the interventions of Amnesty International. For example,
The Escape Memoirs of the Second Secretary Kim Chang-geun (printing
discontinued in 2008), Memorandum of Some Diplomats (Yoon 2011),
The Record of Detainment in Saigon (Lee 1981), and The Korean War
and Vietnam War, Crossing the Dead Line (Lee 2010) are typical auto-
biographic accounts.
The Korean embassy in Vietnam was located at 109 Wenju Street in
Saigon. The ambassador’s residence was 53 Pandingpung Street. The
total number of embassy employees was 58, which included diplomats
as well as typists, telephone switchboard operators, and drivers. The
detention of the embassy personnel started on April 30, 1975 and the
last three detainees, Minister Lee Dae-yong, and three others were
released and arrived in Korea in April 1980. The period that this essay
covers is the 16 months between January 1975, right after the failure
of the evacuation plan, and April 1976, when the remaining embassy
people and the residents returned to Korea with the exception of the
last three (Lee 1981: 11). The detailed information on the diplomats
is summarized in Table 8.1.
184
W. KIM
Table 8.1 The list of detained diplomats

Position Affiliation Name Type of detainment Note
Minister Korea Central Information Lee Dae-yong Imprisonment Dispatched by KCIA

Agency (KCIA) (1975.10.3–1980. 4.11)
The Second Secretary KCIA Ahn Hee-wan Imprisonment Dispatched by KCIA
(1975.6.19–1980. 4.11)
The Third Secretary Ministry of Home Affairs Seo Byung-ho Imprisonment Dispatched by National Police
(1975.6.19–1980. 4.11)
Councilor Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lee Kyu-soo House arrest
(1975.6.9–1976.5.7)
The Second Secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kim Gyeong-jun House arrest
(1975.6.9–1976.5.7)
The Third Secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs Shin Sang-beom House arrest KCIA career
(1975.6.9–1976.5.7)
Chief Operator Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kim Go-yang House arrest
(1975.6.9–1976.5.7)
Operator Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yang Jong-ryul House arrest
(1975.6.9–1976.5.7)
The Second Secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs KIm Chang-geun Escape (1975. 5.3)
Source: Adapted from Cha (2009)

Evacuation Plan, Failure, and Detention
Establishment of Evacuation Plan: January–April 20, 1975

During the winter of 1974 (December–January), North Vietnam planned
a military campaign to liberate South Vietnam within two years. The cap-
ture of Phuoc Long Province on January 7, 1975 and the attack on Buon
Ma Thuot on March 10 accelerated the collapse of the South Vietnamese
government. On March 14, the South Vietnamese government declared
that it was abandoning the northern half of the country. On March 22, the
North Vietnamese forces went on the offensive and on March 27, North
Vietnam launched its Ho Chi Minh campaign to liberate Saigon by May
10, 1975. Eventually, Danang fell on March 30 and President Thieu
resigned on April 21. The government of South Vietnam fell on April 30
(Cha Ji-hyun 2009: 6).
When North Vietnam launched the 1975 Spring Offensive on January
23, the Korean embassy in Saigon started an evacuation plan called the
Vietnam Emergency Plan. The South Korean government had also asked
its embassy in Saigon to create a detailed evacuation plan with each phase
of the evacuation. In January 1975, however, it seems that the Korean
government had failed to predict the rapid collapse of the South Vietnamese
government.
An embassy-wide meeting was held for the first time in March of
1975 to discuss an evacuation plan from Vietnam (Kim 1975). After the
tide of the war had turned against the USA, the evacuation issue was
discussed at every embassy meeting. And on March 28, they decided
that security at the embassy had to be reinforced. The South Korean
government formally asked the US embassy in Saigon for cooperation
with Korean evacuation. Counselor Lee Sang-hoon was named as the
contact point and he was to call Thompson, an American diplomat at the
US embassy, on the matter (Cha 2009: 12). Remaining records suggest
that there were some disagreements among Korean embassy staff on the
order of evacuations.
By April 5, the South Korean government created an evacuation plan at
a meeting chaired by the prime minister when they realized that the evacu-
ation was unavoidable. An evacuation plan created under Minister Lee
Dae-yong’s orders was never implemented because of the strong convic-
tion that the US intervention would eventually save South Vietnam (Lee,
oral document).
186 W. KIM
Even before the Korean community organized an event on April 9 to

help those without sufficient means to finance their return trips, the
embassy had not notified them of the evacuation plan. But the embassy
made it clear to the Korean residents that the situation was serious and
that it would be in their best interest to prepare for evacuations even
though it was their personal choice. After April 13, the Korean residents
were called in to the embassy and strongly urged to return to Korea.
However, it appears from the remaining documents the residents did not
realize the gravity of the situation.
Operation Cross and the Evacuation of Overseas Koreans

Finally, on April 8, 1975, under orders from the Blue House, the decision
was made to send a Landing Ship Tank (LST) filled with relief supplies to
Vietnam and to bring the Korean refugees back to Korea. In compliance
with the South Vietnamese government’s request, after unloading the
relief supplies, LST 810 and 815 were to take on South Vietnamese refu-
gees and drop them off at Phu Quoc Island near Saigon before heading to
Korea with the Korean citizens (Cha 2009: 13).
This was the so-called Operation Cross. This covert operation was
under Executive Order 38, a directive from the Blue House that had the
second highest security classification (Cha 2009: 11; Ah 2005: 212–15).
The operation, however, did not go as smoothly as planned. After leaving
the Port of Saigon Newport on April 26, they discovered that some residents
had boarded illegally; customs procedures were not followed properly; and
the ships received threats from the South Vietnamese government (Park, oral
document). The number of Koreans who did not board the LSTs totaled 260
and a significant number of those on board had not disposed of their property
(Lee, oral document). The number of Koreans scheduled to be onboard was
550, but only 314 actually boarded. And there was quite a large number of
Vietnamese onboard who were never part of the evacuation plan. In fact,
there were more Vietnamese than Koreans onboard and some embassy per-
sonnel brought their private luggage which had not been permitted. After the
two LST ships returned home, the operation command office in Seoul
described the ships as “empty” and the operation faced criticisms for failing to
bring the remaining Korean residents and embassy staff.
The embassy tried to persuade the remaining Koreans to return to
Korea but there were many who did not want to. Most of the Korean resi-
dents had come to Vietnam to make money and they rejected the evacua-
tion pleas. This was one of the major problems faced by the embassy staff
when executing the evacuation plan. The Koreans in Vietnam wished to
go to another country like Iran or Australia where they could find work
and thus requested a stopover to the journey. The Asia-Pacific Bureau of
the Korean Foreign Ministry had negotiated with the government of
Thailand that within a few days of leaving Vietnam, the ships would stop
by Thailand before continuing to Korea. Adding a stopover to the itiner-
ary could trigger a diplomatic issue. Yet the ROK government obtained
the transit (tourism) visas for those Koreans who wanted to go to another
country and altered the port of disembarkation stamped on their passports
to the destination of their choice. This allowed Korean residents who
wanted to emigrate to countries like Iran and Australia to do so (Kim
Gyeong-jun and Kim Sang-woo, oral documents).
Some of the Koreans who were living in Vietnam at the time were aliens
left stranded at the end of World War II (individuals with no nationalities
who were assimilated completely into Vietnamese society) and those look-
ing for work in another country through marriages of convenience, dual
marriages, or family register alterations. So there were many Koreans who
were not interested in evacuating for reasons that had to do with their
illegal resident status, dual marriages, or desire to seek work in another
country (Kim Chang-geun, oral document). Quite a few were not even
registered in Vietnam as Korean nationals. Therefore, evacuation to Korea
was not a simple matter for them (Kim Sang-woo, oral document).
During the LST evacuation, the embassy staff were so preoccupied with
selling the furniture, typewriters, and other embassy property, and settling
severance benefits that staff members could only remember being “very
busy.” The evacuation planning was mentioned at every meeting, but
overwhelming optimism seemed to sweep aside any concerns. Kim
Gyeong-jun remembers that he was too busy to even go to the restroom.
Failure of Evacuation Operation: April 28–April 30, 1975

The first embassy employee evacuation, scheduled to take place on April
28 at 11 a.m. using a military plane, had to be postponed. In the original
plan, the evacuation was to begin when Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”
was playing on the radio. But it was postponed when Tan Son Nhat
Airport was bombed and had to be closed (Ah 2005: 58–9, 161).
On April 29, the second evacuation plan was attempted in which the
Koreans were to be ferried by air from the heliport on the US embassy
188 W. KIM
building rooftop. But this plan was unsuccessful and the Korean embassy
personnel were left stranded in Saigon. On that day, the Korean embassy
personnel, three LST contact military officers, five employees, a Korean
pastor, and a journalist were supposed to wait at the ambassador’s resi-
dence for a call from the US embassy and then proceed to Assembly Point
3 (Lee 1981: 11–12).
Around 9–10 a.m. when the call came from the US embassy, the group
left from the Korean embassy for Assembly Point 3. This was located at a
single-family apartment housing aid organization workers and was
10 minutes away from the embassy by car. But confusion arose concerning
the exact location of Assembly Point 3 for which the ambassador Kim
Young-kwan’s car had left earlier.
As confusion ensued about the exact location of the rendezvous point,
the car carrying the ambassador headed straight towards the US embassy.
At 3 p.m., choppers began landing on the heliport to evacuate US civilians
and their families. Already 12 diplomats, 3 navy officers, around 160
Koreans, and around 40 Vietnamese wives and their children were waiting
at the main entrance to the US embassy entertainment center (Lee 1981:
15; Ah 2005: 76–7).
Around 4:30 a.m., as the last three helicopters were about to land at the
embassy rooftop, the US marines stood in line and lowered their rifles to
block any approach to the US embassy. When the marines threw a tear gas
grenade into the crowd, all pandemonium broke loose. Some Koreans
moved drum containers to the embassy walls and tried to climb over the
walls (Kim 1975). In the middle of the confusion, Minister Lee Dae-yong
recalls his fear of being stampeded to death (Lee, oral document). On
hearing of rumors that the US embassy was about to be exploded after the
evacuations, Shin Sang-beom remembers thinking, “Oh my God! This is
how I am going to die!” as he ran out of the embassy building (Shin, oral
document).
Detention in Vietnam, Arrest of Three Diplomats,

and Repatriation
In the end, the two evacuation attempts both failed and 9 embassy person-
nel, 164 Korean residents of Vietnam, and 350 Vietnamese family mem-
bers of Koreans were left in Vietnam. Minister Lee Dae-yong left the US
embassy at 5 a.m. and went to the French embassy and the Japanese
embassy in order to seek assistance, but he was refused. At 11 a.m. on May
1 at Grall Hospital, Watanabe, the then-counselor at the Japanese embassy

met a Korean embassy representative and told the Korean embassy person-
nel that there was a real danger that the Vietnamese would deport the
Koreans to North Korea. Watanabe then implored him not to do anything
detrimental to the Japanese government (Kim 1975).
The embassy employees and the Korean residents spent a night at Grall
Hospital in the French concession, but the rumors started to circulate that
the Viet Cong forces were preparing to attack the hospital (The Ministry
of Foreign Affairs 1975–78). On May 1, the hospital requested the Koreans
to leave the premises and they returned to the embassy with a French flag
hoisted on their cars. The Koreans restored order in the embassy and set up
a liaison team, a finance team, and general affairs team, assigning a leader
to each team. Then the embassy people were grouped into 10–20 person
units and were instructed to report to the unit leader (Kim 1975).
But as time passed, the Koreans did not act together to move as a team.
After May and about a month after their evacuation failure, the security
situation in Saigon had improved, but the embassy personnel were not
able to perform their functions at all. Instead, Korean community mem-
bers were contacting the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, working as translators and going about looking for living
expenses (Kim Gyeong-jun and Kim Sang-woo, oral documents).
On top of this, quarrels and fistfights erupted among the embassy peo-
ple and animosities emerged between the Korean residents and embassy
personnel. Remarks like “My mind was not at peace for even a day” from
Shin Sang-beom; “It should be a little better as the Korean residents won’t
be with us”; and Kim Gyeong-jun’s use of the expression “commotion” or
“Let’s kill Lee Dae-yong” were indirect affirmations of the hostile rela-
tions among the Koreans.
In the end, Lee Dae-yong, Shin Sang-beom, and Kim Gyeong-jun
decided to move their lodgings to the Korean community center on May
2 (Kim 1975). On May 9, on orders from the Saigon National Security
Bureau Ministry of Internal Affairs, 20 agents visited the South Korean
ambassador’s residence to begin an investigation of the Koreans remaining
in Vietnam (Lee 1981: 39). On May 12, the embassy personnel tried to
register as diplomats stationed in Vietnam to comply with the interim
government’s notification requiring all foreigners and diplomats to report
to the government. But because South Korea was not a country that had
recognized the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, registering as diplomats
proved to be impossible (Cha 2009: 19).
190 W. KIM
Finally, the event that everyone had feared took place between May 19
and May 20. A North Korean delegation appeared in Saigon. North
Korean delegation members began to show up at Caravelle Hotel and
Continental Palace Hotel in downtown Saigon (Lee 1981: 40). This was
when fear and panic began to spread among the Korean residents and
embassy people. In fact, for two days starting on September 27, several
Koreans were summoned to room 502 and 503 at the Majestic Hotel for
questioning by the North Korean delegation (Lee 1981: 64–5).
The Korean embassy personnel were detained at the ambassador’s resi-
dence. Armed guards were placed in front the ambassador’s residence and
kept watch on people entering the premises. This situation lasted for six
months (Lee 1981: 45). After security was established, however, it appears
that on the surface the detention situation attained a degree of stability.
After the police from the Saigon National Security Bureau raided the
South Korean ambassador’s residence at noon on June 19 and arrested
Consul Ahn Hee-wan and Superintendent Seo Byeong-ho, it was antici-
pated that other Korean embassy personnel in the intelligence section
would be arrested. The two were arrested because they worked for the
Korean Intelligence Bureau and were considered war criminals (Yoon, oral
document).
On October 3, Minister Lee Dae-yong was arrested, along with Kim
Gyeong-jun, Kim Sang-woo, and Shin Sang-beom who had been staying
outside the ambassador’s residence. Soon afterwards, Minister Lee, Ahn
Hee-wan, and Seo Byeong-ho were imprisoned at Chi Hoa Prison until
1980. The common factor incriminating the three men was that they were
all intelligence officers (“top security” and “security clearance” levels) and
not associated with the foreign ministry of South Korea (Cha 2009: 27).
It is presumed that the five other members of the embassy who had not
been arrested were being accorded some level of privilege as diplomats.
But the three men who were arrested were expected to be imprisoned for
a long time and could not return to Korea until May 1980.
About a year after their detainment on May 7, 1976, the remaining
embassy personnel received a call that they were going to go home.
Eventually, permission to depart Vietnam was granted by the Vietnamese
government and a list of those approved for departure was posted on the
walls of the ambassador’s residence. They arrived safely in Thailand and
after three days of debriefing by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency
in Bangkok, they arrived in Seoul on May 11. Permission was also given
for the Korean residents to leave and 109 Koreans and 123 Vietnamese
family members left the country (Jo and Ji-Hyun 2014: 9). They prom-
ised the Vietnamese government that they would not talk to the media
about their detention, causing a news blackout to be in effect.
Memories and Narratives of Detained People

In this section, I reanalyze the oral testimonies given by Kim Gyeong-jun,
Kim Chang-geun, and pastor Kim Sang-woo to better understand the
salience of the Vietnam ordeal for the detainees. Most of the interviewees
were fervently anti-communists and loyal to South Korea. By shedding
light on what the Vietnam War and their subsequent detention meant to
them, I challenge the prevailing notion of the Vietnam War as simply a
holy war against communism.
Trauma of White Christmas: Narratives of Kim Chang-geun

Kim Chang-geun was the only embassy personnel who succeeded in escap-
ing from Vietnam. His oral testimony was more about his escape than how
the South Korean government bargained with communist Vietnam. The
testimonies were mostly on the evacuation of the Korean residents, the
reasons Vietnamese boarded the Korean LST ships, and the news blackout
imposed by the South Korean government. Kim Chang-geun was in
charge of general affairs when he was posted to Vietnam in March 1974,
and six months later he was assigned to the political and administra-
tive section.
The evacuation failure and the subsequent escape on a boat was such a
traumatic experience for Kim Chang-geun that several times during the
interview he asked for a break so that he could control his emotions. After
his escape from Vietnam, he continued his diplomatic career, serving in
Korean diplomatic outposts in Eastern Europe and, because he was a mili-
tary man, his revulsion towards communism was apparent in the oral doc-
uments. It should be noted, however, that the Vietnam War trauma,
symbolized by “White Christmas” and “radio,” occupies a very important
corner of his memory.
To varying degrees, other embassy personnel and residents who
returned to Korea after a year of detention all carried traumas of their
own. Kim Chang-geun, who escaped in May 1975, recalls that the South
Korean government initially wanted the embassy personnel to blend in
with other Koreans for evacuation. The foreign ministry was indifferent to
192 W. KIM
the psychological scars left by the ordeal of detention. Kim thinks of the
foreign ministry as a “cold hearted” place. When asked about his situation
right after escaping Vietnam via Bangkok, Kim says, “When I look back on
those days, I still feel strong resentment. I arrived in Seoul but I had lost
10 kg. I didn’t look like a normal human being. What makes me angry
most of all is that nobody in the government even bothered to tell me I
should get a medical check-up.”
Kim Chang-geun described his trauma in explicit detail. He said he car-
ried around a radio for a long time. As the interview came to a close, the
interviewer asked him, “do you still carry around a radio?” Kim answered,
“I keep over 10 radios at my house.” The reason for his attachment to
radios is because of the compulsive obsession he had about reaching the
escape point after hearing the song “White Christmas” on the radio on
that fateful day of April 28, 1975. Kim Chang-geun said it had become a
habit, but he was always carrying a radio because BBC broadcasts at that
time provided information essential for survival (author’s emphasis):
I have picked up the habit of carrying a radio with me all the time. This radio
is my life. During the detention, I had no work to do. So I would go to play
golf in the morning and would always carry a radio with me. This was how
carrying radios became a habit …
How should we interpret the trauma that Kim Chang-geun went

through? More than anything, the two escape failures and the experience
of escaping by sea were important. Other embassy personnel held meet-
ings to discuss escaping, but it was never put into motion. The South
Korean government did not authorize it but the man who did escape was
Kim Chang-geun.
The most memorable part of Kim Chang-geun’s testimony was his rec-
ollection of arriving in Bangkok on May 8, the last leg of his long seaborne
escape. As he explains the situation at that time, he adds, “There was no
place in my mind for my country or government. My family was the only
thing I cared about.” Another memorable part in his escape story was
when he described how his hands shook. For 30–40 minutes, Kim reiter-
ated his story to the Thailand coast guards that he was a South Korean
diplomat from Saigon. Until he arrived safely at the Thailand maritime
police headquarters, Kim Chang-geun was not able to relax (Kim 1975).
Kim Chang-geun was a former military man turned diplomat, the kind
of man expected to have a very firm sense of his national duty. But, he said,
“All my thoughts were about my family. There was no room in my mind

for my country whatsoever.” This was an indirect way of expressing his
feelings that no one, not the USA, not South Korea, and not even the
foreign ministry, could guarantee his safety. The meaning of this recollec-
tion can be gleaned from his experiences around the time of his escape.
First, there was his continuing mistrust of the key figures at the Korean
embassy and the diplomats. His mistrust was sown after watching how the
upper-class Korean residents would go on shopping trips to neighboring
countries even when Saigon was about to fall. The ambassador, a former
navy captain, left Saigon even while telling the embassy personnel to stay
put in Saigon. And the Korean embassy was not intelligent enough to
understand the political situation in Vietnam (author’s emphasis):
I listened to the BBC every day. They tell you the latest about the war situ-
ation. Today, the North Vietnamese troops have taken which point and so
on. Then I marked the maps with where the North Vietnamese positions
were. And I showed the maps to the embassy people, underlying important
points for emphasis. But there was no reaction … These high-level people …
Every day they looked up to the sky and shouted “When are the American B-29s
coming?” They kept saying this. That’s why you need to work for a boss who
has a brain and a capacity to think. Never [in Saigon] …
The next aspect of Kim’s experience that calls for our attention is his
desire for survival right after the evacuation failure and when detention
became a reality. Incidents like misinterpreting the sound of tanks as the
sound of South Vietnamese forces counterattacking, driving to the airport
in a desperate attempt to catch a flight out of Vietnam, or running towards
a US military chopper about to get airborne were manifestations of a deep
desire for rescue even though detention was an absolute certainty.
The third part of his experience that calls for the reader’s attention
is the extreme fear he went through right after his escape plan via the
US embassy fell apart on April 29, 1975. He apparently went looking
around for a place to die. Kim Chang-geun was so terror-stricken that
he could not drive. He threw away the medals he had received from the
South Vietnamese government and took measures to hide his identity
such as hiding his passport in the soles of his shoes. Particularly when
a report surfaced of North Korean soldiers appearing on the streets of
Saigon, his fear reached its climax. When Grall Hospital asked all the
Korean residents and embassy people to leave the premises at 4 p.m.,
194 W. KIM
the Koreans fell into such despair that they reportedly discussed pur-
chasing sleeping pills or potassium cyanide for distribution amongst
themselves to commit group suicide (The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
1975–78). There were even some embassy personnel who wrote their
wills or letters to family members because they felt dying was preferable
to getting dragged to North Korea against their will (Kim 1975). At
Grall Hospital, Kim Chang-geun thought about a place and a way to
kill himself. He actually went around looking for shaving blades to cut
his wrist and asked doctors to give him drugs to commit suicide before
giving up.
A Different Kind of Memories: Narratives of Kim Gyeong-jun

The recollections of Kim Gyeong-jun stand in stark contrast to that of
Kim Chang-geun, who suffered extreme trauma. Kim Gyeong-jun was an
elite who had graduated from Seoul National University and had under-
taken advanced studies in Germany. Kim Gyeong-jun also worked for the
Korean Central Intelligence Agency. The interview with Kim Gyeong-jun
touched on his experience of the evacuation attempt, his emotions after
the failed evacuations, the detention, and the situation right after
his release.
Throughout the interview, Kim Gyeong-jun put on a cheerful face and
said he had a positive attitude about the whole experience because, in his
words, “the past is in the past.” But the expressions used by Kim during
interview suggested that he was trying hard to suppress his emotions in
order to forget the incident. When discussing the time of the Korean
entourage’s arrival at the US embassy, the use of tear gas grenades by the
US marines, the French flag kept at the ambassador’s residence, the rela-
tions between embassy personnel and the Korean residents, the house raid
carried out by the interim Vietnamese government, and evacuation
attempts, Kim Gyeong-jun either could not remember or his testimony
was inconsistent with that of other people. In the eyes of the interviewer,
Kim Gyeong-jun, who had been detained in Vietnam for a year, was very
sensitive about the risk of getting deported to North Korea because he
once worked for the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. As the possibil-
ity of returning home was getting remote with the passage of time, he
became so resigned to his fate that his attitude towards life itself changed.
When he returned home, the attitude of the foreign ministry appeared to
him as rather condescending.
The interesting aspect of Kim Gyeong-jun’s testimony was the way he

remembered his detention period in Saigon. Unlike other interviewees
who went through a similar experience, Kim Gyeong-jun described his
detention using words like “safe,” “there was nothing we could do,” and
“it wasn’t too uncomfortable.” Kim Gyeong-jun was in charge of consular
affairs and continued to sign documents for the Korean residents of
Vietnam even after detention. He remembered April 30, the day the
Vietnam War ended, as a day of “peace.” When the interviewer asked him
why he did not escape, this is how he responded (author’s emphasis):
[Laughter] Yes, that was true and there was a reason for it. Because the war
was over and the Korean residents were evacuated, the situation in Vietnam
had stabilized. Peace had come. But I was in a communist country and there
were now North Koreans working in the city. They were saying, “the Korean
consul is still in town. Go to him and get your photo stamped.” And so they
kept on coming to me in my lodging. That’s why I continued to stamp their
papers. I couldn’t refuse.
He chuckled and said he continued his consular activities even though

he was in a dangerous situation where the possibility of getting deported
to North Korea was growing more real day by day. But in contrast with
the word “stability” that Kim used to describe the situation in Saigon, the
fear and panic that the Korean residents and embassy personnel were feel-
ing was growing. In the beginning, the residents were cooperative with
the embassy personnel but, as the detention started, their attitudes
changed.What was worse, the residents who were questioned by the North
Korean intelligence team kept silent about their interrogation. It was their
silence itself which felt terrifying to the other residents. Moreover, when
two embassy personnel were arrested in June, Minister Lee Dae-Yong
remembered telling Secretary Shin Sang-beom that if he were to be sent
to North Korea, he planned to kill himself. Not only Lee Dae-yong but a
vast majority of the residents were preoccupied with the fear of being sent
to North Korea (Lee, oral document). But Kim Gyeong-jun’s account
gave the impression that he felt more secure than the other embassy peo-
ple (author’s emphasis):
Kim Gyeong-jun: We didn’t need money, except for meals and paying our
rents. There were no places where we could spend money. So, we lived with
domestic helps. We ordered our meals. And every day we went out for drinks.
[Laughter]
196 W. KIM
Interviewer: The sense I am getting is that you never felt any personal
danger.
Kim Gyeong-jun: No. We had absolutely no worries about our security. And
also, when a situation becomes pressing …
Interviewer: Go on.
Kim Gyeong-jun: Well, I began to think, “What the hell, let fate take its
course.” My mentality was if I get shipped to North Korea, I will just have to
live there.
Why did Kim Gyeong-jun remember the challenging moments in such a

different way? Could it be because of his distrust of the South Korean
government for instructing its diplomats in Vietnam to blend in with the
Korean residents when escaping from the country and his realization that,
once detained, he was no different from the residents? His recollections
that the funds sent by the South Korean government did not mean much
and he did not have to worry about money while living in Vietnam sug-
gest that this was very probable.
It is hard to accept his claim, however, that he could remember nothing
but stability about his detention period in Saigon. Kim Gyeong-jun might
have said that, as a diplomat, he argued for his release on legal grounds.
But his way of expressing the fear of his detention and his frustrations
could have been his way of interrogating the foreign ministry’s ideas
about escaping.
Another point worthy of attention is that although Kim Gyeong-jun
repeatedly asserted that he did not view his detention as a serious situa-
tion, he was in fact very nervous that his eight-year career with the Korean
Central Intelligence Agency could act against him. When the embassy staff
who were related to intelligence work were getting arrested by the North
Vietnamese authority, he probably was under extreme stress as a person
with a past history in intelligence gathering. Given these circumstances,
could it be possible that Kim’s recollections of detention as being stable
was actually a disguise to hide the terror that he had experienced? This
question is posed because of Kim Gyeong-jun’s past statements which
seemed to suggest that he suffered psychological stress although he was
physically healthy (author’s emphasis):
Kim Gyeong-jun: There was no post-traumatic stress. Nothing was wrong

with my physical health. But I was mentally exhausted. I thought my life was
finished. I could not go back to the authorities and resume my diplomatic
career. I lived with the feeling that I should just live there, just making sure
I don’t get sent to North Korea. It really wasn’t a very settled livelihood
mentally.
Interviewer: However, when I look at you today, how should I say it. I
do not get the impression that you were very desperate in your situation at
that time.
Kim Gyeong-jun: I wasn’t desperate. I was really calm. Well, I was the
first one to leave the embassy and the ambassador’s residence. And I did
whatever I wanted. I was in a situation where nothing I did could change my
predicament. My thoughts were that I would just leave my life to fate.
When describing his detention, Kim Gyeong-jun used optimistic words

like “peaceful” and “fate.” But he was resigned to the fact that life, the
possibility of returning home, and his diplomatic career were finished.
And he subconsciously revealed the mental fatigue he was under at the
time. Hidden behind his story of how he got out of the ambassador’s resi-
dence to live independently as he pleased, there was another side of him
that wanted to escape the fear of detention more than anyone else.
The Lost Dreams and Repeated Wars: Narratives of Kim

Sang-woo
Kim Sang-woo was the only civilian among the interviewees. At the time
of the interview, he was suffering from poor eyesight and the side-effects
of Agent Orange after retiring from missionary work in the United States.
The interview was conducted at his house in the USA. He was in his old
age but still had clear memories about what really happened in Vietnam
and explained what his roles were as the deputy director of the Korean
residents’ evacuation committee. Like other interviewees, he was critical
of those in the leadership positions at the Korean embassy for gathering
incorrect information from their contacts in the Vietnamese government.
The leadership planned the evacuation on incorrect information and this
ultimately resulted in missing their evacuation timing.
A native of Seoul, he was the son of a railroad worker. After graduating
from Yongsan High School, he decided to become a pastor on the recom-
mendation of his mother who had been a devout Christian. During the
Korean War, he was forced into the North Korean Student Volunteer
Army. But when his unit was scattered from the bombing near Yeseong
River, he returned home and finished high school in Busan in 1954. He
then graduated from Chung-ang Theology Institute and began a career as
a navy chaplain. He then participated as a chaplain during the formation
198 W. KIM
of the Tiger Division, the unit that was deployed to Vietnam. He then
served his country during the Vietnam War as a chaplain in the Tiger
Division. In 1967, he returned to Korea and served in a front-line unit as
a chaplain before his discharge in 1970 as an army major. Afterwards, at
the request of Chae Myung-shin, the head of the military officer-chaplains
union, he returned to Vietnam as a pastor in September of 1970. From
1972 until 1975, he was the senior pastor of the Korean community
church in Saigon. Before the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975, he held the
post of deputy director of the Korean residents’ evacuation committee.
After the war, he was detained in Vietnam and lived with the members of
the South Korean embassy until their release in May of 1976.
To Kim Sang-woo, Vietnam was a country where he could settle down
and live out his life as a pastor. In 1971, he enrolled at the University of
Saigon to learn Vietnamese. After the headquarters of the South Korean
forces in Vietnam had returned to Korea in April of 1973, he passionately
pursued his missionary work and founded the Korea-Vietnam Missionary
Society. He started a farming business to fund his church activities. Kim
Sang-woo, however, was not able to fulfill his dream of missionary life
in Vietnam.
The word that Kim Sang-woo uttered towards the end of his interview
and which catches one’s attention is “frustration.” Kim held the convic-
tion that the United States would never abandon South Vietnam and,
during his detention, he volunteered to do all sorts of menial tasks through
the church network to help Koreans who were struggling to make ends
meet. When the interviewer asked him, “How was your life after deten-
tion?” he replied, “frustration.” For Kim, Vietnam was the place where he
felt his calling for missionary work. To realize his goals, he purchased a
farm and made preparations for a self-reliant mission. But the war in
Vietnam demolished everything that he had worked on. He had to go to
Australia to start anew (author’s emphasis):
Interviewer: How did the incident affect your life?

Kim Sang-woo: I was frustrated. What else?
Interviewer: Frustrated?
Kim Sang-woo: That’s right. I had dreams of a life as a missionary. But it
was abruptly terminated. It was a personal frustration. A missionary must be
willing to spend the rest of his life in one place. All my dreams were com-
pletely shattered. All I, we, had at that time in Saigon was a farm …
A number of Vietnamese in their thirties were on our payroll at that

farm. We gave them work. We built a church for them. But all that was
destroyed. We lost everything.
Interviewer: Your property was forfeited.
Kim Sang-woo: Yes. We lost everything, including our church in Saigon.
We were left with nothing.
After he received the Dongbaek Medal upon his return to Korea, Kim Sang-
woo left for Australia. This was a promise he had made to the people who
had migrated from Vietnam to Australia. In Australia, he worked for four
years at the Sydney United Korean Church, giving sermons while helping
illegal aliens and doing community service work. He later moved to the
United States for his children’s education and worked for 15 years at Eden
Church, a small Korean church in Orange County, CA, before retiring.
This was not the path that he wanted in his life. He thought that even
after the South Korean troops’ scheduled withdrawal in 1973, the church
must be saved to memorialize the contributions of the South Korean
armed forces. This was the reason for creating the Korea-Vietnam
Missionary Society. He lost everything in Vietnam where he had set out
on his journey of becoming a missionary for life. For the next 20 years, he
was unable to settle down in one country, and watched his life drift into
old age without realizing the life he dreamt of in his youth.
But one lingering question is why Kim Sang-woo bothered to begin
work to set up a ministry in Vietnam after the headquarters of the South
Korean forces in Vietnam had gone back to Korea in April 1973. There
were still two years left before the fall of Saigon, but the tide of war was
already turning against South Vietnam and the Americans. So why did
Kim Sang-woo make this decision?
After the failure of the evacuations of the Korean residents on April 29,
1975, the remaining Korean residents were deeply divided over who was
responsible for the situation. It appears to be the case, however, that everyone
had their own opinion about the future of Vietnam. Kim Sang-woo also fer-
vently believed that the United States would not give up Vietnam. Kim Sang-
woo’s optimism, it seems, was probably rooted in his Christian beliefs, his
experience as a chaplain, and his hopes for a missionary life in Vietnam. The
abandonment of Vietnam by the United States came as a shock to him.
Kim Sang-woo’s aspirations for a new life in Vietnam appear to have
been finished. But even when it became clear that he was to be detained,
Kim Sang-woo took out 8 million Piastas1 from his farm treasury, converted
200 W. KIM
it to cash, and loaned the US$7,000–$8,000 through the church network

for the purpose of providing meals to the Korean residents. Kim’s motiva-
tions for this charity stemmed from his emotional attachment to Vietnam,
a place of which he did not want to let go. When asked to describe how he
feels today about these volunteer activities, he used words like “almost a
miracle,” “I did give help to a countless number of people.”
When asked the question, “Do you think the Vietnam War was a
failure?” Kim Sang-woo remembered his missionary pursuit in Vietnam
as a frustration. Did he also view the war as a failure? After his return
to Korea, he met President Park Chung Hee in August 1976 before he
left for Australia. This is his description of the meeting with the late
president:
He gave me a medal, and I greeted him with a bow. He asked me what I had
been doing in recent years. We exchanged simple platitudes, really. He said
I must have gone through a lot. The president told me, “We sent so many
troops to Vietnam. But with the collapse of South Vietnam, I have come to
regard our Vietnam policy was a mistake.” And I told him that wasn’t true.
They were very appreciative of us. They held our hands and with tears in
their eyes, they said, if you could have stayed a bit longer, South Vietnam
would not have fallen. I told the president, “They cheered for us. I wit-
nessed that and I can tell you, we did not make a mistake.” My reply seemed
to please him very much.
Whatever aspect of his recollections about his meeting with President Park
is true, there is another point that calls for our attention: Kim did not
regard either the Vietnam War or South Korean involvement in Vietnam
as failures. On a personal level, the Vietnam War completely interrupted
the establishment of the self-reliant church and operation of his farm, but
it was his belief that even the South Vietnamese people would be apprecia-
tive of South Korea’s contributions in the war effort.
When we read between the lines in testimonies such as Kim Sang-
woo’s, we can see how the Korean War influenced the Vietnam War. Kim
Sang-woo was also not free from the terrifying prospects of being deported
to North Korea. In May, when the North Vietnamese government
announced that all foreign military personnel in Vietnam must report
themselves to the authorities, Kim Sang-woo urged each to accept the
responsibility of reporting to the government. Kim said he felt nervous
when he reported himself to the Viet Cong.
One of the difficulties that the embassy personnel experienced during

their detention was their relationship with the Korean residents. Kim was
also interrogated by the North Koreans who told him they knew about his
service in the Korean armed forces. Not only that, the interrogators told
stories about unification, Kim Il Sung, and the good life that people in
North Korea enjoyed. In doing so, they asked for his cooperation while
expressing concerns about his past involvement in anti-North Korean pro-
paganda broadcasts over the 38th parallel. In particular, as time passed,
some in the Korean community began to harbor suspicions that others
were spying for the North Koreans. Kim Sang-woo was also one of those
who were suspicious of others (author’s emphasis):
I heard the rumors that some individuals were going out to meet with the
North Koreans. But we had no proof. Why were some coming home late?
Why did some come home after a night of drinking? And where did some
get the money to buy beer? We had our suspicions …
Some embassy personnel were fearful of threats made by the residents and
were concerned that they might turn violent. For this reason, for a long
time, Shin Sang-beom became reliant on sleeping pills and experienced
mental instability. They took sleeping pills and lived outside the embassy
because they were afraid of the Korean residents. And that fear had its
roots in their memories of the Korean War. Kim Sang-woo was drafted
into the “volunteer army” during the Korean War. For him, the fear of
being deported to North Korea probably reminded him of migrating to
North Korea during the Korean War. During the Korean War in 1950,
when he was just a middle school student, Kim Sang-woo was forced into
the North Korea Volunteer Army and ended up fighting at Yeseong River.
At Yeseong River, his unit was dispersed by aerial bombardments and
he walked all the way to Seoul. He remembers encountering the South
Korean Army near Gupabal. He chuckles and says, “That was our life in
those days.” Kim Sang-woo still remembered exactly what he wore that
day. Fortunately, he was not called to serve in the ROK army, but his road
trip along the Yeseong River past the Gyeongui line and Imjin River was
like a death march. During his detention in Saigon in 1975, in one corner
of his mind, Kim Sang-woo must have relived the experience of detention
and life under communist rule that he went through during the Korean War.
Just like in a war (or like their youth years in the Korean War), for the first
six months of their confinement they were given rations of 180 g of food per
202 W. KIM
day, eating a bowl of rice for the first meal and porridge for their second meal.
At that time, the embassy people set up a Korean residents’ association and
collected money to pay for food. As the living conditions worsened, the rela-
tions between the embassy people and the residents deteriorated. Shin Sang-
beom remembers having the following exchange of words with Minister Lee
Dae-yong who was cohabiting with Kim (author’s emphasis):
Our food ration was like 180 g, 190 g per day and this included rice, one
cigarette stick, and soybean paste or salt. We could eat only two meals per
day. Our friendly atmosphere completely vanished when our food ration was
reduced to two meals a day. So Minister Lee called me one day and said, “Do
you know about the Geoje-do Island Incident?”2 I told him that I did not know.
If an explosion goes off in here, or a riot erupts, we will be the first ones to die.
The residents will kill us first. Therefore, we have to do our best here. Minister
Lee said that to my face …
Kim Sang-woo also remembers that mutual suspicions naturally had to

exist under the trying times of detention. This implied that the mistrust of
the embassy personnel (as representatives of an authoritarian, repressive
Seoul government) was a common phenomenon, though not at the scale
of village battles that occurred during the Korean War; nonetheless, fear of
one’s countrymen became crystalized.
The question, “Was the Vietnam War a failure?” allows the hypothetical
interpretation that the recollections of the Korean War could have been
superimposed on the terror of detention. The detention of South Korean
embassy employees in 1975 occurred at a time when North and South
Korean ideological rivalry was at its peak. This was a time when the Cold
War was in full swing and the competition surrounding the Vietnam War
and so-called non-aligned diplomacy was being aggressively waged. As citi-
zens of a country which had sent its troops, who had gone through its own
anti-communist war, the Korean War, the collapse of the South Vietnamese
government came as a shock. The terrifying experience of encountering
North Koreans in “enemy territory” must have brought back memories of
the Korean War. The detention situation not only created tensions between
the People’s Army of Vietnam/government and North Korea, but also
tensions among suspecting Koreans. The Korean detainees of Saigon were
thrown back to memories of the early 1950s and the dread of the North,
yet those memories were different for different detainees—after all, many
civilian expats of Saigon were surely refugees from the maelstrom of 1950
to 1953. Memories would have been bitter and diverse.
Conclusion
The Vietnam War is often described as a “god-sent gift to Korea.” It is
difficult to ascertain, however, what detention and escape, death and sur-
vival, and the terrors of riot meant to the Koreans confined in Vietnam.
The detention experiences in Saigon are still remembered in many differ-
ent ways. They speak to the power of their memories but, at the same
time, these are perhaps influenced by the ethics of the Cold War which
often entail confrontational binary oppositions such as enemy vs. ally and
death vs. survival. The mentality formed around the time of the 1953
Korean War armistice was still imprinted in the detainees’ languages. It is
thus hard to simplify the Vietnam War just as another war or a way to earn
foreign currency for the Korean economy. Rather, the detainees’ testimo-
nies seem to show that the battlefields of the Korean War were reincar-
nated in Saigon, Vietnam (Nam 2005).
The unsettled legacies of the Vietnam War continue in South Korea to
this day. The Vietnam War veterans managed to block the testimonies of
Vietnamese civilian victims’ testimonies of the ROK Army’s brutality.
They argued that such historicization criminalizes the war heroes as mur-
derers. A parallel conflict recently reemerged at the government level.
When South Korean President Moon Jae-in referred to the sacrifices of
Vietnam War veterans as “patriotic” acts, the Hanoi government reacted
by officially requesting the Seoul government to be mindful of the nega-
tive impact of unilaterally chosen words and behaviors on bilateral rela-
tions. The Seoul government thus in March, 2018 expressed its official
regrets over the ROK Army’s participation in the Vietnam War and civilian
massacre committed during the war.
The contentious interpretations of Korea’s Vietnam War boil down to
mnemonic fragmentation caused by the lingering Cold War mentality on
the peninsula. The fragmentation fits the typical binary opposition mani-
fested in the parallel juxtaposition of “patriotic war veteran” vs. “murderer
of innocent civilians.” The Citizens’ Court on Peace held in April 2018,
for instance, demanded that the Korean government engage in a
truth-seeking investigation of its Vietnam War participation and the civil-
ian massacre committed by the ROK Army. Korea’s Vietnam War contin-
ues to remain a very inconvenient part of Korea’s contemporary
memory politics.
204 W. KIM
Appendix
Table 8.2 Records of interviewees

Interviewee Position Time of interview Place of Interviewer
interview
Kim Second March 19, 2009 Wellnis Center Jo Dong-joon

Gyeong-jun Secretary (14:00–15:40) at Seoul City
University,
Seoul
Kim Sang-woo Missionary of August 19, 2009 Los Angeles, Jo Dong-joon
the Korean (11:00–14:45) USA
United Church
in Saigon
Kim Second July 7, 2009 Office of Prof. Jo Dong-joon
Chang-Keun Secretary (15:40–16:10) Jo Dong-joon
Park In-seok Captain of the June 17, 2009 University of Jo Dong-joon
LST-100 (16:20–17:30) Seoul
Complaint
Research
Center
Oh Jae-hee Director of the December 9, 2008 JW Marriott Jo Dong-joon
Foreign Affairs (15:00–18:00) Hotel
Bureau
Yun Ha-jeong Ambassador of December 12, Korean Council Jo Dong-joon
Japan 2008 for Foreign
(10:00–13:00) Affairs
Sin Third Secretary March 26, 2009 House of Sin Jo Dong-joon
Sang-beom (14:07–16:40) Sang-beom
Lee Dae-yong Minister November The Office of Oh Je-yeon
3–December 29, Movement for
2012 the Protection
of Liberty
All the interview materials are stored in the National Institution of Korean History except for Lee Dae-
yong. The record of Lee Dae-yong is stored in the Academy of Korean Studies
Notes
1. The piasta was the Vietnamese currency unit in 1975.
2. The Geoje-do Island incident was the 1952 escape attempt made by prison-
ers of war during the Korean War. The POW camp housed about 150,000
people at the time of the incident.
References
Ah Byung-chan. 2005. Take a Photo, Saigon’s Last Look. Seoul: Communications
book.
Cha Ji-hyun. 2009. Analysis of the Negotiation Processes of Authoritarian
Regimes: Focusing on the Case of the Detention of Korean Diplomats in
Saigon, 1975–1980. MA diss., University of Seoul.
Jo Dong-Joon, and Cha Ji-Hyun. 2014. The Signaling Game between the
Republic of Korea and Vietnam on the Repatriation of the Prisoned/Detained
Diplomats, 1975–1980. Korean Journal of International Relations 54
(1): 35–68.
Kim Chang-Geun. 1975. The Escape Memoirs of the Second Secretary Kim Chang-
geun 1975. MF. 2007-66(11197).
Lee Dae-yong. 2010. The Korean War and Vietnam War, Crossing the Dead Line.
Seoul: Kiparang.
Lee Dae-young. 1981. The Record of Detainment in Saigon. Seoul: Hanjin.
Nam Ki-jeong. 2005. The Birth and the Evolution of Cold War States under the
East Asian Cold War System: Examining the Implication of the Korean
Armistice. Journal of World Politics 4: 51–72.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 1975–78. The Negotiated Release of Detained
Diplomats in Vietnam 1975–1978. 722.6VT.
Yoon Ha-jeong. 2011. Memorandom of Some Diplomats. Seoul: Kiparang.
Oral Documents
Kim Chang-geun (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_010_Kim Chang-geun_06.hwp).
Kim Gyeong-jun (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_010_Kim Gyeong-jun_06.hwp).
Kim Sang-woo (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_010_Kim Sang-woo._06.hwp).
Lee Dae-yong (The Academy of Korean Studies History Document No.
AKS2012_SEC3001_SET0001_SEN00403).
Oh Jae-hee (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_08_029_Oh Jae-hee_06.01.hwp).
Park In-seok (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_010_Park In-seok_06.hwp).
Shin Sang-beom (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_010_Shin Sang-beom_06.hwp).
Yoon Ha-jeong (The National Institute of Korean History Document No.
OH_09_029_Yoon Ha-jeong_0601.hwp).
PART III
Democratization, the People, and

Political Leaders
CHAPTER 9
“Politics of Desire”: Ruling Discourse

and Mass Mobilization of the Park Chung
Hee Regime
Byoung-joo Hwang
Introduction
The Park Chung Hee period (1961–79) was decidedly an age of violence
for its draconian Yusin Constitution and Emergency Decrees. The regime’s
authoritarian will was imposed and realized through the suppression of
civil and human rights. At the same time, however, the Park regime was
the first and most effective modern state in the history of Korea in mobi-
lizing the people. In the process of massive mobilization, the state proved
itself to be capable of modernizing and inducing voluntary participation of
people not only through coercion and suppression but also, and perhaps
more effectively, through cultivation of its own image as scientific
and rational.
Two earlier versions of this essay are published in Korean (see Hwang 2004,
2006). This English translation is based on a 2003 conference paper and is
slightly abridged due to space constraints. The author is grateful for Professor
Namhee Lee’s translation.
B.-j. Hwang (*)

National Institute of Korean History, Gwacheon-si, South Korea

210 B.-J. HWANG
The developmental mobilization from the top was intimately conjoined

with the desire of a great number of Koreans. The state unified and col-
lectivized with its own ruling scheme and the desires of its citizens. As
such, Park regime was not only the politics of repression but of desire. The
character of the Park regime as a “politics of desire” can be seen in the
following statement regarding the Saemaeul undong (New Village
Movement):
The New Village Movement is not imposed from outside but is a movement
initiated by an individual with his or her creativity. This movement is not
possible through passive self-abandonment but only through active and vol-
untary self-realization. Even the most altruistic person will not be able to
live for others all his life. There is no pure sacrifice. Individual interest, atten-
tion, and effort are all indispensable for one’s success. (Hanguk gyoyuk hak-
hoe 1974: 29)
The Park Chung Hee system, as the first modern state in Korean his-
tory, attempted to manage and control the consciousness and behavior of
Koreans through modern mass political mechanism and discursive prac-
tices. One such discursive practice was the idea of egalitarianism that pro-
ceeded with the discourse of modernization. The Korean people’s
widespread desire and collective will to get rid of poverty and to live better
lives joined with the populist tendency of Park Chung Hee. Park, unlike
previous leaders in Korean politics who flaunted their elite backgrounds,
repeatedly emphasized that he was the son of a poor peasant and, there-
fore, one of “them.”
By examining and problematizing the existing understanding of the
Park Chung Hee era and the New Village Movement that sees them
mainly in a binary opposition of domination versus resistance, this research
aims to shed new light on the Park era and the modernization project. The
forces of domination and resistance were not always clear-cut during the
process of modernization, nor was the mass (minjung) as a preexisting,
coherent group that could naturally transform itself from the object of
domination to the subject of resistance. Both the state domination and the
minjung resistance were carried out in the name of nation (minjok) and
citizen (gungmin). The resistance carried out in the name of progressive
politics converged with the state-oriented developmental strategy. In other
words, domination is not a cancellation of social animosities and tensions
but rather a modulation and regimentation of them; for that reason, resis-
9 “POLITICS OF DESIRE”: RULING DISCOURSE AND MASS MOBILIZATION… 211
tance is a potential object of state appropriation. The modernization proj-

ect was, therefore, not simply a forceful mobilization by the state but also
involved the consent of a great number of Koreans, who enthusiastically
embraced egalitarianism embedded in the discourse of modernization.
Egalitarianism
To interpellate dispersed individuals into a particular group is a phenom-
enon generally found in modern mass society. Modern society is sustained
by re-territorializing individuals who were de-territorialized from the pre-
vious era’s status system and land ownership. The rapid industrialization
of the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea dramatically increased social
mobility and began to eliminate the remnants of “premodern” social rela-
tions that still remained visible even through the Korean War (1950–53).
Rather than being a passive object of the state’s mobilization, however,
the people were also an active agent of the modernization project.
As the death of Jeon Tae-il1 in 1970 clearly shows, the Park regime’s
welfare policy was nonexistent during the modernization period. Given
the weak material foundation and the absence of a welfare policy during
the Park regime, how was it possible for the state to mobilize its citizens
extensively and successfully? Oppressive domination is one answer, but it
obviously is limited to one-sided explanation. The masses of the Park
regime cannot be viewed only as passive objects. The modernization social
movements such as the Saemaeul undong transformed countless Koreans
into active participants. The existing argument as the “oppressive state and
resisting minjung” cannot fully explain the phenomenon of massive and
spectacular mobilization of people and their social integration. From this
perspective, it is necessary to analyze the state discourse from the perspec-
tive of egalitarian pressure from the bottom.
The modern notion of “a free and equal individual” was an essential
component of this subject formation. The discourse of liberal democracy
was the meta-narrative of the Republic of Korea, but the common people
were offered very little freedom. Moreover, any freedom that the people
enjoyed was in exchange for equality. People accepted state surveillance of
personal matters, such as the length of one’s hair and skirt as well as cur-
few, because everyone was equally subjected to it.
The popular memory of the past as a time when everyone was poor
makes it possible to imagine that a similar future deprivation can be over-
come as long as it is equally experienced by everyone. The Saemaeul
212 B.-J. HWANG
undong was also a result of the egalitarian pressure to narrow the gap
between the city and the village. In other words, freedom and equality, the
interpellative signifiers for subject formation, were integrated into the
South Korean discourse of egalitarianism. To the people who experienced
inequality and discrimination due to their class, gender, and educational
level, egalitarianism was a powerful motivator which the regime could
not ignore.
Park Chung Hee also knew that the desire for equality is the basic moti-
vator of human society and actively sought for measures to bring about
greater equality. He called the existence of inequality “feudal vestiges” and
exhorted that the “[c]ontempt for and discrimination against others
because of the difference in rank and wealth constitute another important
cause of national disunity. Such inequality in moral, spiritual or any other
aspect of human relationship is the clearest evidence that one has yet to be
baptized by the cleansing fire of the modern democratic spirit” (Park 1962
[1970]: 33).
Park Chung Hee found the source of inequality in the past, and articu-
lated the task and goal of modernization as overcoming such vestiges of
the past, thereby delimiting or redrawing the boundaries of egalitarian
aspiration within the confines of the state. He also presented the cause of
inequality to the “privileged consciousness” held by a few elite groups in
the society. Park thereby delegitimized various social networks of private
individuals that were not within the “official sphere.” These “privileged
groups” who were criticized for their individualistic behavior included
certain sections within universities and Buddhist establishments, and
associations based on their school and regional ties (Park 1962
[1970]: 22–3).
That the discourse of egalitarianism was appropriated and state-centered
is effectively illustrated in the state’s articulation of equality in the eco-
nomic sphere. The content of the state’s economic egalitarianism was “not
so much the communal ownership of property or its equal distribution,
but the guarantee of the minimum right to survival and subsistence” (Park
1962 [1970]: 34). Park was also troubled by the conglomerates’ capacity
to destabilize the state by the concentration of their economic power.
Egalitarian discourse shifted to justify the total control of both capital and
the masses by the state.
The state utilized the egalitarian desire for its own political purpose.
Park Chung Hee described the Korean Democratic Party (KDP) as
supported by big landlords, people in the provincial wealthy class and big
businessmen … all of whom were semi-feudalistic and ultra-conservative.
Some of [the party’s] leaders had been government officials under the
Japanese regime; others were intellectuals with colonialist education. Most
were lawyers, bankers, and merchants who were invariably ignorant about
the essentials of democratic revolution and about reforms directed toward
modernization. (Park 1962 [1970]: 199–200)
According to Park, the New Democratic Party, the main opposition party
to the Park Chung Hee’s ruling party in the 1970s, inherited the conser-
vative, aristocratic, land-lordly character of the KDP. Park was also keen to
identify himself as a “commoner,” distant from “landlords and aristocrats.”
The existence of inequality at the level of individual relations and
among interpersonal matters was transposed to the public sphere and
became an issue of public ethics. Naturally, nation became the highest
point of public ethics. Park Chung Hee declared that in order to
become a minjok, one had first of all to be reconstructed as an indi-
vidual, and the reconstruction of an individual could not proceed with-
out revolution in one’s self-consciousness and self-identity: “Where
there is not an established self-identity as an individual but only father–
son, master–slave and adult–child relationships, there can be no equal-
ity, and no human rights. There is no room in such feudalistic relations
for equality or human rights” (1962 [1970]: 29). Therefore, “[w]ithout
an established ego, one cannot enjoy his own human rights … without
an established ego, one cannot have the self-conscious membership in
the national entity” (Park 1962 [1970]: 28–9). In order to construct
minjok, there first had to be a construction of modern individual
subjectivity.
Nationalism as a process of differentiation and integration repeats the
process of ideological appellation to transform unequal individuals into
equal citizens. In this process of interpellation, social inequality is sutured
in egalitarian integration of nation/citizen. More importantly for our dis-
cussion, however, the very social inequality gave rise to the fervent egali-
tarian aspiration that in turn allowed itself to be sutured in the state
discourse of nation/citizen. Not so surprisingly, as social inequality inten-
sified, the egalitarianism embedded in the notions of citizen/nation was
strengthened and the discontented individual was reborn as a citizen and
national subject. This process is most visible in the Saemaeul undong
(New Village Movement).
214 B.-J. HWANG
The state defined the Saemaeul undong as a movement crossing social,

regional, class, and temporal boundaries and as an education project for
the whole people of South Korea to revolutionize their consciousness.
The essential component of this revolution was the transformation of an
individual from the “premodern” being of the “era of poverty” to a new
“modern” person, capable of realizing the long-cherished dream of
Koreans to “live well.”
The Saemaeul undong was not merely a state project or state policy for
particular political purposes. Rather it was to realize the common aspira-
tion of the Korean people, which derived from their history of culture,
spiritual life, and philosophical tradition. The Saemaeul undong was not
limited to only farming and fishing villages but included urban areas, gov-
ernment bureaucracy, and even private companies (Saemaeul yeonguhoe
1976: 46–50). In other words, Saemaeul undong was an attempt to recon-
struct the “people” into “citizen-subjects” imbued with egalitarianism.
What Saemaeul undong emphasized first was the principle of subjectiv-
ity, that is, self-reliance (jajuseong) and national revival (minjok jung-
heung). The Saemaeul undong envisioned the individual “not as a vague
and universal democratic citizen but one that possesses a firm and clear
sense of state within our historical reality” (Hanguk gyoyuk hakhoe 1974:
16). Modernization was not simply westernization nor technological
innovation; it also meant preserving the ethics and mores (mipung yang-
sok), and aesthetics and emotions of the traditional village community
(Hanguk gyoyuk hakhoe 1974: 31). It was a modern version of dong-
doseogi (Korean spirit and external application).
The second principle of Saemaeul undong was productivity. The
Saemaeul undong was defined as a “movement to live better” which was
expressed in the egalitarian language of a “movement to have everyone
live well.” The spirit of the Saemaeul undong was well embedded within
the discourse of modernization and developmentalism.
Developmentalism, one of the core policies of the Park regime, received
wide support from intellectuals. Immediately after the May 16 military
coup of 1961, Sasanggye, the most influential journal among the intellec-
tuals at that time, endorsed the coup as a “nationalist military revolution”:
“While the coup was an unfortunate incident from the perspective of dem-
ocratic values, it was necessary for the nation in light of the mounting
corruption, incompetence, disorder, and the threat of Communists” (Yi
1988: 49). Intellectuals across the political spectrum shared this view.
Associations of university students issued statements of support for the
coup. The US ambassador at the time described the general mood among
the intellectuals as follows: “A surprising number of intellectuals, journal-
ists, and politicians felt that the coup was inevitable and a good thing to
have happened” (Hong 1998: 198). Intellectuals were enamored with the
modernization discourse of the military regime; at the time, one professor
of philosophy summarized the task of Korean nationalism as “moderniza-
tion, economic development, industrialization, technological innovation,
state development, and national revival” (An 1968: 139). At a time when
even dissident intellectuals supported the modernization project of the
Park regime, it is no surprise that the interpellation and mobilization of
the masses as “industrial warriors” and “flag-carriers of modernization”
became the imperative of the era.
Developmentalism was not without inherent problems. There began to
appear cracks and crises in the state’s policies of egalitarianism.
Differentiation in development led to intensification of inequalities, and
the pressure for egalitarianism became an Achilles’ heel for the develop-
ment process. Incidents such as the death of Jeon Tae-il in 1970 and the
Gwangju Settlers’ Protest in 19712 are cases in point.
The above is not to suggest that egalitarian pressure disavowed or
resisted developmentalism. The egalitarian pressure from the bottom con-
verged with, and was institutionalized within, the existing order and was
instrumental in the nationalization of society and the masses. In other
words, egalitarianism was one of the pressures pushing for developmental-
ism. Egalitarianism also acted as a strong antidote to the unlimited com-
petition of capitalism and provided a certain space for equal opportunity
in the competition.
In short, the egalitarian pressure from the bottom had left its visible
trace within the ruling order (both in discourse and in its practices) and
opened two possibilities: one was to push egalitarianism to the point of
imploding the existing order, and the other was to realign it as an institu-
tional practice within the existing order.
Discourse needs to be understood in its institutional practice. Discourse,
not as false ideology or as a vague theory but as institutional practice,
functions as material that constitutes society. Egalitarian discourse func-
tioned not only in the concept of equality but revealed itself in institu-
tional practices. Both military conscription (introduced in 1950) and the
policy of equalization of high school (introduced in 1974) are cases in
point. Equalization of high school was the state’s response to the egalitar-
ian pressure from the bottom. Military service was a symbol of egalitarian-
216 B.-J. HWANG
ism par excellence, in that in principle everyone had to serve. In this

process and through these practices, the egalitarian pressure from the bot-
tom was transformed by the state into the homogeneity of the nation and
was reduced to state power. Park Chung Hee’s public image of himself
was another example of egalitarianism par excellence:
Poverty is my teacher and benefactor. For this reason, my 24 hours cannot

be separated from matters related to this benefactor. My hope is to establish
a self-autonomous Korea as a diligent, hard-working, and honest civil soci-
ety … I was born, raised, worked among the commoners, and hope to die
in the warmth of the commoner … I have partly attained this dream through
the May 16th Revolution that I have carried out because I could no longer
ignore the feast of the corrupted, privileged class. (Park 1963 [1997]: 295–6)
This statement was issued at a time when Park Chung Hee was under
international and domestic pressure to hand over power to civilian rule
and therefore should be read as a statement to obtain support for his
political ambition. But what is important for our purpose is rather its
effect, regardless of its rhetorical intention.
Since the establishment of the Republic of Korea, no leader at the top
has commended this kind of rhetoric. Park identified himself with the
oppressed and downtrodden, sharply contrasting the “feast of the cor-
rupted, privileged class” with the “warmth of the commoner.” Regardless
of Park’s intention or will, it is clear that his discursive practice of mass
politics was in full operation and worked well. Here is yet another example
of Park’s narrative as commoner:
Sweat!
Listening to the humming of the machine
as if it is music
The girl
reading French poetry
in the second-class train
I despised
your pretty hands
We have to work. We cannot survive with pretty hands. Those pretty hands,
because of you we have endured poverty and deprivation. How could I
despise the pretty hands of a girl, but have you seen the hands of the privi-
leged class of less than one percent of the Korean population? Pretty hands
are our enemy … Let us finally fire the cannon of hatred at our enemy. (Park
1963 [1997]: 275–6)
This “anti-privileged” narrative is echoed by a worker’s narrative of

“life as a commoner”:
There are those who complain that their bottom is not comfortable in their
own car, while there are those who live contented and happily even if they
have to walk miles to save the bus fare of 35 cents. This is how I look at life.
I look forward to the future of abundance and happiness that is promised by
the frugal living of today. I will make an effort to create an everlasting image
of myself as a woman who transcended today’s difficulties for tomorrow and
overcame her fate. (Quoted in Kim 2002: 97)
In these two accounts, Park’s “privileged class of less than one percent
of the Korean population” and those “who own their cars” are portrayed
as a group separate from the rest of Korean society, and the two narratives
resonate with egalitarian impulses. In fact, Park’s writing is more radical
compared to the worker’s memoir in which a sense of resignation, to
accept reality as it is, pervades. These two narratives are a meeting point of
the state-initiated developmentalism and the bottom-up pressure for egal-
itarianism, and from this point the nation is constructed as one that inte-
grates and fulfills the desires for both.
Mass Politics and Mass Mobilization

The Park Chung Hee regime was the first genuine example of mass poli-
tics in the history of Korea. The core of mass politics is the politics of
homogeneity. As opposed to the previous era’s politics of differentiation,
the Park regime constructed a new, undifferentiated and homogeneous
mass, based on the principle of free and equal individuals. The state and
the citizens both imagined themselves as constituting the homoge-
neous nation.
It is difficult to find a case in modern Korean history in which the state
leader emphasized his identity with the citizenry as Park did.3 The
Republic’s first president, Syngman Rhee, was called “a Bourbon 200
years after the Bourbons of France.” Another president, Yun Bo-seon, was
a scion of an aristocratic family. The Joseon dynasty’s yangban and land-
218 B.-J. HWANG
owners did not disappear with the demise of the Joseon order but rather
metamorphosed into new leaders in modern society. Yet even in a changed
society, “a person of yangban origin” still could not commingle with the
“lowly”; the state was still an imposing higher-up and the citizen still the
lowly. Park Chung Hee, however, identified himself as a “son of a peas-
ant,” declaring that “he was born as a commoner and will die as one.”
Park Chung Hee’s epistemology was fascist; he viewed that “it is second
nature for the majority of Koreans to be dominated by powerful disci-
pline” (Wolgan Joseon 1993: 484). But at the same time, he knew how to
speak the language of “consent.” He himself was a model success story
and gave hope to the majority of Koreans, who at the time were deprived,
isolated, and treated unjustly. To those, a new life was given as “the war-
rior for the modernization of the motherland.” Let us first look at the
New Village Movement and its major participants, the farmers.
The New Village Movement and Farmers

The Saemaeul undong, starting from 1970 and still continuing, is the
largest and longest running state-initiated mass mobilization project. It
was carried out in almost all villages in South Korea. The number of vari-
ous projects rose to 2,667,000 cases in 1978 from 32,000 in 1972, and
the state support for the farmers to carry out these projects grew to four
billion won in 1979 from 200 million won in 1973 (Jeon 2000: 82).
The mass mobilization project, so heavily concentrated in non-urban
areas, was itself unusual in modern Korea, a phenomenon that cannot be
explained “without the existence of a state that is independent of and free
from civil society” (Im 1997: 12). The Park regime “actively intervened
[in the Saemaeul undong] as a supplier of capital and technology.” The
state’s pro-agricultural intervention was such that the price of grain in the
1970s domestic market reached three times that of the price on the inter-
national market. The size of loans from the Agricultural Cooperative was
also large and gradually expanded from 1.7 billion won in 1961 to 10.5
billion won in 1970 to 87.7 billion won in 1979 (Im 1997: 114).
The Park regime exhorted the farmers to carry out the Saemaeul
undong through the voluntary mobilization of farmers themselves. Park
stated that the government was only an initiator, and the sustaining force
of the movement was the farmers’ “will to improve one’s lot.” That the
farmers themselves bore the bulk of the financial burden in the end is indi-
cated by the rate of the farmers’ own supply of materials, which increased
from 43.9 percent in 1972 to 89.5 percent in 1979. In short, the Park
regime, through its system of support and reward, supplied the economic
and normative rational for inducing the farmers’ maximum participation.
This system of “differentiated support” based on performance and pro-
ductivity was highly effective in mobilizing the farmers.
Although there were various reactions to the Saemaeul undong, by and
large the farmers felt that “there was an element of coercion but in the end
everything turned out all right.” As one farmer remarked,
Once things began to change, people realized that it was a good thing.
Roads were widened, new roofs were put up, and toilets were installed … In
the beginning people were just doing what they were told to, but gradually
people wanted to do more themselves and got involved actively [and there-
fore] the government in the end was a catalyst. One village head expressed
his pride about his involvement in the movement: “I did the village work
even if I could not do my own farming work.” (Farmer A 2000)
Park’s modernization project took on the characteristics of a “passive

revolution” and followed the classical path of industrialization through
the sacrifice made by the agricultural sector. The farmers’ position was
extremely precarious during the period of modernization. Park’s policy to
support small farmers could not achieve its intended self-sufficiency due to
the small scale of production and, in the end, the rise in income in the
agricultural sector was achieved through the state’s assumption of the
increasing financial burden. The Saemaeul undong rescued the farmers
from absolute poverty, but it failed to raise their living standard signifi-
cantly. However, farmers in general had a positive and favorable image of
Park and the Saemaeul undong, which cannot be explained simply as a
case of false ideology.
Until recent times, the Korean farming villages strictly observed com-
plicated hierarchical relationships based on possession of land and status.
This system had its own reproductive structure, and the efforts of the
farmers to overcome the system failed each time throughout history. From
the perspective of the farmers who occupied the position of subordination
in the hierarchical system, when the possibility of overthrowing the system
is dim, the modern state with its “anti-feudal” posture can easily become
an attractive object of allegiance.
Another significant factor in the farmers’ embrace of the Saemaeul
undong can be found in the industrialization project and the expansion of
220 B.-J. HWANG
education that was part and parcel of the modernization and industrializa-
tion projects. By the 1960s, the effect of the industrialization project
greatly increased the farmers’ desire for economic betterment as well. The
modern value system of development and progress began to replace habit-
ual cyclical thinking, and the expansion of public education from the
1960s also heightened the understanding of and preference for modern
ideas and lifestyles. These expectations were channeled through and
focused on the state, however, to the point that farmers expected state
intervention in their own village affairs.
Of course, it is not difficult to imagine how the “military mentality of
unilateral decisions and unconditional obedience” might have applied to
the project. In fact, some participants observed that those who had com-
pleted their military duty were the most enthusiastic and worked the hard-
est. On the other hand, testimonials from the participants include such
statements as “we would have been considered rebellious if we had not
done our job properly” or “those who did not show up for meetings were
treated worse than commies” (Yu et al. 2001: 47). The experience of the
Korean War has left a strong image of the state as “fearful.” During the
war, when one’s life or death was determined by whether one was a gung-
min (citizen of South Korea) or an inmin (citizen of North Korea), there
was a deeply felt animosity toward and fear of the state. Therefore, it was
difficult to oppose the state publicly. It is not surprising that the initial
stage of the Saemaeul undong was accompanied by a considerable amount
of coercion.
The state also penetrated deep into village life. As opposed to the pre-
modern state with limited penetration into the village which could have
hoped at best for passive obedience rather than active mobilization of its
people, the modern state’s extensive and fine-grained bureaucratic net-
work was unprecedented. The Saemaeul undong would have been impos-
sible without the bureaucratic network.
The Minister of the Interior declared the Saemaeul undong “a war”
and the heads of villages and counties responded as such. They were obli-
gated to tour each village and county, and it was not unusual to visit their
districts anywhere from 10 to 30 times a month. Some even resided in the
village and actively partook in village life, ringing the village bell at dawn,
for example. Through this process there was much more frequent contact
than ever before between the local bureaucrats and farmers, and this
contact had a reciprocal connotation in that it promised promotion for the
bureaucrat and more support for the farmer from the state.
To the villagers of the Saemaeul undong, the state was a depoliticized

entity. Those who were interviewed by the author for this essay invariably
viewed all politicians with suspicion and held a negative attitude toward
them, but a number of them did not view Park Chung Hee as an “ordi-
nary” politician. One farmer stated, “People donated their own land when
we were widening roads in the village … The Saemaeul undong was pure.”
Farmers equated the “purity” of the Saemaeul undong with that of Park
Chung Hee. Another stated, “It was the politicians who were oppressed
[under the Yusin system] but we farmers were not oppressed. I’m confi-
dent that President Park worked for the people.” Another farmer’s testi-
monial is also a narrative of identity with Park:
I also grew up poor, and I understood what [Park Chung Hee] meant by
revolution. In fact, no matter what others say, a country like ours needs to
have a stickler … without [Park] we couldn’t have gotten highways. No
need to do democracy … the government had to do what it had to do.
[Park] didn’t make any money out of [the Saemaeul undong]. He gave all
of his effort for the country. Some scholars say he was no good; he did a
military coup and all. But I know one thing, and I’ll say it even if my neck is
gone for saying it. Why? [Those scholars and politicians] didn’t do anything
for the country and while they were bad-mouthing Park Chung Hee, how
much money have they accumulated themselves? Politicians are all liars.
(Farmer B 2000)
This farmer not only identifies himself with Park, but also shows con-
tempt for the idea of democracy, violation of which has been the principal
basis of criticism against Park, and relates his own previous economic
deprivation as authentication of integrity and purity. His expression of
intense contempt for scholars and politicians is also identical to Park’s own
extreme aversion to the West’s modern political system and style.
One farmer interviewed by the author remembers fondly of Park,
“[Park] is from a farming village, and he also drank makgeolli [unrefined
rice wine]. It was the best time for us farmers.” What was also important
for him and many others was perhaps that although Park had left the vil-
lage and became successful, he did not forget his background and retained
respect for where he came from. For these reasons the farmers considered
Park as one of them. Park may have been the president of South Korea,
but unlike other politicians with an elite background, Park was “just like
us.” At this point the state was no longer outside the farmers’ life but was
222 B.-J. HWANG
intimately involved in daily life, having become an object of trust. At the

same time, the farmers made links with the state selectively and competi-
tively, and through this relationship the state was seen not as the object of
opposition or resistance but rather as a supplier of materials to realize their
dreams. In short, through the Saemaeul undong the state and farmers
established the relationship more as patron and client than dominant and
dominated (Han 1995: 48).
The desire on the part of the farmers for economic betterment and for
meaningful life as members of society was met by Park’s policy. What
remains important in the memory of many farmers was that they were
treated with respect and dignity, which was probably more meaningful and
important than their economic achievement. This experience was akin to
going through a social revolution. It is reported that through the Saemaeul
undong the residual elements of the status system and tensions between
lineage groups were greatly reduced. One village in particular had had
long-standing issues among three lineage groups, but these were said to
have been resolved through the Saemaeul undong. Yet another village had
two lineage groups that were divided into left and right during the Korean
War and had a great deal of enmity toward each other, but gradually rec-
onciled during their joint participation in the Saemaeul undong.
Most of the leaders of the Saemaeul undong were in their twenties and
thirties. Most of them had served in the military and also a significant
number of them had graduated from middle school. As young people in
the village were also organized around 4-H,4 the leadership in the villages
shifted rapidly from older people to the younger generation. The new
leadership composed of younger people was more receptive to new ideas
and values, and became a central impetus for the Saemaeul undong. As
previously mentioned, the new leadership also helped to resolve, with the
consultation of local bureaucracy, some of the long-standing issues stem-
ming from the old village order such as lineage groups. The Saemaeul
undong also helped to do away with various “superstitious beliefs and
practices.” In other words, the farmers experienced their “modern” social
life through the unit of their village. One of the guiding principles of the
Yusin system was stated as follows:
Democracy can gradually root itself after practiced by farmers first. The vil-
lage is a small unit in which participation is easy since it is easy to collect
ideas and carry out serious discussions, which is one of the basic principles
of democracy … The small unit of village makes human relationships coop-
erative and imbues individuals with a sense of membership in the commu-

nity, thereby training them as responsible citizens. (Hyeondae jeongchi
yeonguhoe 1976: 130–3)
It is evident from the interviews with farmers that this was very much
the case. Although the Yusin period is generally remembered as a period
of coercion and violence, paradoxically the villagers in the Saemaeul
undong were experiencing “real democracy.” Elections were held for vil-
lage heads, numerous meetings were called, and decisions were made
among the villagers. All these processes took place without much inter-
vention from bureaucracy. Through this experience the farmers gained
political experience in negotiating and settling various differences and ten-
sions in the village. It was through these processes that Saemaeul undong
became their own project and its result also their own. Of course, tensions
and contradictions existed between those who were more active and those
that were less active, but no one disavowed the movement itself.
The mass media began to carry regular programs of the Saemaeul
undong; in 1973 alone, the ten major dailies in South Korea carried more
than ten regular features on Saemaeul undong. TV and radio each had six
new programs covering it. In addition, numerous “news movies” and
“cultural movies” (munhwa yeonghwa) were made and distributed nation-
wide. There were a total of 65 films made between 1973 and 1979, and
these were distributed to 9,850 places. The titles of these movies say it all:
for example, The Miracle of Yongsan River, The Village That Does Not
Sleep, The Couple Who Overcame Poverty, and Progress without End
(Saemaeul yeonguhoe 1980: 77).
The magazine, “Saemaeul,” which began publication in May 1974,
shows the symbolic modality of the farmers’ transformation into citizens.
In the past, it was rather unusual to have farmers appear in mass media, let
alone as social leaders. In these magazines, however, the farmers were the
main focus. Each month the magazine introduced ten leaders of Saemaeul
undong with their names, ages, experiences, and major achievements
along with their photos and their activities. It was a novelty to adorn the
stories of hitherto unknown village heads or leaders of the Saemaeul
undong with the narratives of their achievement.
The village women also were remade through this process. Many vil-
lage women of the period have a positive image of themselves as they were
duly recognized for their abilities and commitment. One former president
of a village women’s association is a good example. For her role as a presi-
224 B.-J. HWANG
dent, she was treated as someone important and serious by the villagers
and the bureaucrats, who until then had been an object of fear. She “can-
not forget the experience” and remembers receiving much praise for her
work: “People recognized me as the president of a women’s association of
my village [and] I worked hard to fulfill the directives from the top.” She
did her work “with ease, energy, and passion.”
She participated at the Saemaeul leaders’ training camp in Suwon and
had a memorable experience performing in skits—it was her first “cul-
tural” experience. The enthusiastic audience clapped wildly for her, again
for the first time in her life. Her mundane life was transformed through
these kinds of experiences, and she remembers the time as “the most excit-
ing time” of her life.
An important element in the Saemaeul undong that gave the partici-
pants specific experience as equal members of society was its education
program. The training program of the Saemaeul undong leaders was
headed by the office of the Presidential Secretariat, an indication of the
importance the state assigned to it. The number of trainees in camp totaled
677,900 between 1972 and 1979.5
Saemaeul undong education was initially limited to men only. The
trainees themselves requested a separate women’s program and asked that
the program be extended to all government bureaucrats including police
and high-ranking government officials. Cabinet ministers also participated
in Saemaeul undong education from 1974 on. It must have been a new
experience for the trainees to be the initiators of new programs when they
were used to being only the recipients of orders and objects of programs
initiated from outside. Nevertheless, the authority of the farmers was dif-
ficult to sustain without Park Chung Hee as mediator and enabler of their
authority.
At the training institutes and camps, the farmers and social leaders were
recognized and treated as equal. In their everyday lives, it would not have
been possible for the two groups to meet as social equals, but at least dur-
ing the training session they were. A report of a meeting between three
Saemaeul undong leaders and three socially prominent leaders6 in one
room was featured as one of the lead stories in the Saemaeul magazine
(1974). The equality enjoyed by these trainees from diverse backgrounds
also symbolized their equal standing as citizens.
Throughout this process, farmers responded actively and enthusiasti-
cally to the call of nationalization with statements such as “I’ve chosen to
live a worthy life” and “I’ll die without regret while fighting against the
communist North Korea.” Some even expressed hostility toward those

who would not participate in the movement, “those who prefer foreign
wines over takju7 and foreign cigarettes over the Saemaeul brand” (1974).
Through their active participation in the various programs of the state, the
farmers had become nationalized, echoing the demands of the state power
as their own.
Those farmers interviewed for this essay had strong nostalgia for and
attachment to the experience of the Saemaeul undong, and harbored
ambivalent feelings about “equalized society,” by which they seem to
imply a changed relationship between the state and citizens towards the
end of the Park regime. One farmer recalled, “In the beginning of the
1970s, the government said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and we followed it. At the end
of the 1970s, it was no longer so. As people were becoming well-off, the
morale became loose.” Another had a similar reaction: “The power of the
Saemaeul undong was that we followed [the government]. The spirit of
the Saemaeul undong made it possible for us to give up our own land …
Now it’s different, now that the society is more equalized. Now that peo-
ple are no longer hungry, they pay more attention to their own personal
affairs and their own share [of profit]” (quoted in Yu et al. 2001: 105).
These statements suggest that the Saemaeul undong is remembered as
state-led but also that a certain amount of coercion in its implementation
was anticipated or expected by the participants themselves.
Between the “Working Class” and “Industrial Warrior-Citizen”

The 18 years of the Park regime also saw the formation and maturation of
Korean capitalism. The expansion of capital-wage labor also meant the
rapid increase of the number of wage laborers. The South Korean worker
was simultaneously capable of three subject positions: as a member of the
proletariat, “digging the grave of bourgeoisie”; as a minjung, endowed
with historical consciousness to change the existing order; and as a citizen,
participating in the modernization project as an “industrial warrior.” In
reality, a worker was often a combination of all three subject positions. A
recent survey by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (Minju
nochong) shows that most workers, who—with very few exceptions—were
union organizers and activists, identified themselves first as a citizen of
South Korea before they identified themselves as a worker. In the case of
women workers, they chose “woman” as their foremost identity, then “a
226 B.-J. HWANG
member of family or lineage” as their second identity (Minjunochong

2003: 82–93).
In short, class identity and national identity can be mutually antagonis-
tic but also interrelate to constitute a group identity. The working class has
become a Korean working class, but an individual is a citizen before he is
a worker. Through everyday, unconscious, “voting” activities, he has
become nationalized. There is no doubt this process of nationalization of
workers began in earnest during the Park regime.
The first generation of Korean factory workers was highly motivated
and enthusiastic about modernization and industrialization. Between
1972 and 1981, the loss of work days due to labor disputes averaged only
4,000 days per 1,000 workers, a number that was overwhelmingly low
compared to other Asian countries, such as the Philippines (56,000 days)
or Singapore (8,000 days) (Kim 1995: 2). According to Professor Choe
Jang-jip, from 1960 to 1980 in Korea, “there were no significant or large-
scale labor disputes that would have jeopardized the industrialization pro-
cess or political stability. The first generation of industrial workers was
docile, rather than combative and resistant to the industrialization process,
and showed a high degree of dedication and enthusiasm” (1988: 11).
This is partly due to the fact that the proletarianization process of the
workers during the Park regime was led and monitored by the state.
According to Gu Hae-geun,
The dominant language effecting Korean workers’ perceptions of their

industrial experiences was provided by the state, including the language of
nationalism, familism, harmony, and national security. The state defined the
economic development in terms of the national goal of “modernization of
the fatherland,” [promoting it] as a project to make the nation rich and
powerful so as to protect itself from the hostile communist north and other
foreign powers. It praised workers’ hard work and sacrifices as patriotic
behavior. (2002: 35)
This particular proletarianization process took place also because the

working class hailed mainly from farming villages. From 1962 to 1975, as
many as 7.5 million farmers migrated to the cities. This implies that, unlike
in Europe’s early modernization, “[t]here was no culture of mutuality, no
sense of pride in workmanship, no cherishing of autonomy and
independence, in short, no cultural and institutional basis on which to
form a positive self-identity” (Gu 2002: 34). In the absence of a strong
tradition of working-class identity, there was a high possibility—and ten-

dency—to be appropriated by the capital and state by rural village ties or
paternalism.
But the workers’ identity cannot be reduced to their agrarian back-
ground. The various experiences of factory work and everyday life must
have played an important role in the identity formation as individuals and
groups. We need to understand various experiences and the world of con-
sciousness of the nameless, unorganized workers whose youth was spent in
the factories. We also need to understand in greater detail the various
material and ideological control mechanisms utilized by the state and capi-
tal to mobilize workers (Kim 2002: 62).
The representative case of the state’s mobilization of workers was the
Saemaeul undong carried out at factories. Let us look at the case of the
Korea Shipbuilding Corporation (KSC) proletarianization process of the
workers. KSC started its Saemaeul undong in 1975, by 1976 it had its
own Saemaeul training institute, and by 1977 it had trained 3,000 workers
in 48 sessions. Its programs included, among others, early morning clean-
up, construction of flower beds along roads, a mass marriage ceremony,
early morning exercise competitions, and a campaign to walk fast
(Seonggonghoedae sahoe munhwa yeonguwon 2002: 90–1). KSC’s fac-
tory Saemaeul undong was at once a movement for individual reform as
well as for management–labor cooperation and for the spirit of “corpora-
tion as family,” which naturally was extended to patriotism. One partici-
pant in the training camp wrote,
We wake up at five in the morning … we sing the national anthem up to the

fourth stanza and do our “citizen exercise.” Then we shout our morning
slogans, “Let’s unite!” “Let’s go crazy!” and “Let’s perform!” We also jog
while we shout. As “Miss Lee” is transformed to “Comrade Lee,” I some-
times feel like I’m a character in a movie about the [Korean] independence
fighters … Even before we’re reminded by our instructor, we push our
recording machine and the message comes out of our mouths automatically:
“We believe firmly in our motherland as a community.” “We believe firmly
in our neighbor as a community.” “We believe firmly in our comrade as a
community.” On the sixth day of training, I feel like I have become recon-
structed. At the graduation ceremony, I stand before an exhibition of a pre-
vious trainee’s “Declaration of My Resolve” written in blood, and I renew
my determination afresh. (Quoted in Seonggonghoedae sahoe munhwa
yeonguwon 2002: 91)
228 B.-J. HWANG
Through the military-like training camp, the worker-cum-national sub-

ject has become an automatic recording machine calling others “com-
rades” and looks up with awe at his fellow trainee who had written his
declaration in blood. The group-ism that starts from one’s fellow workers
to one’s neighbor to finally one’s nation shows the image of workers uni-
fied in the life of the nation (minjok). As the training, that was as unrealis-
tic as a movie, comes to an end, the trainees have a firm resolve just like
independence fighters during the colonial period. Of course, we cannot
take at face value everything that is written in this memoir or believe that
every participant felt this way. It is not difficult to imagine, however, that
without strong will and effort, the trainee, removed from his or her every-
day life, would have easily approved or accepted what he or she was expe-
riencing during the training session.
The ritual of resistance was also not detached from the ritual of state;
rather they are imbricated with one another. The YH workers, whose pro-
test partly contributed to the demise of the Park regime, sang the national
anthem and paid their respects to those who died for Korea at the end of
their occupation of the New Democratic Party building. During the
Gwangju People’s Uprising in 1980, the “rioters” also sang the national
anthem. In short, the identity as a citizen experienced and cultivated in
quotidian life makes an abrupt appearance even in times of resistance.
From this perspective, the above quote from the worker in training can be
seen as a process of state discourse being inscribed in everyday ritual and
the consciousness of the worker.
The logic of nationalization acted as a logic to rationalize the workers’
participation in the distribution of their labor’s fruit. In 1978 the slogan
of KSC was “Production first and profit first.” This campaign extended
further to include improvement of productivity and intensification of
labor regimentation, as shown below:
There are several movements of our own initiative that we’re carrying out
concurrently with the factory Saemaeul undong, such as “no talk during
work,” “no smoking,” “no throwing of cigarette butts,” and “get a standard
haircut”… Among these we’re quite successful with the campaign to “show
up at work one minute before the start-up time” so that about 80% of our
employees show up by 7:40 a.m. (Quoted in Seonggonghoedae sahoe mun-
hwa yeonguwon 2002: 92)
At this point we may say that the Saemaeul undong became no longer
a project directed by the state. The slogan of profit increase through
improvement of productivity shows how the desire of the workers con-

joined with demands of the state and capital. The absence of any critique
toward the ideology of state competitiveness in the aftermath of the 1997
IMF crisis can be explained in the previous state discourse of “production
and profit first” of the Park era. The quotidian desire of the workers
was simple:
Wages were high. Work was for 8 hours—provided with dormitory and
bath. I just thought it was heavenly. I just couldn’t understand why people
protested for higher wages and unionization. I moved into the dormitory of
Dongil Textile’s modern white building and, having lived in a shack in a
slum area, I couldn’t believe I was sleeping in a heated room. (Quoted in
Seonggonghoedae sahoe munhwa yeonguwon 2002: 161)
The above testimony of an active member of the legendary Dongil

Textile’s labor union of the 1970s, before she became a union activist,
allows a glimpse into the quotidian dreams and desires of the majority of
Korean workers at the time. A recent study classified the women workers
employed in light industries in the 1970s into four groups: “those who
study and read in dormitories and at night schools, those who devote
themselves to religion, those who follow popular cultural trends and look
for marriage partners, and those who are conscientized through night
schools and small group activities.” According to this study, most workers
of the 1970s belonged to the second and third groups (Seonggonghoedae
sahoe munhwa yeonguwon 2002: 40–1).
The existing scholarship on the Korean workers approaches the workers
mainly from the perspective of the history of the labor movement and,
therefore, neglects the majority of the workers. According to another
recent study that analyzed the memoirs of “model workers” of the 1970s,
the writers of these memoirs “sought the reasons for their unhappiness in
poverty that was not of their choice and saw their life as a worker as tem-
porary that would be passed by once they made money.” They also called
themselves “industrial warriors,” “export soldiers,” and “Miss Saemaeul”
in order to boost their self-image (Kim 2002: 97). In other words, they
chose not a path of “class” but of “citizen.” The specifics of this phenom-
enon are as follows:
People look down on me just because I’m a bus conductor, but I can laugh
it off. I’ve received a big award, and I’m recognized by people around me
230 B.-J. HWANG
and by my company. I must confess there were times when I got really
depressed about my situation before I was awarded, but now I can over-
come any problems in the future. (Quoted in Kim 2002: 79)
Another factory worker declared, “I’m a leader in the [night school]

class, president of my dormitory, dutiful daughter to my mother, good
sister to my younger siblings, and model worker in my factory” (quoted in
Kim 2002: 80).
It is not difficult to imagine how the social recognition through the
system of award and promotion must have compensated for the discrimi-
nation and frustration experienced as the daughter in a family and a woman
in society and how this kind of psychological compensation would have
motivated them to become model workers demanded by the capital and
the developmental state. The last quote also reveals the factory workers’
multiple identities that crossed boundaries of school, factory, and family.
But it is not too difficult to imagine how the multiple identities are inte-
grated into one national identity.
A study of women workers also shows that they tended to echo the
dominant discourse of sexual inequality. In 1980, for example, a group of
women workers were asked about differential wages, and 61.9 percent of
the respondents retorted, “Why do you ask such questions? Women natu-
rally receive less than men because we’re women” (quoted in
Seonggonghoedae sahoe munhwa yeonguwon 2002: 183).
What is significant in this process of co-optation is the act of speaking
on the part of the co-opted. In the process of speaking in which the ratio-
nale of state and capital is internalized, what may be more important is the
act of speaking itself rather than the speech content. The dominant cannot
simply silence the dominated. On the contrary, the dominant tries to
engage the dominated in active and voluntary speaking. The dominant
discourse is activated fully when the dominated speaks its language. The
dominant discourse that has been internalized and spoken in the language
of the dominated becomes natural, and is seen as internal vibration with-
out any stimulation from outside.
Domination is never complete and always faces the imminent resis-
tance, rupture, and crisis. The point from the perspective of the dominant
is not necessarily doing away with resistance and fissures but rather how to
sustain the tension, incorporating the resistance and fissure within.
Domination functions, and is also effective, in resistance.
Until the “Great Labor Struggle” of 1987, one of the workers’ persis-
tent demands had been to be treated with dignity as human beings. What
insulted the workers most was that they were treated as ignorant and
uneducated. The society’s ideology on education was hurtfully internal-
ized by the workers. One of the most representative of the democratic
unions of the 1970s was Control Data, and it is known that its union
workers were mostly graduates of high school and had a strong sense of
being different from other “gongdori” and “gongsuni” (derogatory terms
referring to male and female workers, respectively). However, in spite of
accepting the dominant ideology of education, there was also a strong
egalitarian impulse. In other words, both the internalization of hierarchi-
cal order and the egalitarian desire coexisted in the workers
(Seonggonghoedae sahoe munhwa yeonguwon 2002: 193–210). The
worker’s self-consciousness as a free and equal modern subject sometimes
clashed with the hierarchical order based on education and gender and yet
also was bound by it.
University Students’ Agrarian Service Movement

During the Park regime the university students, along with Christian and
dissident intellectuals, constituted the most forceful resistant group to the
Park regime. But at the same time, there were university students who
were more like model factory workers. In particular, the university stu-
dents who participated in the agrarian service movement (nongchon bongsa
hwaldong) are usually contrasted to the students who protested again the
Park regime.
As Saemaeul undong expanded to the whole society, university students
were also mobilized. The National Association of University Students’
Research on Agriculture was organized in 1961 and was active until 1969.
In 1970, the National University Association for Service was organized
under the slogan of the “establishment of national subjecthood” and “let
us save the nation through saving agriculture” (gunong guguk). The
Ministry of Education supplied funds for their activities as well as admin-
istrative assistance, such as collection and distribution of books and medical
supplies, advertisement of its activities, and holding contests of memoirs
of participants. For ten years starting from 1970, approximately 296,900
students were mobilized from 2,008 universities, and they were active in
10,517 villages (Jeonguk daehak hakdo hogukdan pongsa yeonhaphoe
1982: 9–35).
232 B.-J. HWANG
The activities of the Joseon University student organization

“Mukyeonhoe” in 1978 provide a glimpse into specific activities of these
groups. “Mukyeonhoe” was composed of two faculty advisors and 30
members. Their programs were divided into five departments: education,
labor, medicine, technology, and enlightenment. They operated summer
schools in farming villages, sponsored athletic competitions and recre-
ational activities, showed the villagers how to put up flags and name plates
on doors, worked on the farms, repaired roofs, toilets, and household
electric items, gave haircuts, provided emergency medical treatments, and
gave lectures on family planning and anti-communism among other activi-
ties. The participants of these activities seemed to have firmly believed in
their mission:
Our club carried out the activities under the slogan of national equalization
… For a long time modernization of villages has been our nation’s long-
cherished dream. It is the task not only of politicians or farmers but that of
pan-citizens. (Quoted in Jeonguk daehak hakdo hogukdan pongsa yeonha-
phoe 1982: 1046–56)
Another participant exhorted the farmers,
We must first of all awaken your consciousness in order to get rid of our
embarrassing label as an underdeveloped country. What we can do for you
is not just medical treatment or simple surgery. We can also arouse passion
for struggle in life … as your life has been unchanging and without stimula-
tion. Also important is the introduction of the notion of rationality. Look at
the Yeongdong Highway. How can this be only for the benefit of urbanites
to reduce their travel time? No. That is not so. You can see it as a catalyst to
arouse your stimulation and as a vision for the future. (Quoted in Jeonguk
daehak hakdo hogukdan pongsa yeonhaphoe 1982: 902)
The discourse of egalitarianism expressed in the “national equalization”

and terms such as modernization, nation, and pan-citizen are all echoes of
the state’s demands. The second quote also shows how the project of the
state is expressed in the students’ elitist and enlightenment language.
These students did not think of themselves as the object of mobilization
but rather as its subject. In their relations with the farmers, they thought
of themselves as leaders and as active agents implementing the state’s proj-
ects. Moreover, they were imbued with nationalistic sentiments:
How can I possibly express the beauty of our motherland that blinds my
eyes, the grandeur of its nature added with man-made order? Why is it that
the train that I am on cannot run its course [through the 38th parallel]? I
am again indignant, as I was the first time I saw the sign, “The iron horse
wants to run.” When will be the day that I see Geumgang Mountain, the
cities of Weonsan, Sinuiju, and the Manchurian plain where our ancestors’
souls must have been buried? (Quoted in Jeonguk daehak hakdo hogukdan
pongsa yeonhaphoe 1982: 897–902)
This intense nationalistic sentiment was not only his. This narrative of
reunification, of the Manchurian plain, and of national autonomy is a
familiar stock of Korean nationalism. This nationalism was not far distant
from the nationalism of the protesting students.
The students in the service movement interpellated their fellow stu-
dents to the tasks of the nation. One student remarked, “Today’s youth
who waste their lives are spiteful, but I am sure someday they will also hear
the clarion call of the motherland. I act as if I can shake the universe with
the scribble of my limited knowledge, but I am thankful to my country for
setting me straight to hold my pen firmly” (quoted in Jeonguk daehak
hakdo hogukdan pongsa yeonhaphoe 1982: 1046–56). The state was
already internalized by the students; the statism was operating no longer
in the structure of “state versus students” but rather in the structure of
“student versus students.” However, the students of the agrarian service
movement were not all that different from the students of the anti-
government movement in their epistemology. A student who participated
in the agrarian service movement of the early 1980s reported,
Every [student] was reprimanded for accepting the snack provided by the
village head. Strong disciplinary measures were in full operation, such as
holding assessment sessions until wee hours of the morning. In the morning
we sang military songs and marched. (Quoted in Jeonguk daehak hakdo
hogukdan pongsa yeonhaphoe 1982: 1046–56)
The rejection of snacks provided by villagers, the never-ending assess-

ment sessions, and the morning marches were all very familiar features of
anti-government student movement activities in the villages in the 1980s,
which were also carried out under the same name of “agrarian service.”
Perhaps the only marker of difference between them was the songs they
sang during the march. The students’ “pro-government” agrarian service
of the 1970s was characterized by its “strong enforcement of disciplinary
234 B.-J. HWANG
measures” and its attempt for rational, efficient, productive organization.

Discipline functioned as a rule of life that cannot be ignored by anyone
whether one is in agreement with or in resistance to the state.
Concluding Remarks
Park Chung Hee’s regime as Korea’s first modern nation-state successfully
carried out its modernization project through capitalistic expansion and
construction of national subject. The modernization project was the pro-
cess of conjoining the egalitarian desire from the bottom, the dream for a
better tomorrow, and the developmentalism of the state.
The Park regime also actively mobilized the techniques of mass politics.
Unlike previous regimes, the Park regime interpellated the multiple iden-
tities of individuals as homogeneous subjects and pursued the nationaliza-
tion of society and citizens. Farmers, workers, and university students lived
and occupied different sociopolitical locations in society, yet they shared
the common experience of being the object of the intense mobilization
campaign by the state.
Although the Park regime was a period of oppression and denial of
freedom for many in South Korea, at the same time it was also a symbol of
development, progress, productivity, and integration for a large number of
Koreans into one nationhood. The desires of the masses were expressed
and realized through the state’s dominant discourse of nationalism and
developmentalism. The state met with much resistance, but that resistance
was complicit with the dominant discourse. The domination was realized
through, and functioned in, resistance. It was during the Park regime that
a nationalized and capitalistic life was established and attained by individu-
als. Even after the collapse of the regime, the statism, mass politics, devel-
opmentalism, and nationalism continued, especially channeled in the
everyday life and unconsciousness of the people.
Notes
1. Jeon Tae-il was a garment factory worker who self-studied the labor law
after experiencing inhuman working conditions. After many of his attempts
to improve the conditions on the shop floor failed, he self-immolated to
protest against the brutal exploitation of workers. He was 22 years of age at
the time of suicide.
2. In 1970, the government moved thousands of those living in the slum areas
of Seoul to Gwangju, a newly created satellite city of Seoul. The city planned
to eventually transfer 20,000 families to the new area and give them pieces
of land on which to build houses by promising to give them loans during the
next four years. When the promised factories and schools did not follow,
nearly 80 percent of the settlers went back to their original squatting places.
Those who remained in Gwangju faced unpaved roads, nonexistent sewage
and water services, nonfunctioning toilets, and high taxes for using land.
This led to a protest involving 30,000 settlers in August 1971. See Lee
2007: 33–4, 150–1.
3. A possible exception to this is President Roh Mu-hyun (2003–08).
4. “4-H” stands for “Head, Heart, Hands, and Health,” and is the youth edu-
cation branch of the Cooperative Extension Service, a program of the
United States Department of Agriculture. It was introduced to South Korea
in the early 1940s by the US Military Government in Korea.
5. Far fewer trainees—69,533—were not in camp during this period.
6. They were the director of the training session, a vice president of a corpora-
tion, and a vice minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
7. Takju is another name for makgeolli, unrefined rice wine.
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CHAPTER 10
The Subjectivity of Civil Militia in May 18

Gwangju Uprising
Jung Han Kim
Introduction: Subjectivity in Modern Political

Philosophy
Subjectivity remains an intriguing yet complicated topic in contemporary
political philosophy. Authorities of structuralism, an intellectual move-
ment that started in Europe in the 1960s, questioned human existence
and declared its “death.” The bold argument which reduced a subject to
the effect of structure came under scrutiny in the epistemological context
of free will through the watershed 1968 Revolution (Fraser 1988;
Katsiaficas 1999; Wallerstein 1989). The critical slogan that structure
alone cannot act on the streets underscores that structuralism portrays
subjects compliant and obedient to the existing order. The reactive post-
structuralism thus acknowledges the innate complexity and individuality
of subjects resilient to structural constraints.
The topic of subjectivity is being revisited not just because of the philo-
sophical transition but also due to political and economic changes around
the world. Capital-driven neoliberalism and globalization since the 1980s
has weakened the welfare system and the role of government in controlling
J. H. Kim (*)
Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea

238 J. H. KIM
labor. Capitalism has built and expanded through financial investments

instead of labor output. The changes have mass-produced “redundant”
humans who have been neglected by the state and capital. The world is
brimming over with citizens in need of state protection and administrative
support, people with alien or refugee status denied of citizenship, and the
jobless isolated from a capital-dominated production system. The exclu-
sion has become so common that it has led to fundamental questions about
the roles of people, nation, citizens or the mass, and class that make up
subjects engaging with or resisting the power of state and capital.
But there are limits in the highly figurative modern political philosophy
and discussions on the concrete subjects in reality. For example, the “mul-
titude” explained by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2001), the
“nomad” Deleuze and Guattari (1987) referred to, and the “subject of
the real” Slavoj Zizek (1989, 1999) emphasized have the concept of jus-
tice at the core of their reasoning. But when applied to empirical situa-
tions, their interpretations are too diverse or even contradictory to pin
down the essence. It is as if they molded the realities to serve their
arguments.
This chapter studies the example of civil militia members during the
May 18 Gwangju Uprising to understand the issues of subjectivity in a real
situation. For the first time since the Korean War (1950–53), armed citi-
zens fought against a brutal military force. In their armed resistance, they
were transformed into genuine political subjects, giving symbolic signifi-
cance to the dramatic social movements in the 1980s.
Other studies on the subjectivity of the Gwangju Uprising focused
mostly on the economic position of the subjects. With the focus on the
overall characteristics and development of the historical event itself, less
attention has been paid to the changes of subjectivity in the process of
the struggle.
This essay analyzes the features and changes in the subjectivity of the
Gwangju civil militia in the unfolding of events drawing on modern politi-
cal philosophy, mostly (post-)structuralist theories. This research investi-
gates the questions of who the subjects are, how subjectivity is formed,
and what its features are by examining documents and testimonies of the
former militia members.
The biggest achievement of structuralism, which is often dubbed as a
revolution in modern philosophy, is the discovery of the “symbolic.”
Symbols and languages are composed of hidden and differing rules and
structures. In structuralism, subjectivation takes place when an individual
10 THE SUBJECTIVITY OF CIVIL MILITIA IN MAY 18 GWANGJU UPRISING 239
enters and finds its place in the symbolic order. A subjectivity is formed
when the self finds his or her place in the symbolic order. Louis Althusser
called the process of individuals’ response to ideologies and recognizing
themselves as either subjects or subjectivation “interpellation” and repres-
sion (Althusser 2001, 2014). Althusser argues that “ideological state
apparatuses” assign a subject to its place in the symbolic order by the way
he is addressed. By answering to interpellation, the individual acknowl-
edges his subject position and forms his identity. At the same time, she or
he is subjugated to the law and repressive state apparatuses, being forced
to accept the position in the symbolic order. The subject is an agent of
acting and thinking free will and at the same time is subjugated to the
symbolic domain in which they live, having had internalized its laws and
rules. The English word “subject” connotes both Latin meanings of “sub-
jectum” and “subjectus” (Balibar 2003: 10–11).
The question is why and how subjects come to resist or overturn the
symbolic order. Post-structuralism believes that the subject struggles to
fight and escape from the “symbolic.” Structuralism identifies the subject
in the process of conforming oneself to the symbolic order. Post-
structuralism, on the other hand, sees the subject as a dissident against the
symbolic order. Zizek (1993: 21) defines the true political subject as a
void or nothingness. To him, a true political subject should not have any
place in the symbolic order and refuse to identify with the given position.
The subject instead is beyond the “symbolic,” and identifies with the
“real” that is unrepresentable in the symbolic order. For instance, the civil
militia in the Gwangju Uprising chose to entirely commit themselves to
the fraternal community that sprouted in the process of armed struggle
and risking their lives for the single goal of upholding the “truth.”
Deleuze and Negri’s “Autonomia” shares Zizek’s observation of the
subject located outside of the symbolic order. Their concepts of
“nomad” and “multitude” as subjectivity aim to deconstruct the sym-
bolic sphere instead of forming a new order (Seo 2002: 458–9). The
subjects resist to conform to the rules of the domination, and desire to
escape from ideologies. The same holds for “deterritorialization” (Yi
1995). The subjects identifying with the “real,” therefore, are not neg-
ative towards a new order and act as a vanishing mediator in the transi-
tion. The new social movements that marked the 1980s as the era of
revolution stemmed from survivors’ hopes to keep the spirit of civil
militia alive and were dug out of the dogmas of Marxist and Communist
taboos of the 1970s.
240 J. H. KIM
The Question of Subjectivity in Studies of the May

18 Uprising
The subjects in revolution, rebellion, or other social movements often
consider the social status of the participants. The majority group among
the participants in terms of socioeconomic class is often regarded as the
key agent of the movement. Most studies on the May 18 Gwangju
Uprising are not very different from the existing studies on subjectivity as
they did not treat the why and how questions as core research topics.
Whether the civil militia are referred as across-the-board citizens of
Gwangju or generic members of the populace, the difference is the view-
point in seeing the active participants of the armed struggle as members of
a broad populace or a group with distinguishable traits. The studies accen-
tuating their poor urban working-class background refer to the data on
occupation of those who were arrested and victimized during the incident
(e.g. Kim and Kim 1990; Lee 1989; Sohn 2003).
This essay argues that the participants’ occupation-based class position
alone cannot explain their subjectivity. As a participant’s socioeconomic
status alone cannot determine his or her class position, it does not make
the person a political subject (Choi 2007: 352). This argument is not to
deny the possible causal association between socioeconomic status and
political consciousness in its entirety. Instead this research calls for a more
nuanced approach to the formation of the political subject from the stand-
point of relational positionality. While social movement can be motivated
by economic interests, it is contingent upon the contents of specific events
where the Gwangju Uprising is not an exception.
Choi Jung-woon (1999, 2001) and Kim Sang-bong (2006, 2008)
share their criticisms of the materialistic interpretation of the Gwangju
movement. In his pathbreaking research, Choi said materialism should
not taint the spirit of “absolute community” of the Gwangju Uprising. He
argued that economic theories and ideologies cannot fully explain the
Gwangju Uprising (Choi 1999: 163). Yet he did not probe further to
identify the subjects as citizens, in terms of masses and class. He instead
rounded them up as the universal category of “human beings” based on
humanism theory. “If we have to pinpoint the force behind the May 18
uprising, it has to be humans” (1999: 271).
While basically agreeing with Choi, Kim Sang-bong understood the
Gwangju movement in the context of “reciprocal subjectivity” by criticiz-
ing the western philosophy which confines the subjectivity to singular
entities with little regard for others. Kim places subjectivity at the interac-
tions with others instead of one independent individual. “The common
subjectivity does not come from self-driven subjectivity but from mutual
or shared relationships” (Kim 2008: 348). He attributed “subjectum
commune,” or interdependent subjectivity to empathy and shared senti-
ments. He asserts that collective courage, promises, and grievances are the
principal forces behind the Gwangju Uprising. Although Kim’s insight of
connected subjectivity and bonding with others has important implica-
tions, the emphasis on personality and spirit tilts his view too much toward
consciousness formation rather than collective action itself (2008: 341).
Disregard of multiple factors that can influence the mind and behaviors
thus breeds one-sided emphasis on individuality and autonomy of the
mind separated from specific context and meaningful interactions
with others.
Subjectivity of the Civil Militia
Ideological Map in May, 1980: Anti-communism and Liberal

Democracy
On the premise that a subject is constituted according to its position in the
symbolic order, the contemporary ideology needs to be mapped out on
the subjectivity of the civil militia in the May 18 Gwangju Uprising. The
dominant ideology can influence the composition of the subjects more
than production process as argued by the theories of social construction,
humanism, and consciousness philosophy. Anti-communism and liberal
democracy were the dominant ideologies shaping the course of events
during May 18 and 27, 1980 (Kim 2013: 81–83).
Political slogans, newsletters, statements, and testimonies reflect the
dominant ideology at the time of the uprising. Banners on the streets
called for “Out with Chun Doo Hwan,” “Lift the Martial Order,” and
“Release Kim Dae-jung.” The civil militia bulletins and other published
materials exposed the brutality of the airborne troops and tried to spread
accurate information, pleas, and resolutions to struggle against the des-
potic regime. The publications also expressed the strong will to fight for
freedom until the end and called for the establishment of a transitional
government (Gwangju City 1997: 41). During the final assembly on May
26, the crowd issued a resolution signed by 800,000 citizens which defined
their insurrection as the “righteous uprising of Gwangju citizens” and
242 J. H. KIM
urged the creation of a democratically elected government (1997: 73).

The uprising ultimately aimed to quench the airborne troops and defy the
military regime and the coup d’état leadership. The civilian resistance was
shaped largely by the aspirations for liberal democracy.
Their courage stemmed from the Cold War legacy of anti-communism
(Choi 2006). The rebels vehemently refused to be stigmatized as rioters
and communists (Korean Modern Historical Materials Research Institute
1990: 233, 525, 642, 581). Their testimonies suggest that they strategi-
cally tried not to give the military forces any justification for their attacks
and thereby undermine the purpose of the insurrection. But the anti-
espionage campaign was in full swing as citizens alleged of spying were
grilled by the investigators at the provincial administration building on
May 23. The investigation bureau was in charge of interrogating the peo-
ple suspected of spying and other suspicious activities (1990: 239–40).
Jeon Choon-shim and Cha Myeong-sook who were involved in broad-
casting to warn the citizens of the encroachment of the military in the
early stages of insurrection were arrested after being accused of espionage
activities by the citizens (1990: 909).
The ubiquitous presence of the national flag (Taeguk-gi) and anthem
throughout the insurrection underscores another important behavioral
feature of the Gwangju civil militia. The display of Taeguk-gi was every-
where at the rallies against the military during the uprising. Civil militia
raced down the streets in vehicles with the flag attached to the antennas.
Citizens on trucks and jeeps held the flag in their hands, and the bodies of
the civilian victims killed by the soldiers and police were wrapped with the
national flag (May 18 Memorial Foundation 2004: 17, 24, 76, 85; 2006:
83, 93, 107, 119, 127). The national anthem was played and sung at the
beginning of every civilian rally (1990: 690, 876).
In the eyes of martial law forces, the Taeguk-gi eventually became the
emblem of the civilian militia. One vehicle driving a corporate executive out
of the city of Gwangju on May 21 was stopped by a security guard. After some
wrangling, the driver received an apology and a warning from an army com-
mander lieutenant not to drive a car with the flag on the pole and with head-
lights on because the act “is something the communists do” (Korean Modern
Historical Materials Research Institute 1990: 1423). Another incident of May
27 shows a similar symbolic representation of the national flag. Upon discov-
ering a civilian who had fled the raided YWCA building hiding inside a kitchen
stove, a soldier shouted to his peer, “This rat was hiding inside a stove. He
must be a spy. He has a flag with him” (1990: 838). The testimonies indicate
that the martial law authorities ironically perceived the national flag as synony-
mous with the resistant force. Waves of Taeguk-gi overwhelmed the streets
where citizens celebrated the retreat of airborne troops and the recovery of
the provincial administration building on May 21 and May 22.
The streets were packed with the vehicles carrying armed students and citi-
zens waving the Taeguk-gi from early in the morning. By midday on the
21st, the national holiday marking Buddha’s birthday, armed citizens and
students drove from Hwasoon St. and received thunderous cheers from the
citizens in the streets … Unarmed students and militia with Taekuk-gi in
their hands marched into the cheering crowd … The mood was euphoric.
People handed out meals and beverages. They were their proud children
and warriors who fought for their freedom and rights. How could they be
labeled as rioters and communists? They were brave patriots. Let the flag fly
high and far. (1990: 176)
Waving the national flag and singing the national anthem was to dem-
onstrate that “the Gwangju citizens represent the true Republic of Korea”
(Choi 1999: 143). “They were establishing their identity as the citizens of
South Korea. Although the rebels were isolated, they thought of them-
selves as true people of the Republic of Korea” (Kim 2008: 335).
Identifying themselves as a part of the Republic of Korea signified that
they were defenders of liberal democracy as opposed to advocating com-
munism in the polarized ideological society.
Jung Keun-sik shows that the national flag was a common symbol of
insurrection in contemporary Korean history and visualized civic republi-
canism (Jung 2007: 179). He saw the Gwangju Uprising as a dramatic form
of republicanism in line with the civic revolutions in the West. Jung contin-
ues to assert that civic republicanism embraces the merits of liberalism and
communitarianism. Yet he fails to elaborate on the concept of civic republi-
canism and remains ambiguous about its implications for resistance. Since
liberal democracy in Korea prizes both individuals and community, what
Jung Keun-sik describes as “civic republicanism in western society” may not
be much different from “Korean-style liberal democracy.”
The Civil Militia’s Fraternal Community

The ideological landscape of the 1980s and analysis of the subjects are essen-
tial for the study of the Gwangju movement. The militia members identified
themselves as true citizens of the Republic of Korea under the dominant
244 J. H. KIM
ruling ideology of liberal democracy. That alone, however, does not fully
explain the formation of a resistant community. Gwangju citizens formed a
uniquely warm solidarity, willingly donated their blood to the victims, shared
any food in their hands, and handed out grenades in their joint struggle
(Kim 2008: 369–72). While conforming to the subject-position in the sym-
bolic order, they, at the same time, transcended it.
Personification of subjectivity through the national flag and anthem
were demonstrated again in the aftermath of mass-scale artillery firing by
the martial military forces on May 21. Vehicles plastered with a large
Taeguk-gi flag and “security guard” sticker roamed around the streets
from the 22th to the dawn of the 27th (Korean Modern Historical
Materials Research Institute 1990: 306). The civil militia reconfirmed
their commitment to the subject-position as the citizens of democratic
Korea and fortified themselves against the brutal aggression of the military
forces. The militia was “a solidarity of the people bound by the commit-
ment to justice and liberal democracy” (Park 1988: 33).
The civil militia consisted of the inner city and peripheral units. But the
surrender of arms by the pacifist camp weakened the peripheral unit, lead-
ing to its disbandment in May 23–24. Resources were mobilized to the
inner city unit which was divided into self-defense and public safety divi-
sions. On May 22, they set up a situation room at the provincial hall and
the patrol team. On May 26, the resistant militia formed the leadership
group, “Democratic Citizens’ Struggle Committee,” and strike forces in
its preparation for the aggression of the martial military (Ahn 2001:
285–8; Jung 2008: 117–20).
In retrospect, it was actually extremely dangerous to allow untrained
students and citizens to arm themselves against the airborne commandoes.
But they cared less after witnessing hundreds of people getting slaugh-
tered by the martial forces. “Why did we arm [ourselves]? The answer is
very simple. We could not sit around and watch the military brutally
destroy our lives” (Gwangju City 1997: 63). The title of “civil militia”
came naturally for those who engaged in either passive self-defense or
aggressive armed insurrection as they chose not to tolerate the massacre
(Ahn 2001: 284). In the time and locale of Gwangju City in May of 1980,
the coordinates of an existing symbolic axis dramatically changed and
evolved. What had been deemed impossible suddenly became normal.
The axis of the possible and impossible shifted.
A gun is a deadly weapon. Yet the citizens had very few choices but to
pick it up when brutally attacked by the military. Having witnessed the
military opening fire at the innocent citizens and heard news of their
neighbors killed by their shootings, the citizens realized that they had to
pick up arms to protect their lives from the airborne troopers. Getting
armed for self-defense was not advocated by certain individuals. The con-
sensus was made as the people understood it as a survival imperative in the
highly volatile confrontation.
I was walking down the street with my friends toward the Jeonnam Girl’s
High School. We talked about what we could do … We were having stew
that was handed out for free near the Daein market when several elderly men
asked us why we were not on the streets fighting. “You should get guns and
fight,” they said. We told them we will after we had our meal. After we got
out of the store, we headed straight to the Gyelim police station to get a
vehicle and guns. (Korean Modern Historical Materials Research Institute
1990: 330)
The elderly people were not scolding or commanding the young boys.
They were just telling them to do the most natural thing under the cir-
cumstances. What had been unimaginable before May 18 became ordi-
nary. Holding a gun would have been a desperate choice. Yet it was not a
difficult question. It was what everyone was doing. It was therefore
most natural:
Once a barricade was installed, citizens began to talk about getting guns
after hearing the news that the martial forces opened fire and killed many
people. We raced toward Jiwon-dong street. There we met an armed vehi-
cle. They told us that guns were being handed out at a bar near the Nam
Gwagnju market. So we headed toward the market. We went to every bar in
the area but couldn’t find the one that had guns. One bar owner said he
would give away a nuclear bomb if he had one. An armed jeep passed us by
and told us to go to Sungeui Vocational School. It was about 3 or 4 in the
afternoon. Several young men from a vehicle at the vocational school were
handing out weapons. There was a long line behind the vehicle. Frustrated
by the slow distribution, I jumped on the truck. The truck was filled with
hundreds of guns and rifles, eight boxes of bullets, and three boxes of
grenades. I grabbed a carbine and stuffed it with about 100 ammunitions,
three clips and three grenades. (1990: 508)
The civil militia’s subject-position began to transform according to the

changes in the symbolic order. The relational focus shifted from family to
friends. In the early stages of the uprising, the militia members went to
246 J. H. KIM
the streets with guns amongst a group of “friends.” Testimonies showed

that one joined the demonstration after talking with close buddies, or
upon finding a friend amongst the protesters, or hearing or witnessing a
friend getting beaten by an airborne trooper:
On May 20, I was talking with my friend at my senior class of Songshil

Vocational School and three others from my neighborhood in a café. After
a heated debate, we decided to join. Since we could not go bare-handed, we
got ourselves metal batons and clubs. (Korean Modern Historical Materials
Research Institute 1990: 352)
I went to see Jae-kwon with a friend who was at home after being beaten up
by airborne troopers … I felt something hot in my throat when I saw Jae-
kwon all swollen and bruised up. He was a quiet and studious guy. At that
moment, I decided to fight. (1990: 306)
School alumni, fraternity club, and neighborhood friendships were cru-

cial for the civil militia activities. Most of the high school student resistors
learned of the developments through school peers (1990: 354). They
were also motivated by elder college students lodging at their homes
(1990: 393) and inspired by younger girls protesting at the rallies (1990:
442). As Choi Jung-woon described, “Friendship became the only reliable
source of support in the absolute community. Civil militia members fought
more courageously when they were joined by a friend. School juniors and
seniors as well as neighborhood friends were as big support as a colleagues
in the struggle … What remained unchanged was friendship in a volatile
and unpredictable world. The civil militia sustained itself on friendships”
(Choi 1999: 207). Most resistant activists bonded with each other through
a “neighborly network” of friends and acquaintances from the same school
or home town (Choi 2007: 224–5).
While friendship networks were the driving force behind the armed
insurgency, family acted against it. Junior members in the militia were
incessantly beleaguered by their duties at home and concerns for their
families, and some of them eventually returned to their families (Choi
1999: 205, 206). Those who laid down their weapons due to pleas and
concerns for their families were afflicted with “shame” and “guilt” (Korean
Modern Historical Materials Research Institute 1990: 372). Yet some of
them defied opposition from their families and joined the militia. The
minors kept their family relationship a secret, refused to go home despite
their mothers’ pleas, or sneaked out of their homes. The autopsy reports
of the Gwanju district prosecution office show that the youths made up
the majority of casualties. The death rate among the youth made up the
lion’s share among teens (36; i.e. 21.8 percent) and those in their twenties
(75; i.e. 45.5 percent).
A special unit was going to be formed among those skilled in shooting. I

practiced shooting for about an hour and tried out. To be eligible, one had
to be a male with excellent shooting skills and without a dependent. Anyone
who was either an eldest or the only son in the family was not allowed to
join. I was 15 years old and the only son in my family. But I kept it as a
secret. I passed the test and was chosen among the 32-strong special force.
I did not have any fear. A few days previous, I was just a middle-school kid.
Now I was a militia man full of a sense of justice and rage. (1990: 386)
I met my mother on my way to the provincial hall after finishing my patrol

mission. My mother had walked all the way from Naju city to the provincial
office. She grabbed my hand as soon as she spotted me. “Ki-kwang, my son,
let’s go home,” she pleaded with me. “I can’t, mother. If I go now, all of us
will die. I will go home soon. Please do not worry and wait for me at home.”
Mother did not persist because she knew how head-strong I could be. She
did not say anything more but I knew how anxious she was. She finally
turned back. At that moment, I did not care about school or family. Personal
matters meant nothing when people were being killed by the martial mili-
tary and the country was in a crisis. (1990: 502)
I returned home on May 24 after being unable to contact my family for

several days. My family had been worried sick day and night. They were
relieved to see me well. I stayed in my brother’s room at the Chosun
University Hospital. But I couldn’t sit tight. I left a death note and slipped
out. (1990: 261)
Friends and families made up a crucial part of the community. During

the uprising and forming of the militia corps, friendship became an inte-
gral force behind the resistant movement. Family relationships, on the
other hand, put the community back to the pre-uprising status quo. Such
a dynamic is only natural because family as an institution serves to repro-
duce and buttress the dominant ideology of a society. Some families joined
the insurrection forces after their members became victims. Their losses
exposed the truth of the government’s severe oppression against its own
248 J. H. KIM
people. “When a family member challenges the existing regime or institu-

tion, the state represses not only the individual, but also his or her family.
When confronted with the oppressive state power, the family first tries to
contain the militia member in the family in order to resume the status
quo” (Lee 2003: 225–6).
Friendship formed in the battleground was cemented during the upris-
ing. While patrolling, one militia member struck up a conversation with
his partner and they became friends. Their missions bonded them closer.
They were strangers. Few knew what they were doing during the daytime,
but somehow the same people showed up at the rooftop after dark. I don’t
know if they knew each other beforehand. We were guarding there every
night, keeping each other’s company until morning. (Korean Modern
Historical Materials Research Institute 1990: 359)
I stood guard with two factory workers. I was a high school student and was
in charge of our unit. We talked and learned about our families and home-
town. Everyone including myself feared death. The underlying terror made
us closer to each other. We relied on each other like real brothers. (1990: 366)
We were called a special mobility unit. We were in charge of patrol. We rarely

received orders from the commanders. We patrolled the outer city areas like
Hwajeong-dong, and the Baewoon-dong and Gwangcheon-dong intersec-
tions. At one time, we went as far as the municipal prison. Our chief was
skillful with the walkie-talkie. We spent several days in a fraternal bonding.
(1990: 505)
The sense of fraternity and camaraderie on the armed front was dif-
ferent from the ordinary friendship in a typical community life. In the
battlefield, social rank or career—whether one was a student, factory
worker, rich or poor—did not matter. They did not hold any prejudice
or differential treatment among themselves. The testimonies, however,
suggest that some of the poor felt disappointed or betrayed by the col-
lege students and intelligentsia. Yet we should note that the negative
feelings emerged in post-uprising prison and society rather than during
combat. “We became disappointed by college students in the military
prison. They had spoken about comradeship, but were very individual-
istic. I began to have doubts about them. I don’t think I can easily
forget those feelings” (Korean Modern Historical Materials Research
Institute 1990: 484).
The special strike force created during the final stage of the uprising
transcended the above-mentioned social cleavages. Although the unit was
formed through public notice, the members were mostly from the patrol
team. They shared unusually strong bonds as they participated in a cere-
monial ritual to launch the unit (Ahn 2001: 288; Jung 2008: 120). Each
militia had a nickname and developed a new identity different from
the old ones:
The mobile strike unit created a new identity for each member in a unique
way … For instance, they addressed each other in familiar nicknames like
“bun,” “white bear,” “tiger” that can be easily remembered. They wrote
down their unit number and nicknames on the cap. The militia formed an
entirely new organization of a new type of individuals just in five days … The
individuals who willingly chose to leave their past social relations and fight
alongside new partners in the militia community built a new identity for one
another through nicknames. (Choi 1999: 244–5)
The civil militia built an “absolute community” based on a fraternal,

new identity after breaking free from the existing family and social rela-
tions. It was a new “fraternal community” based on friendship that rose
above social stigma, rank, and jobs. The members of the strike unit were
mostly boys and young men from the poor working classes. Yet the cama-
raderie and brotherhood among those fighting together would have
played a bigger role in bonding with each other than the common
class position.
We were deafened by the thunderous applause and cheers from the crowds.
I felt overwhelmed by the crowd. Physically, I was in a car, but my spirit was
with the crowd. It was a kind of exhilaration that I had never experienced
before. The people looked completely different. I also felt very different. It
was like everyone in the crowd became my own siblings and parents. It felt
like I was a son to them. I repeatedly promised with myself that I would
work harder for my mother. We sang the national anthem with all our hearts.
(May 18 Gwangju Uprising Youth Society 1987: 183)
In the community of fraternity, everyone was like family to each other.

The experiences in the community were very valuable to orphans and
those without ordinary family. The fraternal community was not a simple
variation of family community. Instead the group was an outcome of con-
scientious choosing of close relations out of universal love and bonding.
250 J. H. KIM
The French Revolution is, thus, often explained by family romance, libera-
tion from biological family, and belonging to a higher level of social order
(Hunt 1992; Cho 2000: 72–3). The Gwangju Uprising bred fraternal
affinity and built a new identity in a transformed symbolic order. The male
bonding had a tendency to underrate the contributions made by the
female participants in the uprising (Kang 2004; Ahn 2007). That ten-
dency stemmed more from the life-threatening circumstances of the armed
struggle rather than patriarchal family tradition. The studies of social
movements in the 1980s contribute to a generalizable subject-position of
the militia rather than limiting them to males.
The Final Night: Birth of New Subjectivity

When confronted with brutal martial forces, the axis of the symbolic order
began to change again from general passivity to dramatic proactiveness.
Their transition peaked on the final night of the uprising on May 27, 1980
when the Gwangju civil militia faced the deadliest battle against the fully
armed martial forces in a counterinsurgency operation. From May 25,
Park Nam-seon, head of the civil militia, told his men who had returned
from regular patrol that the patrol was going to be their last mission and
urged them to go home. From the late hours of May 26 to the dawn of
the 27th, about 500 men in the strike unit remained for combat (Jung
2008: 129–30). They knew that the government army was zooming in.
While some of them thought that the army would not dare a massacre,
they all knew that the confrontation was going to be their last. “We passed
the plaza in front of the city hall in processions in the early morning hours
of the 27th singing marching songs as loud as possible … We all knew we
were marching towards our deaths” (Korean Modern Historical Materials
Research Institute 1990: 211, 261). The leaders of the last mass-scale rally
on May 26 told the citizens frankly that “there is a big possibility that the
martial forces will attack again. The crowd suddenly fell to silence. Some
shouted that they must fight until the end, but anxiousness and fear filled
the air” (Park and Im 2008: 392).
What could have gone through their heads as they waited for the full-
scale raid? Each spent what would have been the longest night in their
own ways. “I could not stop trembling. I kept going to the toilet. I chain-
smoked” (Korean Modern Historical Materials Research Institute 1990:
837). “Strangely, I did not have fear or anxiety. I focused on my work of
printing out the ‘Militia’s Bulletin’ with three others” (1990: 867). Some
remained calm and stoic: “I could not let anyone go to fight hungry. I
prepared enough meals to last until next morning” (1990: 228); “A group
of us orphans met separately at the YMCA building and shared our final
dinner. We were determined to fight until our end” (1990: 303); “When
woke up, I looked out the window and saw the soldiers moving in. I
charged my rifle with ammunitions. I looked towards the south and silently
apologized to my parents for dying before them” (1990: 449).
The boys and men had to make the biggest decision of their lives. They
had to decide whether they were going to lay down their weapons, return
to their family, or fight until the end. But for many of them, leaving was
more difficult than staying. They could not forgo and abandon shared
beliefs, comradeship, and fraternity. Park Nam-seon, the commander,
must have suffered the same inner conflicts. Yet he did not desert his men:
The death hour was approaching. I was anxious. How would my family
survive without their eldest son? Do I really have to die? I dreamed of my
family and I would live happily ever after. Should I slip away now? My aunt
lives just behind the wall of the provincial hall. I could run to her house and
hide there. What would become of my people if their commander flees?
That would be a sin. They will never forgive me. My head suddenly became
crystal clear. I was fully awake. Let’s do this! We all die in the end. I might
as well die in honor. (Park 1988: 59)
One witness described the scene from the evening of May 26 to the
dawn of May 27 as follows:
I was standing against the wall with a gun in the room I was assigned to.
Until then, I never pictured myself shooting someone with a gun, let alone
myself dead even after watching so many people getting killed. I was terri-
fied. Sounds of gunshots pierced through the darkness from a distance. A
woman’s shrieking voice through the loudspeaker was warning the people
that martial troops were moving in. My stomach shrank. Millions of
thoughts roamed through my head. My house, the faces of my family and
the scenes of my life passed right before my eyes. The distant sound of gun-
shots was coming closer. I knew the battle at the provincial hall had begun.
(Korean Modern Historical Materials Research Institute 1990: 784)
That night in Gwangju is reminiscent of Hegel’s “The Night of

the World”:
252 J. H. KIM
The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything
in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representations, images, of
which none belongs to him—or which are not present. This Night, the
interior of nature, that exists here—pure self—in phantasmagorical repre-
sentations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head—there
another white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disap-
pears. One catches sights of this night when one looks human beings in the
eye—into a night that becomes awful. (Quoted in Zizek 1999: 30–1)
In “The Night of the World,” a being entirely blocks out reality to

reemerge as a new subject out of pure nothingness. It is the moment one
experiences absolute negativity by erasing reality and accepting the world
in emptiness. One can be reborn as a true political subject upon living
through the night of the world, in a moment when one completely for-
swears the world of reality (Pinkard 2000: 189–190). By entirely rejecting
the role bestowed upon by the symbolic order, or the world of existence,
the subject opens the political space to recreate a new order. Zizek theo-
rizes the rejection as a “political act” through which a new symbolic order
is created and a new subject is born. In short, a true political act is possible
by rejecting the existing symbolic order and creating a new one. “An act is
a kind of re-birth of the subject. It involves a total rejection of the existing
Symbolic Order and therefore of the Symbolic mandate or role assumed
by the subject” (Myers 2003: 59).
The rejecting subject becomes the “vanishing mediator” for the transi-
tion from existing symbolic order to a new order. Choi Jung-woon referred
to the bandana-masked Gwangju militia as having a “liminal” existence.
“They [militia members] were liminal entities who temporarily dwelled at
a transiting point between the absolute community and the Gwangju
commune.” As liminal subjects, “they stood at an extraordinary place
between the two communities without being aligned to any. Since they
were not limited to a certain position, they were completely free and
unrestrained in their actions” (Choi 1999: 273 n.14). This corresponds
with Zizek’s “vanishing mediator” who makes a “mad” gesture of radical
withdrawal from reality, which opens up the space for its symbolic (re)
constitution (Zizek 1999: 35).
Such a political act transforms the axis with the familiar subject-position
identification. The subject identity is different from the “multitude in
Autonomia” (Jo 2009) or “nomadic subject” in Deleuze (Yi and Jo 2009)
because it resists the entire establishment of the symbolic sphere. Gwangju
militia cannot be limited to these theoretical concepts. The desperate

woman’s voice from the loudspeaker in the final night asks of the citizens,
“Do not forget us. We will be defending Gwangju until the last moment.”
It was a plea to the survivors to carry on the new symbolic order.
The militia who chose to stay for the final showdown knew that they
would not see the end of day on May 27 and transcended the subject-
position identity formed on family and social strata. They instead chose
their new symbolic identity built on friendship and fraternity in the resis-
tant community. The civil militia were the genuine self-renouncing subject
in the political act of challenging the given reality. The Gwangju insurrec-
tion was for the defense of liberal democracy and was the vanishing media-
tor accelerating social democracy movements in the 1980s. Yoon
Sang-won, who died fighting at the provincial government hall, said, “To
die at their bullets is to make us live forever” (Park and Yim 2007: 407).
The resistant force broke out of the oppressed reality and chose an honor-
able eternity. Their desperate choice epitomized the true political subject.
The political subjects had a rebirth on the final night of the uprising which
was revived in the revolutionary form of democratic social movements in
the 1980s. Yoon Sang-won was right in his prediction.
Conclusion: Legacy of the Final Night

The subjectivity of the Gwangju civil militia evolved in three stages. In the
early stage, the militia fought against the military coup to defend anti-
communist liberal democracy. They recognized their identity as the
defenders of democratic Korea and challenged airborne troops on ques-
tionable missions. In the next stage, the militia was transformed into a
fraternal community where age, professional prestige, and social rank did
not matter. They kept each other’s company in life-threatening situations,
and formed extraordinary friendships during combat. The communal
empathy formed a utopia-like imagined community. Finally, they reached
their final night where the militia members rejected the rules of an existing
symbolic world and chose to remain in the group to fight to the last
moment. Their choice and action turned them into true political subjects
as the “vanishing mediators” setting up an example for the social move-
ments of the 1980s. Because of their martyrdom, other citizens of Korea
tried to continue the legacy of honorable resistance. Unlike the activists of
the 1970s, the survivors of the Gwangju Uprising kept up the “revolu-
tionary” resistance tradition.
254 J. H. KIM
The militia who stayed until the final hours were not many. For
those who survived and were imprisoned, liberal democracy was no
longer an abstract rhetoric. “I waited for the news in the army prison
cell. I heard about the Constitutional reform under [President] Chun
Doo-hwan. The reform sounded great. Yet, when looked at closely,
each provision had a list of exceptions,” one former fighter sneered
(Korean Modern Historical Materials Research Institute 1990: 475).
The militia members were disillusioned by the contradictions of liberal
democracy and continued to struggle on an individual level. One testi-
fied that “I became eligible to vote in the 12th general elections during
military service. The reality was not free voting. I was enraged by the
violation of my sacred rights. I refused to comply with the order [to
vote for a certain party candidate] and faced a lot of hardship during
the rest of the military service” (1990: 351). Others pursued academic
careers to theorize their social movement experiences. “I did not
understand much of what the college students were saying because
they spoke in jargons and acronyms. I decided to educate myself in
order to continue with protest activities. My education stopped at the
fourth grade. I rigorously read social science books and began writing
to build a theoretical base” (1990: 511). The Gwangju Uprising
offered life-changing momentum for the civil militia members where
theoretical debates on the political subject have much relevance.
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London: Verso.
CHAPTER 11
Memories of Labor, Identities of the Time:

Workers and Intellectuals in Korea’s Labor
Movement of the 1980s
Keong-il Kim
Introduction: Filling the Mnemonic Void

It is since the 1980s that the theme of “memory” has aroused a worldwide
interest.1 In modern western history, this becomes the center of attention
against the backdrop of reflection on modernity, and has been discussed
along with the Holocaust, the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, and
the fall of authoritarian regimes all around the world (Ch’oe 2003:
159–60; Chun 2005: 17). Accordingly, the realm of the past which his-
tory has hitherto solely appropriated is challenged by the memories of
various groups whose voices have been denied by history. In this vein,
Pierre Nora argues that memory is an outcry of the people in terms of
resistance which could bring about a new kind of privilege and prestige,
while history has been controlled by power holders and authorities on
knowledge or professions (Nora 2006: 186).
While history is a story of victors and rulers who have systematically
oppressed memories conflicting with their versions of narratives, memories
K.-i. Kim (*)

The Academy of Korean Studies, Seongnam, South Korea
e-mail: keongil@aks.ac.kr

258 K.-I. KIM
are forced to be wandering around the private sphere threatening the offi-
cial narratives as a counter-history (Assmann 1999: 15; Ch’oe 2003: 171).
Whereas history works as the ideology of the privileged, memory is an
oppressed and forgotten truth. To put it simply, the struggle between his-
tory and memories is a war between the memories that has become history
and the ones that have been excluded from history (Chun 2005: 15; Kim
2011: 116–18).
Discussions on memory also can be found in South Korea since the
early 1990s. The close of the military regime and burgeoning democracy
movement urged Koreans to recognize that there is an unbridgeable gap
between actual memories of the past and its official version. In this con-
text, democratization of history has been advocated as a memory struggle
to excavate and reconstitute the counter-memories repressed by history.
The discourse of memory in South Korea revolves around the oppression
of the people by the state power (or Imperial Japan), and the western case
has largely focused on the “liberation of the marginalized” such as women,
working-class, religious, or sexual minorities (Nora and Yi 2004: 338;
Nora 2006: 185). This chapter aims to investigate the conflict and tension
within the oppressed.
South Korea’s famed twin success in development and democratization
has been the focus of lively academic debates for the last decades. The lit-
erature often highlights the inordinately important role played by college
students in the democracy movement where college students and college
graduates gave up their high status and privileges and chose to live the
lives of manual laborers helping to organize industrial workers. This phe-
nomenon of the “worker–student alliance” (nohak yŏndae) emerged in the
1970s and flourished in the 1980s as a core practice of the radical student
movement. This “infiltration” into industrial sites by the “hakch’ul,”
meaning college-student-turned-labor activists, peaked around 1985. The
number of participants in this movement is not clear, but is estimated to
be about 1,000 to 3,000.
College student activists and dissident intellectuals have been singled
out as the leading forces that brought about the nation’s historic turn to
democracy. The role industrial workers played in the democracy move-
ment, on the other hand, has been viewed as limited and peripheral (Ch’oe
1997: 375–6; No 2005: 329–30; Pak 2005: 129). Low evaluation of the
industrial workers’ role in the struggle contrasts with the centrality given
to the worker–student alliance in the minju (democratization) movement.
Privileging of the labor movement associated with these hakch’ul
11 MEMORIES OF LABOR, IDENTITIES OF THE TIME: WORKERS… 259
interventions as the minju labor movement, and of the guiding role of

hakch’ul activists in that movement, has led to a general downplaying of
non-hakch’ul industrial workers’ contributions. The rather monolithic
portrayal of the worker–student relationship prevalent in the literature has
produced a fixed image of worker activists and student activists; both are
devoid of diversity and complexities. This narrative structure leaves little
room for tales of conflict and tension. The relationship between history
and memory has reversed once again because of the memories of the non-
hakch’ul workers challenging the historical memories of students.
Episodes of frustration, complaints, and a sense of alienation felt by
workers toward college-educated hakch’ul are certainly not rare in avail-
able sources, yet they remain on the margins of the minju labor movement
narrative. To better understand the worker–student alliance experience
and what it meant to the labor movement and the democracy movement,
it is critical to investigate how workers and intellectuals coped with the
overwhelming status and power differences between them, where they
might have found common ground, and how their encounters changed
both parties in the relationship. By using new oral history and life history
materials, this chapter aims to revive the memories of those who have been
underrepresented in the radical labor movement in the 1980s.
Class Consciousness and Identities

The worker–student alliance of the early 1980s pushed questions of class
consciousness and identity to the fore. The issues of (false) class conscious-
ness were extensively discussed by Marx and Engels and Lukacs, a social class
theorist in more recent decades (Bradley 1996: 70–3; Sin 2001; Pak 2003;
Eley and Nield 2007). Recent scholarship, such as from postmodern theo-
rists, embraces the concepts of identity and subjectivity focusing on an elastic,
and constantly evolving, fragmenting, and shifting sense of self and group.
Compared to the class paradigm, the contemporary theories highlight the
multiple and shifting nature of consciousness and sense of belonging at the
individual level. Both paradigms are useful for analyzing the South Korean
case, and some scholars (see Bradley 1996; Heerma van Voss and van der
Linden 2002) argue that the class paradigm should also be considered while
paying due attention to issues of identity. Bradley notes that ideational frag-
mentation occurs simultaneously with polarization in the conventional class
model and introduces the concept of “fractured identity.” She asserts that the
concept is useful to explain ideational complexities and contradictions.
260 K.-I. KIM
In the identity paradigm, diverse elements such as gender, race, ethnic-

ity, religion, age, nationality, sexual orientation, and consumption patterns
are discussed for categorization (Bradley 1996: 23; Heerma van Voss and
van der Linden 2002: 19–21). Among many elements, the most cited
variables are gender, age, race, and religion. Since race was a minor ele-
ment at that time, it is excluded from the following discussion because of
its limited applicability for the Korean context. Gender, age, and religion,
on the other hand, appear to be salient for the workers to develop their
identities in Korea. This seems to be especially true of the female workers
analyzed in this study.
Another key variable is educational attainment, or the differentiation
between “intellectuals” (chisigin) and manual workers (nodongja). In the
conventional classification, intellectuals are often imagined to be vanguards
(chŏnwi), while manual workers are relegated to the mass (taejung). This
difference was the starting point for developing class-based commitment
to social change in the 1980s and 1990s. The intellectual–worker binary
thus became crucial in forming identity at the individual level.
Methods and Materials
To understand the worker–student alliance experiences at the individual
level, this chapter organizes the memories of the participants into four
types. The participants of the labor movement since the 1980s neither
share the same memories nor have a similar sense of identity: their narrative
is multifaceted. Passerini’s study of the industrial workers of Turin, Italy,
differentiates patterns of self-representation and narrative identity with the
workings of memory construction at its center (Passerini 1987: 59–61).
There are two criteria to classify these narratives. The first criterion is
“identity transformation.” It is about students/intellectuals or workers’
ideational change from student to worker or vice versa. Second is “mem-
ory orientation” of conformity and criticism. Some memories are compli-
ant with the narratives of the mainstream movement and others are critical
of hegemonic grand narratives.
Table 11.1 arranges the four discernable categories. Type I includes
two possible cases of the worker-turned-college student (i.e., hakch’ul-
workers) and college student-turned-worker. This essay excludes the for-
mer case for there have been enough discussions on them. On the other
hand, there hardly have been any attempts to study becoming-student (or
knowledge-aspiring) workers. The workers began to join the political and
radical labor movement by arguing that knowledge should not be
Table 11.1 Categorization of narrative types
Identity
Memory Transformation Transition Maintenance
Orientation
Conformity I II
Criticism IV III
onopolized by the intellectuals. This rare case reveals greater tension and
m
more conflicts than the case of mainstream hakch’ul workers. Type II indi-
cates that workers maintain their own identity, yet actively support the
hakch’ul-led labor movement.
Type III takes a critical stance toward the mainstream movement while
maintaining their own identity. The grand narrative of the Korean democ-
racy movement has been largely described by the radical political move-
ment initiated by types I and II. Type III, the majority of workers,
encountered conflicts with the encroaching hakch’ul-workers. Type IV is
critical of and reflective upon the current labor movement. As a result, the
memories of types III and IV have been repressed and underrepresented
in the mainstream movement.
Except for the type I hakch’ul-workers, these types bring to the fore the
problematic loci of this essay: criticism on the grand narrative of the labor
movement through alternative memories of the oppressed within the
group. These typologies themselves give a glimpse of contradictions and
fissures of the monolithic grand narrative of the South Korean labor and
democracy movements.
The story of Kim Miyŏng (Kim 1990) fits the type I narrative. Kim was
a garment worker, became active in the Seoul Labor Movement Alliance
(Seoul Nodong Undong Yŏnhap; Sŏnoryŏn; hereafter SLMA) and the
Minjung (People’s) Party. Yi Oksun’s story represents type II narratives.
Yi started out as an official of the Wonpoong Textiles Union, and served
as the vice chair and then the interim chair of the SLMA. The story of Pak
Sunhŭi (Pak et al. 2007) is an example of type III. Pak was a key official of
the Wonpoong Textiles Union and co-chair of the Korea Trade Union
Congress (Chŏn’guk Nodong Chohap Hyŏbŭihoe; the Chŏnnohyŏp), the
organization of minju labor unions that competed with the government-
controlled FKTU (Federation of Korean Trade Unions). To illustrate type
262 K.-I. KIM
IV, the story of Sŏ Hyegyŏng (2007) will be examined. Basically a hakch’ul-

worker, she took the lead in the Kuro Solidarity Strike as the vice chairper-
son of the labor union, and joined the SLMA.
Type I workers, who chose to join the mainstream radical movement,
generally suffered from inner splits because of identity transformation.
Type II workers displayed even greater conflict and tension during the
inclusion process into the hegemonic labor movement. Yet types III and
IV narrate more impressive and complicated stories. What did type III and
IV workers think of the main current labor movement? Why didn’t they
readily consent to the mainstream labor movement? What was their ulti-
mate goal by challenging the grand hegemonic narrative? By answering
these questions, alternative visions can be adumbrated, as the 1970s minju
labor movement led by female workers clearly demonstrates the genuine
value of labor and radical challenge to “minju” (Kim 2005). This discus-
sion can have implications for “the crisis of the labor movement” facing
the recent South Korean workers.
These four types will not be sufficient to explain the whole body of
counter-memories of the 1980 South Korean labor movement. There are
many individuals who belonged to multiple spaces among these catego-
ries, and some cases defy such classification. Han Sunim of Bando Trading
is a good example. After actively participating in the minju labor move-
ment, she was labeled a “traitor,” which led her to collaborate with the
foes of the minju unions.2 There were also many other workers who were
the bystanders of the movement despite their sympathy toward the cause.
Some of them suffered from remorse and negative self-identity because of
their failure to join union activism for various reasons. All in all, the minju
labor movement had a transformative effect on active participants and
bystanders alike.
With the macro social structure and historical changes as a backdrop,
this study examines workers’ memories and experiences at the micro level.
By reconstructing an individual’s life story, we can delineate one’s con-
crete experiences and interactions with outside factors and produce a cer-
tain structure of meaning (Yi 2005: 125). This chapter utilizes diaries,
journals, autobiographies, memoirs, and oral history testimonies to dis-
cuss the above-mentioned four types. A large-scale oral history collection
produced by Sungkonghoe University’s Research Institute of Society and
Culture (Sahoe Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn), one of the best life-history
collections produced in recent decades in South Korea, is the additional
data source for this study.
Type I: Dream of a Vanguard Intellectual

Kim Miyŏng was born into a poor farming family in South Ch’ungch’ŏng
Province in 1965. After graduating from an elementary school in her
hometown, she came to Seoul in 1977 at the age of 13 and began her
working life at a blue jeans factory in the Namdaemun Market. Moving
from one small factory to another, she suffered from “terrible working
conditions, continuing overtime and all-night work,” and often “had to
sleep amid piles of fabric after work ended late at night” (Kim 1990: 26).
Kim’s awareness of labor rights and social issues came through night
school. Around 1983 she began to frequent the Yŏngdŭngp’o branch of
the Urban Industrial Missions (UIM).3 Kim attended Sunday prayers and
participated in a stage performance about workers who struggled against
severe repression by the company and the government. It was at the
Yŏngdŭngp’o UIM where she heard Yi Oksun speak, and made a resolu-
tion to live like a “fighter committed to the liberation of fellow workers.”
Her life as a “labor organizer, dismissed worker, agitator, and professional
activist” began from that time (Kim 1990: 40). Kim worked during the
day and studied at night at a labor church. She remembers it as a happy
time, feeling that “everything was new and every day was filled with joy”
(1990: 44).
One day, a teacher at the night school told her that UIM had inherent
limits in its relationship to the labor movement, being a religious organi-
zation, and suggested that she join him and get involved in genuine labor
activism. Kim thus abandoned all her activities at the church and severed
her relations with the UIM. To become a labor organizer, she found a job
in a factory in the Kuro Industrial Complex in Seoul, but the repressive
atmosphere of the factory and the tight labor control system made her
realize the limits of individual effort. Frustrated, she wandered from fac-
tory to factory, regretting that she “naively viewed labor struggle as some-
thing cool without knowing anything.” Now she “knew too much to be
content with life, unlike before.”
In June 1985, an important incident happened both in terms of the
history of Korea’s labor movement and Kim’s labor activism: workers
from many companies in the Kuro Industrial Complex joined forces and
conducted a solidarity strike. The Kuro Solidarity Strike galvanized
workers in the area and propelled Kim to join the labor movement in ear-
nest. In March 1986, she was arrested after participating in a sit-in protest
after a fellow worker in the complex immolated himself. While in jail, she
264 K.-I. KIM
was critical of the college students, particularly their willingness to sign a

pledge to refrain from any further involvement in the labor movement in
exchange for early release (Kim 1990: 109, 115). She continued to exhibit
a strong self-awareness as a person who “endures hardship and continues
to fight with nothing but pride as a worker.” Kim also was very sensitive
to her lack of a coherent and analytical understanding of the labor move-
ment. Yet, it did not lead Kim to harbor great respect for student activists.
Following her release from prison in the summer of 1986, Kim joined
the SLMA, which was organized by hakch’ul. She was overjoyed by the
prospect of working as part of the SLMA. Her “awe and trust” of the
organization approximated a religious faith, according to her recollection
(Kim 1990: 71). Working in a lower-level local unit of the organization,
she found herself “brimming with energy at the thought that [she] had
finally become an activist worker as a member of the organization” (1990:
130). Joyful days, however, did not last long. Soon the SLMA succumbed
to an intense internal ideological struggle which paralyzed the organiza-
tion. At a general meeting in September 1986, the mainstream faction,
largely composed of hakch’ul activists, jeered and insulted worker repre-
sentatives, accusing them of not having the capacity to present “well-
crafted theory” on the direction and purpose of the national-level labor
organization the SLMA was working to create. Kim recalls “intensely hat-
ing them” and thinking “how dare they ridicule workers.” The students’
argument on their “political position” was so complicated and scholastic
that it was “impossible to understand.” The workers in the audience began
to shout, “We are ignorant and cannot figure out what you are talking
about!” (1990: 145–6). Along with anger toward the students and intel-
lectuals, however, workers at the scene, including Kim, felt ashamed of
their ignorance.
In the wake of this confrontation, many workers left the organization,
disgusted by what they saw. But Kim persevered, looking for a solution to
the crisis. It was tough. Nostalgic about the golden days of the SLMA, yet
feeling absolutely helpless about her own limitations and the organiza-
tion’s incompetence, she was tempted to return to the life of an ordinary
worker tending sewing machines (Kim 1990: 148). Her desperate search
for a solution ended when she was connected to a radical faction in the
SLMA, which called for “purposeful struggle based on a scientific theory
of revolution.” The faction belonged to a larger “CA” (Constitutional
Assembly) group at that time.4 The group preached a united struggle by
industrial workers to overthrow big capitalists, who monopolized the
economy, in order to bring about a society where workers were the mas-
ters. She was fascinated by the argument and felt “blessed” that her search
was finally over. At the same time, she was overwhelmed by fear, stemming
from her painful awareness of her own ignorance. She recollects that “all
the words sounded incredible yet so completely unfamiliar that it was hard
to understand what they meant” (1990: 147–50).
She came to the conclusion that workers should become “knowledge-
able and smart” in order to become the subject of struggle (Kim 1990:
152). Kim totally agreed with a senior colleague in the organization that
workers as professional activists should carry out the ideological struggle
instead of leaving it to scholars or student revolutionaries (1990: 249–50).
From that time on Kim began to immerse herself in the study of the “sci-
entific theory of revolution,” and embarked on a life as an activist in the
politically oriented labor movement (1990: 158–9). Her conclusion was
that producing a proper theory of revolution was also part of the obliga-
tion and rights of workers, and the theorizing should not be entrusted to
hakch’ul activists (1990: 153). She states that “workers must not be igno-
rant, and if they are ignorant, they should be ashamed of it” (1990: 156).
Kim Miyŏng challenged the stereotypical view of laborers as uneducated,
ignorant people, and called into question that knowledge was the exclu-
sive property of intellectuals.
Her attempt to reverse such time-honored thinking resulted in some
sacrifice on her part. Her fellow workers dismissed her assertions as
“mimicking the students,” and those who cared about Kim warned her
about the danger of being “swept up without knowing anything” (Kim
1990: 151). By “usurping” knowledge and theories, she attempted to
transform herself into a “worker intellectual,” who created fissures in the
traditional demarcation between intellectuals and manual workers. This
shift in her identity revealed contradictions in the existing binary opposi-
tion of students/intellectuals vs. manual workers by suggesting alterna-
tive possibilities.
Type II: Finding Oneself Between the Extremes

Yi Oksun was born in 1954 in Chŏng’ŭp, North Chŏlla Province, to a
family of moderate means. Her family’s fortune began to decline when she
was in middle school, and she dropped out of high school and went to
Seoul in 1972. After working at a few places, she was hired at Han’guk
(later Wonpoong) Textiles in March 1973. Like most women workers of
266 K.-I. KIM
the period, the purpose of her life was making money and helping her
siblings to finish school. Various experiences in the factory, however,
slowly changed her. What affected her most was the union activism she
witnessed at Wonpoong, which was a key site in the minju labor move-
ment. By participating in a series of struggles the union initiated, she
learned to appreciate the solidarity of workers accomplished through an
organized union. As a result of her dedication to union work, she was
elected a union representative in March 1978, and was serving as the last
general secretary of the Wonpoong union when it was disbanded by the
government in October 1982.
Small-group activities at the Yŏngdŭngp’o UIM also had a significant
impact on Yi. Through small-group meetings she learned “why workers
remain poor, and what the proper way to live life is,” as well as how to
manage personal finances and friendships, and how as a member she could
contribute to the group. During the same period, she began to expand the
scope of her activities outside the factory by engaging in volunteer activi-
ties such as visiting orphanages and nursing homes, or supporting incar-
cerated labor activists. As her exposure to the democracy movement
increased, she began to attain more politically radical consciousness.
Starting with the Labor Day demonstration in 1976 at Myŏngdong
Cathedral, she regularly took part in anti-government demonstrations. A
major turning point in her transformation into an activist came around the
end of 1978 when she attended a six-month Leadership Training Program
organized by the UIM (Yi 1990: 97). Educational programs like this
retained a degree of autonomy, even though they were offered by Christian
organizations. And she learned about Marxist and socialist ideas for the
first time. Through the program she “came to realize why [her] life had
been full of pain” and “made a small resolution to dedicate myself to bring
about ‘a new society’” (1990: 97).
With other participants of the program, she organized a small group
called “Isak” and actively participated in union organizing drives and
political protests. In September 1982, the Chun Doo Hwan regime force-
fully disbanded the Wonpoong union. Yi was arrested and imprisoned in
November of that year and released on parole in August 1983. What
awaited her, however, was a well-known conflict between her union and
the UIM. She was thrown into a situation in which a choice had to be
made between taking a side with the Wonpoong unionists and continuing
her activism in the orbit of the UIM. Unlike most of her fellow activists
who chose the union, Yi Oksun stood by the UIM, a decision that brought
her cold-shoulder treatment from her colleagues. The price of the

“betrayal” was unbearable for her. The “unconcealed hostility” of her col-
leagues broke her heart (Yi 1990: 212–13).
Over time, Yi became convinced of the “need to define the political
nature of the labor movement more clearly” (Yi 1990: 249), and from the
mid-1980s began to support the hakch’ul-led radical labor movement. In
August 1985, when the SLMA was founded, Yi was elected as one of its
vice chairpersons. The leadership of the SLMA was in the hands of intel-
lectual activists, but some worker activists, including Yi, were invited in. It
did not mean that she discarded her manual worker identity and identified
herself with the intellectuals at the SLMA. She recalls how envious she felt
of the college students who “looked so proud,” when she was petrified by
the fear of getting arrested by the police at a Labor Day rally at Myŏngdong
Cathedral in 1976. When asked which school she was from by a student
demonstrator, Yi found herself hesitating before saying that she was a fac-
tory worker (1990: 86). Again, while participating in the May 1980 dem-
onstrations, a student asked the same question of her, and this time
without hesitation she was able to reveal her worker identity. Still, having
difficulty in figuring out the meaning of the slogans the students were
shouting, and admiring female students who were leading the marching
demonstrators, Yi found herself feeling frustrated: “Why can’t we workers
perform like that?” (1990: 111–12).
Yi did not harbor a sense of inferiority towards students, however. She
served her prison term from late 1982 to mid-1983 and was in close con-
tact with student prisoners. She developed a deep appreciation for the
comradeship and solidarity with college students and intellectuals in the
labor and democracy movements (Yi 1990: 186–7, 202). Oftentimes she
expresses regret that workers were not good at “understanding the world
scientifically.” This kind of self-consciousness and self-criticism were
extended to her critique of the Wonpoong workers, who, in her opinion,
“failed to settle on a future direction of the struggle even after the terrible
repression of the minju unions thoroughly planned and executed by the
authorities” (1990: 208).
Therefore, her active participation in the hakch’ul-led labor movement
may have been the result of her yearning for knowledge, mixed with her
awareness that workers were not quite capable yet intellectually. Her
decision to join the hakch’ul-led movement did not mean she remained
uncritical of student leadership. Although Yi was a vice chairperson, she was
not informed of SLMA members’ field activities because of tight security
268 K.-I. KIM
concerns. “The three Min,” that is, minjung (people), minju (democracy),
and minjok (the nation), which formed the guiding principle of the SLMA,
were steered solely by student activists, and the job of worker members,
including Yi, was simply memorizing and reciting them. It was natural that
workers in the SLMA felt alienated from the leadership dominated by intel-
lectuals. Junior worker members often complained bitterly to Yi that the
hakch’ul language was too difficult to understand (Yi 1990: 282–3).
It is not difficult to find such complaints and discord among worker
participants in the student-led struggles of the 1980s. Yi began to wonder
whether the labor movement can really bring about a new world of equal-
ity and fraternity, where people could realize their full potential. She criti-
cized the student leadership for their “class-based selfishness,
self-righteousness and obstinate attitudes,” which, to her, were starkly dif-
ferent from “the generous attitude of our working-class people” (Yi 1990:
294). In her diary of April 5, 1987, she condemned the hakch’ul activists
as positioning themselves as vanguards and viewing workers as mere
objects of their guidance (1990: 300).
Yi’s differed from the type I narrative of Kim Miyŏng. Unlike Kim, Yi
did not question her own worker identity. Yi never challenged the conven-
tional barrier between intellectuals and workers even though she became
a part of the hakch’ul-dominated SLMA leadership. Although Yi had, like
many other workers of the period, certain complaints and an uneasiness
regarding the hakch’ul-led movement of the 1980s, she actively
supported it.
Type III: Voice of Genuine Worker

Pak Sunhŭi was born into a working-class family in Yŏngdŭngp’o, Seoul,
in 1947. Her father and grandfather were manual workers. Religion was a
central motif in her childhood memories. After her grandfather converted
to Catholicism, her entire family lived in a deeply religious environment.
Unable to afford middle-school education, she attended a civic school
(kodŭng kongmin hakkyo), which offered free middle-school education,
albeit without a diploma. In April 1964, when she was 18, Pak began her
work career as an assistant clerk in a nearby factory office.
Pak Sunhŭi regarded her job as temporary because her dream was to
become a teacher. She planned to save money to continue her education.
Thus she never identified herself with other workers at the factory (Pak
et al. 2007: 10). But she soon found herself drawn to workshops where
camaraderie among workers was strong, and a few months later, she vol-
unteered to move into a workshop. But she vacillated between the dream
of becoming a skilled worker and her aspiration to go to college. In 1966,
she quit her job and began to take courses at cram schools. Things did not
go well, however, and she felt lost. She even stopped attending church.
After about a year of wandering, in the spring of 1967 she went back to
a factory, Taehan Textiles, which she entered through an examination.
After giving up the dream of pursuing college education, she was deter-
mined to become a good technician. She was promoted to the position of
team leader within a year. About this time, she resumed her religious life,
and at her church she encountered the Jeunesse Ouvrière Catholique
(JOC). The Yŏngdŭngp’o Catholic Church she was attending happened
to be one of the key centers of the JOC movement. “God created the
world through labor. Laborers are those who follow God’s will.” The ser-
mon from the JOC priest came as a shock to her and “opened [her] ears
and eyes” (Pak et al. 2007: 193).
Pak’s involvement in the JOC movement gradually changed her. Labor
that used to represent disdain, disregard, and discrimination now became
a source of pride and a sense of mission. Jesus lived as a laborer and worked
with the impoverished. And he died for others. She found new meaning in
life as a worker, and embraced the principle of the JOC movement that
“labor is prayer and the workshop an altar.” She began to create a new life
for herself, cherishing the value of labor and the dignity of human beings
(Pak et al. 2007: 205). In the spring of 1974, when she was 28, at the
request of its union she moved to Han’guk Textiles, which became
Wonpoong Textiles in 1975. The union regarded Pak’s experience and
skill as a union organizer very highly. Since she entered Han’guk Textiles
not to earn money but to lead the union movement, her motivation
resembled the hakch’ul activists who became factory workers during the
1980s. A year later, in April 1975, she became a vice president of the union.
During the short-lived “Spring of Seoul” in 1980, which followed
President Park Chung Hee’s assassination in October 1979, Pak was busy
helping other unions and participating in the effort to democratize the
FKTU. Under the Chun Doo Hwan regime, however, she was put on the
wanted list and dismissed from Wonpoong in August 1981. Arrested in
November 1982, she served a prison term until August 15, 1983. Upon
her release from prison, what she found was a labor movement dominated
by hakch’ul activists. She expressed strong repulsion against the factional
and ideological struggles among hakch’ul activists (Kim 2005(9): 5; Pak
270 K.-I. KIM
et al. 2007: 198–9). Pak wanted to return to her work as a labor organizer
with the strong conviction that that was the life she wanted to pursue. But
two obstacles blocked her from doing so. One was the blacklist, a list of
labor organizers deemed subversive by the authorities and businesses, and
the other was the power wielded by hakch’ul activists in the labor move-
ment. Unable to find work in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, which was
under the control of the hakch’ul, in October 1983 Pak moved to the
countryside with the help of the JOC, and resumed her religion-based
labor activism (nodong samok) (Pak et al. 2007: 236–7). In Iri, North
Chŏlla Province, she ran a “House of Labor” and provided consultation
and support for workers and unions in the region. During the 1987 Great
Workers’ Struggle, Pak was active in organizing and supporting workers’
struggles in the region. In the spring of 1989, she moved to an industrial
complex located in Taejŏn, where the labor movement was in its infancy,
and continued her religion-based activities.
Labor and religion were twin motifs in her life since childhood. Religion
had complex meanings for her. For labor activists, it functioned as a refuge
from the ruthless repression and exploitation of the real world. When Pak
heard about Chun Tae-il’s self-immolation, she felt sympathy and respect
for his courage and self-sacrifice, yet at the same time felt disturbed at the
prospect that a similar destiny might await her (Pak et al. 2007: 112, 195).
She chose a convent as an escape, although that solution did not work out
for her in the end (2007: 196). On the other hand, religion functioned as
a source of inspiration and in fact was something like a compass for her
life’s journey. Religion helped alleviate her inner struggle with yearning
for knowledge, and made it possible to continue her life as a labor orga-
nizer beyond the age of 30, something rare in Korea at that time.
Her perspective on religion is closely related to her stance on workers’
autonomy. Pak understood the role of religious institutions as that of help-
ing workers from outside, and believed that the leadership in the movement
should come from the union. She felt greater affinity with working people
and workshops because she grew up in a family of manual workers. Although
she took part in politically oriented struggles, including anti-American pro-
tests in the 2000s, and joined the Democratic Labor Party (Minju
Nodongdang), Pak still considered shop-floor activism much more impor-
tant than any political struggle and steadfastly held onto her worker identity.
In labor education, she emphasized knowledge that workers accumu-
late through interactions and experiences on the shop floor and in every-
day life over the kind of knowledge that was inserted from outside. From
this workshop-centered stance she quit her vice president position in the
union and went back to the production line in 1979. Her belief that each
and every member of the union must have a sense of ownership of the
union and take part in its operation drew strong support from other union
leaders (Kim 2005(7): 10). Consistent emphasis on the workshop corre-
sponded to her labor-centered view of the democracy movement of the
period. She believed that history in general, and labor history in particular,
was made by ordinary workers who toiled at their workshops, not by the
leadership of their union or elite intellectuals or college students. She
claimed that democratic struggle in its genuine sense occurs not in the
streets through political struggle but at work sites. The labor movement
proceeds when workers “die on the shop floor holding onto their
machines” (2005(7): 43).
She points out that the theories and teachings of student activists
sounded great and that it made workers aware of their lack of education
(Kim 2005(7): 51). But in the end students destroyed workers’ trust,
according to her, and many workers quit their involvement in the labor
movement because student activists had a tendency to use workers as mere
objects in their “heroic struggle.” She asks: Should workers who suffered
at the hands of companies and the authorities now fall victim to intellectu-
als whose claim is helping workers (2005(7): 51)? In her view, most intel-
lectuals and students lacked adequate understanding of shop-floor politics
and were bound by their idealism, intellectual way of thinking, elitist men-
tality, and fixation on privileges, fame, and power. That is why it is not easy
to find in them important virtues, including a respect for workers’ auton-
omy, democratic principles, and comradeship, shop-floor camaraderie, or
a deep understanding of life itself (2005(7): 35, 60; 2005(8): 45).
Type IV: A Reflective Militant

Sŏ Hyegyŏng was born as the eldest daughter of one son and two daugh-
ters in Kimje. Her father was a low-ranking official, so her family was not
well-to-do. Sŏ lived in Hongjedong, a mountain village on the outskirts
of Seoul. She was a curious girl, reading many books, including an anthol-
ogy of world literature while in middle school. In her childhood, she
often asked herself, “What is most important in life? What are human
beings? And who am I?” Sŏ recalls that she could not understand the real-
ity of everyday life and society, while questioning many things (Sŏ
2007: 190–1).
272 K.-I. KIM
After entering university in 1978, Sŏ joined two circles. One was for
English conversation study as an outside school activity, and the other was
a social science study group at her university. Like other college students
during that period, she was reading “books of ideology” (inyŏm sŏjŏk).5
One day, she was stunned to read about Chun Tae-il’s life story. Sŏ said,
“The report on Chun totally shook not only my consciousness but my
whole spirit.” She admired Chun as a paragon and reflected on her lifestyle
of drinking away with college friends or attending protests and then serv-
ing prison terms. She wrote, “Shudders ran through my body, and I was
moved to tears. And then I was struck by a sense of shame” (Sŏ 2007: 195).
Sŏ began teaching at night school at the Kuro Industrial Complex after
her freshman year. During her second year, like many other college stu-
dents of those days, she became immersed in the major works of Marx and
Lenin banned by the dictatorial regime. These books were a fresh shock to
her because they seemed to give “explicit and consistent analyses of and
good solutions to” the problems she was greatly concerned about. She
states, “I [willingly] accept this new worldview … All of a sudden, the
world looks totally different as if I had ‘the third eye’” (Sŏ 2007: 198).
Sŏ, in 1980, her third year of university, witnessed the civil uprising and
the follow-up massacre in Gwangju under the military regime, subsequent
nationwide civil resistance, and the failure of a large-scale democracy
movement. Most college students thought that student-initiated protests
or democracy movements dominated by opposition and religious leaders
had limitations. They believed that a new type of democracy movement
should be organized by masses (minjung), consisting of the working class.
Likewise, Sŏ decided to share her life and fate with the masses, watching
her college friends plunging into the factory shop floor. She later recol-
lected that was “a naïve and rigid decision” (Sŏ 2007: 199).
Sŏ started to break with her past by preparing for factory work with two
college friends. She burned the diaries she was keeping since her high
school days (Sŏ 2007: 202–3). And she was determined to move to the
Kuro Industrial Complex and gathered information about the area before
entering the shop floor. Finally she started working at a ceramic factory and
organizing a small study group together with her college hakch’ul-
colleagues and factory workers to study Korean labor history and labor laws.
Sŏ moved to Karibong Electronics in the summer of 1983, and suc-
ceeded in founding a labor union at the factory in June 1984. She com-
pares its foundation to “launching a ship,” suggesting that “a labor union
functions like a ship which cannot but be stuck on the land but must go
smoothly in the water” (Sŏ 2007: 209). The Karibong Electronics Labor
Union developed jointly with Daewoo Apparel’s and Hyosung Corp.’s
unions which were also established around the same time. Sŏ recollects
those days as the busiest and the most rewarding time of her factory work
days. She actively participated in the activities of the small groups of the
region after her labor union was stabilized.
It appears that Sŏ successfully transformed herself from an intellectual
into a worker. She was, however, confronted with the toughest problem,
which was self-criticism of her newly acquired identity on the shop floor.
Sŏ as one of the hakch’ul-workers could not get rid of the “remaining
vestiges” of intellectuals despite her change into a manual worker. In other
words, Sŏ thought of herself as none other than one of the typical petit
bourgeois who are weak-minded, restless, and wavering. Sŏ could not free
herself from self-denial and self-torment even though she lived a hard life
as a worker.
I am nothing but a living remnant of what I used to be. I still find myself
bound by liberalism and the past. I had a perm out of style, threw away all
the books, and reduced daily necessities to the minimum. Yet I still could
not fling Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men away. I’ve
neither the fighting spirit nor the sensibility of the working class. It is so
hard to change my nature and sensibility though I spend all of my life trying
to break away from my family and change my way of life. (Sŏ 2007: 207)
Sŏ believed that she was able to eliminate her intellectual traits and
thoroughly change herself. Later, however, she realized that she had been
ignorant and naïve enough to cherish such an empty hope (2007: 206).
Workers who spent time with Sŏ viewed her differently from themselves
for having the “dream of a revolution in a radical way and ending up fight-
ing in a violent way.” Despite this, she was a person who “would contem-
plate rather than act out, see things from another angle rather than with a
clear focus on class struggle, lay emphasis on human relationships and
processes, often hesitate when not convinced, and deep in grief while in
anger” (2007: 206–7).
Sŏ continued as a worker-activist while harboring inner conflict. The
regional solidarity struggle was triggered by the arrest of the chairperson
and another three leading members of the Daewoo Apparel Labor Union
two months after the wage negotiation in 1985. That is the starting point
274 K.-I. KIM
of the well-known Kuro Solidarity Strike. Sŏ made it public that she was a
hakch’ul-worker to the union members in the evening of June 24 when
the union began the solidarity strike. She sought their understanding as to
why she had to hide her real identity. The leaders of the strike were subject
to mass dismissal and the other employees were also driven out of the
closed-down company after the strike was quelled by the police force.
Meanwhile, Sŏ was arrested on the spot on a charge of leading a sit-in
protest at the five-way intersection of Karibong Industrial Complex one
month after the end of the strike in late July of 1985.
It was not until the spring of 1986 that Sŏ was released with probation.
When she was in jail for about 10 months, the student movement under-
went a drastic shift. The radical faction of intellectuals and the leadership
of student movement labeled the activities of those days non-scientific
romanticism, drawn mostly from orthodox Marxism-Leninism, and aimed
to build a vanguard organization. Sŏ found the atmosphere surrounding
the labor movement “highly politicized” after her release from prison. She
was confused and frustrated with such a change, in which “to my surprise,
politicized slogans for a wage struggle were everywhere on the shop floor.
They were too impetuous, venturous, and extreme and that undemocratic
and politicized strife alienated the people” (Sŏ 2007: 219).
Sŏ was dragged to Defense Security Command on a charge of the
Sŏnoryŏn strife right after the Incheon uprising of May 3, 1986 which
took place a mere month after her release, and then interrogated and
severely tortured. Bombarded with tenacious questions from examiners,
she realized that she reached a dead end of her identity transformation.
Facing it directly from extreme hardships, she realized the gap between
what she ought to do and what she was capable of doing. Sŏ acknowl-
edged “the limits of [her own] class” (Sŏ 2007: 222–3), and hence bid a
farewell to the political movements. The decision still tormented her
because she was discarding the most ethical and scientific Marxism-
Leninism that she believed in.
Sŏ pointed out that it was impossible for hakch’ul-workers to think and
act in individual terms on the shop floor from the 1980 Gwangju
Democratic Uprising until the 1987 Great Workers’ Struggle. The collec-
tive identity as an activist only was emphasized. Hakch’ul-workers had to
act upon the working-class consciousness because anything other than
that was regarded as meaningless, or weakness to be overcome (Sŏ 2007:
188). Sŏ differs from most hakch’ul-workers who were committed to radi-
cal political struggle armed with Marxist theories. Those who headed the
vanguard organizations participated in secular “politics,” and she called
into question the collective identity which denies diversities. She engaged
in thorough examination of herself and writes that “I was horribly ashamed
that I was full of intellectual vanity, arrogance, self-righteousness, disre-
spect for workers as if they were mere objects … [showing] undemocratic
orientation, obsession with hegemony, and irresponsibility of letting
workers go alone under harsh trials, which ended up not only disappoint-
ing myself but also hurting workers” (2007: 229). While Yi Oksun (type
II) and Pak Sunhŭi (type III) with their working-class origins were very
critical of hakch’ul, Sŏ relentlessly blamed herself and reflected upon
hakch’ul-workers, as she was one of them.
Sŏ’s self-criticism and self-reflection of her identity were followed by
her sympathy with workers. In jail, she saw other imprisoned workers in
worse conditions than hakch’ul-workers who were receiving plenty of
necessities and books from frequent family visits (Sŏ 2007: 217–18). She
wrote on worker-colleagues who had just finished prison terms in the
summer of 1987:
They have changed so much in two years. Their youth has vanished. I could
immediately read the hardships on their faces and grim eyes. I could sense
their deep hurt because they often avoided eye contact with me. Later, I
heard that they were disappointed with self-righteous hakch’ul-workers
while taking part in the protests and distributing flyers after the Kuro
Solidarity Strike. Hakch’ul-workers were hiding from risks and instead
pushed workers to the forefront saying that they had more important things
to do. Some workers, who had become devoted activists through learning
theories on liberation in a small group for a short time, became disillusioned
and severely hurt by hakch’ul-workers. I could guess what really happened
and it was so heartbreaking to see, as if something precious was irretrievably
broken. (2007: 226)
Sŏ did not agree with “vanguard organizations armed with scientific

theories and steel-like determination” soon after her release on parole. She
thought that there were no organizations without any errors and that
scientific theories were one thing, and putting them into practice was
another thing (2007: 226). She prioritized the practice as a humane pro-
cess, and paid a hefty price to learn the “painful lesson” (2007: 227). Sŏ
was committed to support the workers, and was not involved in any politi-
276 K.-I. KIM
cal faction. She later worked for Chŏn’guk Nodongja sinmun (The National
Labors’ newspaper) and the Labor Rights House until mid-1991 after the
Korean Trade Union Congress was established.
Conclusion
The four stories explored in this chapter clearly show that they have not
been integrated into the master narrative of the South Korean minju labor
movement. These memories have been suppressed by the hegemonic
mnemonic practice by which the voices of women factory workers have
hardly been heard to this day. This research challenges the “myth” of the
worker–student alliance and asks the students of contemporary Korean
history to pay attention to the fragmented memories of the workers.
These four women activists plunged themselves into a historic struggle,
and developed discernable types of identities and worker consciousness.
Kim Miyŏng accepted the legitimacy of militant and radical political strug-
gle and the utility of theories and knowledge for professional labor activ-
ists. She then practiced what she believed in by creating a new identity for
herself as a worker-intellectual. Yi Oksun emphasized the autonomy and
agency of workers, and dedicated her life to create a society in which toler-
ance and dialogue are the norm and humane values such as compassion
and equality can be fully actualized.
Pak Sunhŭi put great emphasis on workers’ autonomy and agency,
democracy and solidarity in the labor movement in addition to the value
of labor itself. She was proud of working people’s role in history. With
deep retrospection on life and the dignity of every human being, she
dreamed about a society where people help each other through labor and
fair distribution. Sŏ Hyegyŏng stressed compassion for labor itself and
workers, and the spirit of solidarity. She valued the process of struggle, not
the outcomes of struggle. Sŏ’s goal was to actualize the humanistic values
based on self-reflection and spontaneity of people as an individual.
Their life histories as woman labor activists represent the four typical
patterns of activist life in Korea’s labor movement. They did not stop rais-
ing questions on many aspects of the contemporary labor movement. The
women activists of the union movement strived to develop alternative
ideas on the value of labor and the idea of “democracy” (Kim 2005).
Those alternative values might contain clues to solve today’s “crisis of the
labor movement” in South Korea, on which observers both within and
without the labor movement concur as real and critical.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this essay appeared as Kim and Nam (2012).
2. Unlike Chun Soonok, who made Han Sunim a typical example of a traitor
of the union movement (Chun 2003), Hwasook Nam reads Han Sunim’s
story as a kind of protest against the culture and strategies of the mainstream
minju labor movement, an alternative narrative to the master narrative of
minju labor activism (Nam 2009: 27–30).
3. The UIM, along with the Catholic JOC (Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne),
played an important role in the 1970s democratic labor movement. See Koo
2001, chapter 4.
4. The “NL” (National Liberation) and “PD” (People’s Democracy) groups
represented the two most influential factions in the 1980s radical social
movement in South Korea. The NL group prioritized the task of national
reunification because the group saw the country’s subordination to the USA
as the biggest problem, while the PD group prioritized the struggles
between labor and capital within the country. The “CA” group belonged to
the latter.
5. These books are critical of modern Korean history and society. College stu-
dents used to read them in quasi-legal circles to understand the reality of their
country. Exemplary books include such books as Chunhwan sidae ŭi nonri
(The logic of a transition period) by Lee Yŏnghee and Haebang chunhusa ŭi
insik (Understanding the liberation period) by Song Kŏnho et al. (6 vols.).
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tion. Han’guk sanŏp nodongja ŭi hy ŏngsŏng kwa saenghwal segye y ŏn’gu. Labor
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Bipyŏng 66: 324–342.
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[Class, Culture, Language: Politics of Meaning in Corporate Space].
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saneghwal ŭi ch’ŭkmyŏn esŏ [The Development of Democracy in 1980s South
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CHAPTER 12
Truth, History Revision, and South Korea’s

Mnemonic Representation of the Past
Ñusta Carranza Ko
Truth-seeking, reparations, criminal prosecutions, legislative changes, and

institutional reforms are important transitional justice processes that
address past human rights violations of a state. Embedded in these transi-
tional justice mechanisms is an implicit reference to memory.1 Memory in
transitional justice is regarded as “a silent shibboleth of the field,” one that
“organizes its most taken-for-granted principles that demand confronta-
tions with the past in order to renew the present” (Manning 2017: 5).
Societies in transition undergo the confrontation with the past, to amend
past trauma and progress socially (2017: 31). This process involves the
agency of the state that intervenes to mandate the direction of a society’s
memory. In this context, memory is a tool that may be politically used and
reproduced to stabilize a state in transition.
This study is about the mnemonic representation of the past for states
undergoing transition. Collective memory of the past borrows from
Olick’s idea of “genuine collective memory,” which is made up of “public
discourses about the past as wholes” or “narratives and images of the past
that speak in the name of collectivities” (Olick 1999: 345). Textbooks and
schools “carry the work of transitional justice instruments beyond … the
scope of influence,” helping for instance truth commissions disseminate
Ñ. Carranza Ko (*)
University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA

282 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
the truth and preserve the memory of victims and past harm (Cole 2007:
121–3). An empirical examination of human rights language in history
textbooks sheds light as to how and why transitional justice processes
influence changes in policy, particularly in history revision and memory.
The findings reflect how the language of human rights within textbooks
reflects the politics of memory reproduction, even in states that transi-
tioned from abusive pasts to democracies. Studies that connect memory
and truth-seeking, reparations, and commemoration have been discussed
previously (Jelin 2007; Hamber and Wilson 2002; Moon, C. 2012; Brown
2013), while studies that link history revisions as a form of symbolic repa-
ration related to truth-seeking efforts have yet to be done.
This chapter explores the relationship between memory and repara-
tions, with a focus on history education. Symbolic reparations include
“official apologies, rehabilitation, the change of names of public spaces,
the establishment of days of commemoration, the creation of museum and
parks” (De Greiff 2006: 453), and history education intimately linked
with revisions and reproductions of memory. Specifically, this study focuses
on the reproductions of memory in history education and the historical
narratives in truth commissions. As Cole explains, “secondary school his-
tory revision” helps a society’s ability to “reckon with the difficult past for
the sake of a more just future” and complements truth-telling (2007:
123). History textbooks are produced by the state for public school distri-
bution and as government publications, and an analysis of the content of
these texts can gauge the extent to which the history they present reflects
the symbolic reparations recommended by truth commissions. And, the
broader reflections from this study explore the ways politics shape transi-
tional justice mechanisms and how revisions in history textbooks carry
their own political objectives by advancing a form of memory that serves
specific political interests.
From these observations, this chapter examines the case study of South
Korea that has proliferated in its development of truth-seeking practices
along with other mechanisms of accountability and reparations. The chapter
considers how the historical narrative from the South Korean Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (established in 2005) (TRCK) has been chan-
neled in history education via South Korea’s 2016 national history text-
book. The analysis of memory from this textbook argues for the need to
critically evaluate the politics that shape memory construction. The political
interests’ influence on truth-seeking and history revisions reveals how a con-
servative vision of politics in South Korea’s contemporary h istory frames the
12 TRUTH, HISTORY REVISION, AND SOUTH KOREA’S MNEMONIC… 283
creation of memory. As changes in history education can potentially reflect

the “state’s official acknowledgement of past injustices” and its “commit-
ment to institutionalizing transitional justice processes like truth commis-
sions” (Cole 2007: 123), the politics involving the Korean case serves as a
telling case for the limited implication of truth-telling, or the lack thereof, in
the reproduction of memory.
In this chapter, I first outline the research frame and method, then
engage in discussions of the literature on memory and transition, and
from that point I analyze the South Korean case. I use political discourse
analysis to analyze the TRCK’s Final Report and the high school national
history textbook in comparison. This approach includes elements of dis-
course analysis, which takes into consideration the “social structures and
social practices” that embody the texts and “social agents,” such as that of
political actors, that shape texts (Fairclough 2003: 22). Additionally, it
uses ideas from political discourse analysis that examine how political con-
text shapes reproductions of political power in texts (Van Dijk 1997: 24,
11). Previous studies on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission have used discourse analysis to examine how the Commission
constructed a discourse on human rights violations, created categories of
victims and perpetrators, and produced a narrative of the violent past and
the future reconciliation (Moon 2006: 260–9). The TRCK’s Final Report
and the high school national history textbook are analyzed in a similar
way, with a greater emphasis on the power dynamics related to South
Korean politics.
Specifically, I compare the portrayal of two periods in recent Korean
history with large-scale human rights abuses: General Park Chung Hee
(1961–79) and General Chun Doo Hwan’s (1980–88) governments. The
focus is on the variation from the TRCK’s Final Report and the national
history textbook, which are expected to have similar narratives about past
human rights violations. This view is built from the constructivist theoreti-
cal view on how the adoption of human rights norms results in positive
and improved human rights practices for a state (Dube 2011). This per-
tains to South Korea’s transitional justice policy record (e.g., prosecuting
two former heads of state) which implies that Korea would be more likely
to abide by the transitional justice policies it voluntarily adopted. It is
important to note that on May 31, 2017, South Korea rejected the use of
the national history textbook in secondary educational institutions.
Nonetheless, as this text was the state’s most recent attempt to sponsor the
production of a national history textbook in a market dominated by p rivate
284 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
textbook companies, an analysis of the content specifically on the human

rights abuses included in the TRCK’s Final Report is merited.
Memory and Transitional Justice

Previous debates in transitional justice often juxtaposed various pro-
cesses of transitional justice against one another, for instance, truth-
seeking and justice. According to this view, truth commissions or
“official bodies set up to investigate and report on a pattern of past
rights abuses” (Hayner 2001: 5) forgo the pursuit of justice for the
promotion of societal reconciliation (Gutmann and Thompson 2000:
22). The case of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(1996) is often referenced as a key example where truth-seeking came
at the expense of justice, where perpetrators who came forward to pro-
vide information on their non-politically motivated crimes were given
amnesty. Contrasting the categorization of certain transitional justice
processes as opposed and exclusive, in recent years, the literature has
shifted towards acknowledging the complementary relationship of
transitional justice mechanisms. For instance, scholars note the truth
commissions’ positive contribution to justice (Hayner 2001: 86–8);
the impact that truth-telling has had when combined with criminal jus-
tice (Rotberg 2000: 6); and explored individual cases of Sierra Leone,
Mexico, and Peru, where having truth-seeking and criminal prosecu-
tions (Bassin and Van Zyl 2009: 252), combining truth, justice, and
reparations (Acosta and Ennelin 2006: 104), or gathering probative
material (i.e. “judicial truth”) and having integral reparations programs
have been effective in dealing with human rights crimes (Ciurlizza and
González 2006: 6).
Memory and history revisions are a form of symbolic reparations, which
form part of the larger arena of the various processes of transitional justice.
Memory and transitional justice debates often revolve around discussions
on the definitions of collective memory and the politics of memory. Olick
argues that collective memory is a multifaceted process built on two views
of memory, one which regards collective memory as an aggregate of indi-
vidual recollections and sees it as having a subjective quality, and the other
that considers it as a set of patterns of “publicly available symbols objecti-
fied in society” (1999: 336). The conglomeration of these visions creates
a collective memory, where individual and society’s memory come together
to form a collective memory (1999: 346).
Connecting such discussions of collective memory with truth-seeking,

Wilson (2001) identifies how the political constraints on South Africa’s
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) conditioned the truth-
seeking work of the commission. Due to the amnesty arraignment negoti-
ated by former regime personnel and the new government in power and
the internal political discordance between truth commissioners who
wanted to emphasize the legal aspect and others who focused on the rec-
onciliatory role of the TRC, the TRC was unable to produce a coherent
narrative of truth about human rights violations (Wilson 2001: 20, 41).
Such views are reiterated by Hamber and Wilson’s study on the TRC that
explains how the TRC’s political aim to “construct memory” in a single
official collective version of memory (2002: 36) repressed individual vic-
tims’ memories. Wilson (2001) and Hamber and Wilson’s (2002) works
all point to the political conditions that shape truth-seeking work and col-
lective memory.
Other scholars further discuss the complexities of the political struggles
of memory, linking memory with symbolic reparations. Jelin examines
how policies of public memorialization in the Southern Cone (i.e., com-
memorations, territorial markers, and archives) cannot be seen indepen-
dently. Jelin (2007) notes that these processes of remembrance and the
creation of a public memory involves a continuous political struggle
around the meaning of memory. A commemorative date may evoke differ-
ent memories and meanings for the actors involved in the creation of
memory, which includes the state, individual victims, and society.
Adding to Jelin’s ideas (2007) on the politics of memory, Manning
(2017) examines how processes of criminal accountability can be exces-
sively imbued with political interests by analyzing Cambodia’s Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts (ECCC). While the ECCC was established in the
name of “ameliorating past violence,” it too carried its own political objec-
tives: “foreclosing some ways of thinking about memories of atrocity just
as others are enabled” (Manning 2017: 10). Nongovernmental organiza-
tions from Cambodia and the United States that were involved in the cam-
paign to create the ECCC and administer criminal accountability against
Khmer Rouge were particularly effective in advancing their political agen-
das of history education on genocide (Manning 2017: 53). This included
the creation of genocide education programs as a follow-up to the ECCC
work in Cambodian public schools and the distribution of new textbooks
for schools to support the curriculum. As education is a “central venue for
the construction and consolidation” of memories and the national identity
286 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
of a state (Manning 2017: 100), the Cambodian textbooks included infor-

mation on the genocide, helping to create a memory that addressed the
state’s violent political past.
Cole (2007) also explores the connection that Manning (2017) makes
on transitional justice and history education. From Cole’s view, history
education shares similarities with transitional justice policies in confront-
ing the past. History education and truth commissions share the essential
task of reducing the “number of lies” in public discourse about past human
rights violations (2007: 119). Particularly, textbooks are a useful tool that
form a part of the discourse of “reckoning with the past” and are regarded
by victim groups as a tool to “gauge the intent of former perpetrators of
violence and the sincerity of their commitments not to repeat the past”
(2007: 125). In other words, the narrative of the past in the textbook that
acknowledges past violence provides a glimpse for citizens as to whether
the state has become a reliable partner in the post-conflict transition soci-
ety. Such views about the importance of textbooks are shared in scholar-
ship on textbooks and politics from Apple (1993, 2004), who notes how
textbooks are produced out of political, economic, and cultural debates,
and how the knowledge that they portray carries a political objective.
The discourse on memory in East Asia also involves the politics of
memory. South Korea stands out for its record of human rights innova-
tion, establishing the most extensive system of truth-seeking in the region.
The reach of the estimated ten truth commissions examine human rights
violations from Japanese colonial rule, the Korean War (1950–53), and
authoritarian periods in Korean history. Korean memory scholarship
focuses on various themes of regional reconciliation and memory, along
with the politics of memory and Korean truth commission work. Memory
and reconciliation that involves Japan, discusses the lack of recognition,
apology, and compensation from Japan towards Korean comfort women,
and how this stance has soured the political relations of the two states
(Kim, M. 2013, 2014, 2016). Other scholarship on truth-seeking in
South Korea analyzes the accomplishments and shortcomings of truth
commissions such as the Jeju 4.3 Commission (established in 2000) (Kim,
M. 2014) and the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRCK) (established in 2005) (Kim, M. 2014).
This chapter contributes to the scholarship on memory in East Asia and
other works on transitional justice processes and memory production
(Manning 2017; Cole 2007) by assessing the relationship between
memory, symbolic reparations, and truth-commission narratives.

Particularly, I focus on history revisions produced in textbooks that com-

plement truth-telling and deepen official acknowledgement of atrocities
(Cole 2007: 23). Using political discourse analysis, this study explores
history textbook revisions of the key human rights violations in the most
recent authoritarian past in comparison to the 2010 Final Report of the
South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRCK). I argue
that while the textbook’s collective memory reproduced from truth-seek-
ing work is not completely at odds with the TRCK’s Final Report, it leaves
the historical context of some of the gravest human rights atrocities in
Korean modern history underexplored. The toning down of such crimes
conditions the ways in which human rights memory for younger genera-
tions is shaped. This case reveals how politics constrains the reproduction
of memory from truth-seeking, making it difficult to have a collective
historical narrative that relies on truth commissions.
Truth Commissions’ Link with History Textbooks

On December 1, 2005, the government of President Roh Moo Hyun
(2003–08) launched the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRCK) via the Framework Act on Clearing Up Past
Incidents for Truth and Reconciliation (Law No. 7542). The enactment
of the TRCK followed years after South Korea’s transition to democracy
and implementation of various transitional justice mechanisms, including
the reparations for victims of the Kwangju Massacre.2 The TRCK’s objec-
tives under Article 1 of Law No. 7542 were to facilitate the reconciliation
of society, seek the truth about crimes related to anti-Japanese indepen-
dence movements, anti-democratic and anti-humanitarian human rights
violations, and suspicious deaths from 1945 and throughout the authori-
tarian regimes (National Archives of Korea 2017; TRCK 2006). The
TRCK attempted to cover all periods of Korean history, including mass
killings and individual cases that the commission regarded as meriting
importance.
The TRCK’s recommendations on symbolic reparations began with its
2006 Report on truth-findings. Under Chapter IV Article 40 of the
Report, the TRCK specified the form of symbolic reparations, asking the
state to establish an organization to oversee commemorative initiatives
that would honor the victims (TRCK 2006: 77). Along with these recom-
mendations, in the 2010 Final Report, the TRCK made additional
suggestions to the state on, among other things, instituting peace and
288 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
security education and cultivating education based on historical conscious-

ness (TRCK 2010a: 200, 211–25).3 The TRCK’s recommendations on his-
tory revisions and rectifications formed the basis to promote an educational
revision to help society reconcile with past political violence.
History revisions and history education as recommended by the TRCK
is better understood within the context of Korea’s textbook publication
system for secondary education, which is dominated by a state-sponsored
and a state-authorized textbook publication system. From the changes
instituted by the Ministry of Education in 1977, state-sponsored national
history textbooks were developed by the state in collaboration with aca-
demic or research institutions. With the 2007 Seventh National Curriculum
Reform, the textbook publication process changed from being heavily
dependent on state-sponsored to state-authorized productions, and cre-
ated a separate textbook and course curriculum for Korea’s modern and
contemporary history. As a result, state-sponsored history textbooks
became largely replaced by state-authorized textbooks, which are pro-
duced by private publishers (e.g., Jihaksa, Kyohaksa, and Keumyoung
Publishers) following state guidelines and with the approval from the
Korean Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation and the Ministry of
Education, Science, and Technology (Lee 2010: 143). Scholars welcomed
this development, as the new textbooks would no longer voice a single
government-led narrative of history (2010: 144). The 2009 National
Curriculum Reforms that followed also brought some changes to pre-
modern and contemporary Korean history education in secondary institu-
tions. The reforms instituted new learning outcomes that focused on
disseminating a correct vision of history and situating Korea’s historical
experience, such as that of Japanese colonialism and the rise of indepen-
dence, democratization, and social movements to the broader regional
context (Moon, Y. J. 2012: 116–17).
While the 2007 and 2009 National Reforms were indicative of the
increased role of the state in history education, as the reforms created a
shift from state-sponsored to state-authorized textbook production based
on private publishers, the state’s overall influence in shaping the narrative
of history in textbooks decreased. Given this backdrop, the publication of
the state-sponsored 2016 national history textbook represented a signifi-
cant change that brought the state back into the conversation of memory
construction. According to the Committee Investigating the Truth about
the State-Sponsored History Textbook Production, President Park Geun
Hye’s (2013–16) political motivations guided the development of the
national history textbook. Critics note how the textbook idealized Dictator
Park Chung Hee’s government (1961–79), the father of President Park
Geun Hye, highlighting the economic successes while downplaying the
growth in human rights violations (Kim 2017). Such views formed the core
founding ideas of South Korea’s conservative political movement of adopt-
ing authoritarian rules to suppress challenges against the state, with the goal
of a future “realization of democracy” (Kang 2014: 25). As the national
history textbook committee members were predominantly identified as
sympathizers of conservative ideology, the opposition questioned the pos-
sibility of a conflict of interests between the academics involved in the text-
book development and President Park’s government (Kim, D.-C. 2015).
The most recent attempt by the state to produce a state-sponsored his-
tory textbook was rejected on May 31, 2017 by the incoming administra-
tion of President Moon Jae In (2017–22) for allegations of “abuse of
power” (Ministry of Education 2016). The rejection of the textbook for
its political leanings seemed to clear the way for a diminished role of the
state in structuring memory and history. However, President Moon’s gov-
ernment soon launched new State Guidelines for History Education and
Textbook Writing Criteria with the input from the Korea Institute for
Curriculum and Evaluation and related policy researchers (Ministry of
Education 2016). The new initiative once again brought the discussion of
textbook production as involving a possible state power dynamic in guid-
ing the direction of memory for secondary institutions. Keeping these
changing political developments in mind, in the sections to follow I ana-
lyze the connections between truth-seeking and memory, examining the
most prominent cases of human rights violations from the TRCK’s Final
Report which occurred during dictators Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo
Hwan’s eras.
Memory and History Narrative of Dictator Park

There is not a single dominant South Korean memory of the 1970s.
According to scholars, General Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship (1961–79)
is remembered in a mixed way, as a period of significant economic devel-
opment accompanied with suppression of civil liberties (Baker 2010).
Korea generated “high levels of economic growth rates” that made the
state one of the “rising dragons of Asia,” although it came at a “steep
price” with the deterioration of workers’ rights and human rights (Heo
and Roehrig 2010: 24). The TRCK’s Report lists various human rights
290 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
violations from this period, including forced labor, crimes related to the
violation of Park’s national security law, arbitrary detention, and torture
from the May 16, 1961 coup d’état (TRCK 2010b: ii). These human
rights violations from the early years of Park’s dictatorship were noticeably
absent in the national history textbook. This added to the critics’ views on
how President Park’s political motivations in portraying her father’s legacy
in a more positive light may have impacted the production of memory in
the text. Similarly, the political interests of the researchers that were com-
missioned to write the textbook and the deliberation committee that over-
saw the text’s final publication were questioned in a similar vein. The
committee members included the President of the Academy of Korean
Studies, Lee Gi Dong, whose views were under the influence of the state,
as the Academy was a state-linked higher educational institution. As his-
tory education can “complement and deepen both official acknowledge-
ment of harm done and truth telling” (Cole 2007: 123), the political input
of researchers involved in Park’s textbook publication were thereby crucial
in framing the public’s understanding about past human rights atrocities.
What is unique about the politics of memory production in Korea is
that other human rights abuses that came in the latter years of Dictator
Park’s regime were included in the textbook’s narrative. For this reason, it
is difficult to reiterate only the critics’ view that the textbook presented the
positive side of Dictator Park’s government, for instance solely document-
ing the 1970s new village movement (saemaul undong) that boosted
Korea’s economy (Kim, I.-W 2016) and disregarding the human rights
crimes. In other words, while President Park’s political interests to docu-
ment a positive legacy of her father’s government may have influenced
parts of the textbook, the inclusion of some human rights violations from
this period reflected the complexities of politics involved in memory con-
struction. However, evaluating the textbook from the TRCK’s recom-
mendations on revising history according to the truth commission’s
findings, there is clear evidence that the text selectively omitted certain
human rights crimes and the political context of how they occurred. This
in turn ended up creating a version of historical memory in the national
history textbook that deviated from the TRCK’s truth narrative.
The heading of Chapter VII Section II of the national history textbook
describes Dictator Park’s era as one of “authoritarian governance structure
during the Cold War period and the socioeconomic progress in South
Korea” (TRCK 2010b: 262). A positive outlook is provided about the
economic development of Korea echoing the conservative political views
of President Park and those involved in the textbook committee. However,

neither Chapter VI nor VII refers to the human rights violations that
accompanied Park’s rise to power on May 16, 1961. The TRCK’s Final
Report documents the arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and conviction
without due process of 17 civilians during the May 1961 military coup
d’état that brought Park to power (TRCK 2010b: 78–82). The
Commission found Park responsible for these crimes, along with other
basic human rights violations he committed in the name of security mea-
sures for the state (TRCK 2010b: 80–2). The list of omitted human rights
violations from the textbook also extended to the July 1964 case of the
People’s Revolutionary Party investigated by the TRCK. This was a fol-
low-up case to a previous incident brought to the Committee on Korean
Central Intelligence, which found the state responsible for the arbitrary
detention of individuals suspected of being members of the leftist People’s
Revolutionary Party. The TRCK recommended a new hearing for the vic-
tims and found the state responsible for the human rights abuses (TRCK
2010b: 96–7). As the textbook committee’s conservative political views
were critical of social movements that challenged the state’s political sta-
bility, it was suggestive of why these human rights violations were excluded
from the history narrative.
The human rights violations documented in the textbook focus on
human rights crimes that resulted from the passage, adoption, and institu-
tion of the 1972 Yushin Constitution (Ministry of Education 2016:
262–5). According to the textbook, this period was one that experienced
both the entry of the Constitution and the trial of democracy. The chal-
lenges to democracy resulted from the Constitution, which expanded the
power of the executive branch by giving the president the power to appoint
and dismiss cabinet members and allowing one-third of the National
Assembly a third presidential term. The Yushin Constitution formed the
basis of what scholars consider as “neo-colonial fascism,” which “impeded
civil liberties” (Heo and Roehrig 2010: 24) and aimed to “suppress the
people’s demand that the ruling classes of imperialism cease to resist lib-
eral democratic reforms” (Jean 2003: 163). The textbook criticizes the
authoritarian quality of the Constitution, discussing the abuse of power of
the executive branch and the enactment of the Emergency Decrees. It
describes the public’s backlash against the government and the anti-Yushin
campaigns, including the March 1 campaign for the return of democracy
from students and political leaders which were characteristic of these times
(Ministry of Education 2016: 265).
292 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
Along with the human rights violations stemming from the Yushin
Constitution, the textbook also referenced other human rights violations
included in the TRCK’s Final Report. One of the violations dealt with the
Yushin Constitution and the president’s emergency martial law. The state
implemented martial law, under ten different circumstances that the state
deemed as endangering the state, such as any instance of social movements
to revise or revoke the Constitution (TRCK 2010b: 119–21). Essentially,
martial law allowed the state to arbitrarily detain, disregard due process,
and terminate employment of any individual or education institution that
expressed disagreement against the government. As documented by the
TRCK, Dictator Park’s government indiscriminately targeted individuals
of various professions (e.g., workers, academics, and artists) who expressed
dissent against the government. The individuals were labeled as leftists,
accused of espionage, forced to confess to crimes, tortured, and convicted
without trial for three to eight years in prison (TRCK 2010b: 122–9).
The textbook makes specific reference to three distinct human rights
crimes discussed by the TRCK. The first case was the 1973 kidnapping of
human rights activist and government opposition politician Kim Dae Jung
by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (Ministry of Education 2016:
266). This was a case listed in the TRCK Report’s timeline on human
rights violations during the period of the Yushin Constitution. The second
was a human rights violation that occurred a year later in 1974 against the
National Democratic Youth and Student Alliance. A footnote at the bot-
tom of the page of the textbook explains how the Park regime charged the
students for being part of an anti-government subversive organization. In
fact, the textbook even included the most up-to-date information of this
case, referencing the 2009 court decision to absolve the students of their
crimes (2016: 266). The third case included in the textbook was the 1974
reconsideration of the People’s Revolutionary Party. The textbook
reported the accusations from the state against the People’s Revolutionary
Party for having received orders from North Korea to foment student
protests and disrupt the bilateral talks between South Korea and Japan in
July 1964 (TRCK 2010b: 96). The reconsideration of this case in 1974,
which the TRCK did not include in the Final Report, led to the conviction
of the Party members for the death penalty. An additional reference is
made in the textbook to a related court ruling in 2007 of the same con-
victed People’s Revolutionary Party members, who were declared inno-
cent of their crimes (Ministry of Education 2016: 266).
The textbook’s reference to these cases could be interpreted as a signal

from the government to revise history and include information on human
rights violations investigated by the TRCK. The national history textbook
does represent some of the important human rights violations that
occurred during Dictator Park’s government. On the other hand, it could
be also considered as a result of a political compromise between the visions
of the conservative leaning textbook writers and the TRCK’s Final Report
which extensively documented the human rights violations from Park’s
period. Adding weight to this argument, the textbook leaves out signifi-
cant portions of detail related to the politics that permitted such viola-
tions, which were included in the TRCK’s Report (TRCK 2010b:
119–21). The omission constructs a partial historical picture of Dictator
Park’s regime that caters to the conservative vision of Korean history. The
shaping of historical narratives that leave out major human rights viola-
tions involves political complexities, ones that are bound to the political
calculations of actors involved in the production of memory. Furthermore,
the textbook does not discuss the political context of the human rights
abuses under the Yushin Constitution and the nine different Emergency
Decrees. The Decrees expanded the emergency powers of the president
and “provided for emergency courts-martial for offenders,” restricted
freedom of assembly by suppressing students’ political activities, and, with
censorship of the press, restricted the freedom of the press (Chen 2010:
77 n. 113). This context of state repression contextualizes the disregard
for human rights and the extent of the state violence against the popula-
tion. Nevertheless, the national history textbook limits the discussion on
Emergency Decrees to a single line, with only a reference to the Yushin
Constitution (Ministry of Education 2016: 265).
It is worth nothing that the textbook’s reference to human rights
crimes from Park’s dictatorship may signal some state inclination to con-
form with the TRCK’s narrative and its recommendations on history revi-
sion. However, the selective omission of other human rights abuses and
the absence of information on the politics that perpetuated the human
rights violations during this period question the sincerity of this signaling.
The construction of a partial version of history from the national history
textbook failed to contribute to the strengthening of memory and
rectification of history as had been envisioned by the TRCK. Similar

debates on memory were also found in the textbook’s history of Dictator
Chun Doo Hwan’s government.
294 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
The Memory of Kwangju

Human rights abuses escalated further during Chun Doo Hwan’s govern-
ment (1980–88). Following Dictator Park’s assassination by the Director
of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency on October 26, 1979, General
Chun took power after a military staged coup d’état on December 12,
1979. By this time, South Korea was under martial law and protests that
demanded the “termination of martial law and democratisation” (Chen
2010: 78) had broken out on May 14, 1980 across the cities of Kwangju,
Busan, and Masan. In the name of political stability, Chun launched even
more repressive measures, including the arrest of opposition leaders, pro-
hibition of any political activities, censoring of the press, and closing down
universities (2010: 78). Of the numerous campaigns to quell the demon-
strations, one specifically targeted the city of Kwangju. A large group of
students from various universities in Kwangju gathered for a peaceful pro-
test (Katsiaficas 2012: 166). The days that followed from May 18 to May
27, 1980, resulted in the gravest breach of human rights violations in
Korean history, known as the Kwangju Massacre. Scholars estimate that
“close to two thousand” died and disappeared in the city of Kwangju,
compared to conservative government records of two hundred victims
(Heo and Roehrig 2010: 32).
Chun’s government argued that Kwangju’s situation was inevitable as
the city and the protests were “taken over by rioters” and that therefore
the government had “no choice but to use force to restore order” (Baker
2010: 205). Contrary to the state’s position, scholars note that the mas-
sacre involved not civilian rioters but rather government paratroopers who
were “so out of control that they even stabbed to death the director of
information of the police station when he tried to stop them from brutal-
izing people” (Katsiaficas 2012: 167). In fact, the violence from govern-
ment forces even targeted innocent Kwangju citizens not involved the
protests. The indiscriminate killings of Kwnagju citizens were reconfirmed
in the TRCK’s Final Report. Additionally, the TRCK found evidence of
state use of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, manipulation of evi-
dence, and conviction without due process of individuals such as Kim Hee
Kwon and Yoon (first name unknown) who participated in the Kwangju
democratization movement (TRCK 2010b: 11, 326–8). The only excep-
tion was with the case of Chae Su-Gil, who was found to have been killed
on May 23, 1980 by government security forces in Kwangju and buried in
an undisclosed location. While the state was responsible for his death and
secret burial, the TRCK found insufficient evidence to determine whether

or not the state had purposely manipulated his army-related records, for
which his time of death had been ruled as inconclusive (TRCK
2010b: 323–4).
As determined in the TRCK’s Final Report, Kwangju’s Democratization
Movement was a pivotal moment in the Korean history of democratiza-
tion, which unfortunately was used as a pretext by the state to continue
the violations of human rights. Chun characterized the Movement as
threatening the state’s political order and created a National Security
Emergency Committee to repress the political opposition and establish his
government control (TRCK 2010b: 311). The Committee and the mea-
sures that were instituted gave the government the power to designate
companies as anti- or pro-government. The categorization was then used
by the government as a tool to crack down on any businesses in the name
of the “purge against corruption and tax evasion” (TRCK 2010b: 315).
Dongmyung Timber was one of the companies on the government’s hit-
list. From June 15, 1980, the owner of Dongmyung Timber, Kang Suk
Jin, and the President of the Board of Trustees of other Dongmyung-
related companies, Kang Jung Nam, in addition to some employees, were
arbitrarily detained up to two months for being an anti-government busi-
ness. Only after Kang Suk Jin and Kang Jung Nam agreed to cede the
companies’ assets, they were released from government detention (TRCK
2010b: 315–17).
The national history textbook included a general description of
Kwangju’s Democratization Movement and the accompanying human
rights violations from the state. However, the history narrated in the text-
book neglected to cover the political context of the massacre which
resulted from the authoritarian rule of Dictator Chun. Moreover, the spe-
cifics of what types of human rights crimes were committed were notice-
ably absent in the textbook. As Kwangju’s Democratization Movement is
often challenged in its categorization as a revolutionary movement or as
an uprising, it was important to specify the memory of this citizen-led
democracy movement and how this massacre set a historical precedent for
Korea’s future democratization efforts. Furthermore, it was important to
contextualize the reason why the democracy movement flourished in the
city of Kwangju located in the Jeolla Province. This region had long been
marginalized and excluded from the policies of economic development
pursued by Dictator Park Chung Hee. Thus, the impetus for the citizens
296 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
to cry out against another dictatorial government and to demand democ-

racy was already brewing in Kwangju.
In defense of the textbook, at the very least it followed the TRCK’s
wording in referring to Kwangju’s human rights violations as the May 18
Democracy Movement (Ministry of Education 2016: 270). And, there
was some information as to how the anti-government protests spread
through the country after the troops enforcing martial law closed Congress
and detained thousands of students and politicians on May 17, 1980.
According to the textbook, the protesters in Kwangju faced violence
which was “overdone” (2016: 270). The textbook also includes two pic-
tures of Geumnam road in Kwangju that provide a visual to the democracy
movement with a commentary on the role that the May 18 Kwangju
Democratization Movement had in South Korea and East Asia’s democra-
tization efforts. However, no pictures document the brutalities of the
Massacre or of the aftermath of the vicious campaign from the govern-
ment against the citizens of Kwangju. In fact, there is no further elabora-
tion on the specific cases of human rights violations related to the
Democratization Movement and none of the cases from the TRCK’s Final
Report is mentioned in the section. The only other picture on the same
page is headlined as the “Burmese Terrorist Incident,” with a brief caption
that describes the South Korean delegation that was present before the
1983 North Korean terrorist attacks in Myanmar (2016: 271).
Compared to the historical narrative on Kwangju’s Democratization
Movement, the textbook does detail another important democracy move-
ment that came at a later date in June 1987. The textbook explains how
the June Democratization Movement developed, explaining how the tor-
ture of university student Park Jong Chul served as a catalyst to motivate
the protests (Ministry of Education 2016: 272). Such reasoning is absent
on Kwangju. Moreover, different than the Kwangju case where even indi-
vidual human rights cases (e.g., Domgmyung Timber) were absent, for
the June Movement, the textbook elaborates on the case study of Park.
The TRCK describes Park as a junior Seoul National University student
majoring in linguistics who was arbitrarily detained at 11 a.m. on January
14, 1987, by security forces and questioned for the whereabouts of
another Seoul National University student and democracy activist Park
Chong Woon. In this process, Park Jong Chul faced waterboarding and
torture, which led to his death by suffocation (TRCK 2010b: 314–15).
Along similar lines, the textbook explains that Park was tortured to death
in 1987 (Ministry of Education 2016: 272). The textbook further notes
how Park’s death brought about a public outcry against the government
and helped mobilize the democratization movement. The death of univer-
sity student Lee Han Yeul on June 9, 1987, who was fatally wounded from
a police tear gas canister, which is not included in the TRCK’s Final
Report, is also referenced in the textbook in contextualizing how the June
Democratization Movement gained more momentum (2016: 272).
The individual case studies of state crimes against Park and Lee, and
the historical narrative on the June Democratization Movement of 1987
that conforms and even expands more than the TRCK’s Report, strike a
clear comparison to the textbook’s coverage of the Kwangju
Democratization Movement. While there was information on Kwangju,
including photos of Geumnamro, there were limited causal explanations
of what led to the movement and the Massacre, and why it mattered for
Korea’s democratization. History rectification as had been recommended
by the TRCK did not refer to a selective revision of history. In other
words, all history had to be revisited to correctly portray the memory of
the past, in this case of both Kwangju and the June Democratization
Movement. The weight that the national history textbook placed on
describing one human rights violation over that of another constructed
only a partial picture of the true historical events that had taken place,
deviating from the TRCK’s truth narrative and memory on human
rights crimes.
Revision of Memory and Politics

Comparing the historical truth of the human rights crimes from Park
Chung Hee’s dictatorship and the Kwangju Democratization Movement
in the Final Report of the TRCK and the 2016 national history textbook,
reflects the difficult relationship that symbolic reparations and memory
initiatives, such as history revisions, have in post-authoritarian states. The
national history textbook did produce a narrative with respect to past
human rights history, describing the state violence from Dictator Park and
Dictator Chun’s eras. Contrary to the critics’ views, the textbook did not
completely thwart all references to human rights abuses from Park’s
regime, nor did it only elaborate on the economic successes of the times.
In similar ways, the textbook did introduce the Kwangju Massacre as a
democratization movement. And, it even included more history on other
democratization movements (i.e., the June Democratization Movement)
and individual human rights violations.
298 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
Despite the convergence of the TRCK and the national history text-
book’s memory on some grounds, the textbook still offers a narrow and
selective portrayal of the truth about both periods of authoritarian leader-
ship. The textbook omits the discussion of the varying types of human
rights crimes committed from Park’s regime and opts to not contextualize
the politics that caused the Kwangju Democratization Movement. The
decision to emphasize one truth over another contradicts the TRCK’s rec-
ommendations on revising the human rights history of Korea. And, this
finding strengthens the position from the critics on the politics that con-
ditioned the construction and production of memory in the national his-
tory textbook.
The politics of memory echoes back to the critics’ original views on
how the filial relationship between Dictator Park and President Park Geun
Hye, who directed the national history textbook project, influenced the
vision of history portrayed in the textbook. The emphasis was placed on
the economic successes of Dictator Park’s government and all other refer-
ences to the suppression of civil liberties and human rights violations from
the Yushin Constitution (Kim 2017) were pushed aside to shape a rhetoric
of history and memory that caters to the conservative political platform.
As the “workings of memory, such as remembering, forgetting, retrieval
and deletion, are mediated by commemorative media and agents” (Kim,
M. 2015: 17), and given that the agency here was President Park and the
conservative-leaning textbook writers, perhaps this form of selective his-
tory portrayal was not a surprise. In fact, studies have found how on vari-
ous occasions transitional justice processes of truth-seeking and memory
production were used to advance certain political objectives (Loyle and
Davenport 2014: 178). However, what makes this analysis of the history
textbook, truth-seeking work, and memory unique is that politics condi-
tioned the production of memory in a context of a state that had already
transitioned to a democracy and implemented various mechanisms to
address past crimes such as truth commissions, prosecutions, reparations,
and even legislative reforms. The state had already moved on from the
period when the state “shaped the nation’s dominant memory” and “fact-
finding committees” were used as “weapons in memory wars over trau-
matic events” (Baker 2010: 207).
The Korean case is a clear indicator of the continuing influence of poli-
tics in shaping memory narratives and conditioning symbolic reparations
for South Korea. The truth about past human rights memory came sec-
ondary to that of political interests that worked in the development pro-
cess of textbook publication. The textbook was produced in this backdrop

of a clear objective of establishing a version of memory, while not com-
pletely, that favored one version of the truth more than that of others, and
that served the conservative political interests of the state. In this process,
the TRCK’s recommendations fell short of influencing the rectification of
history that conformed to the truth established by the Final Report. The
restrictions that the TRCK faced in making other recommendations to the
state, such as that of medical reparations for victims (Kim, D.C. 2015:
178–80) and the struggle of labeling Kwangju’s Democratization
Movement as a massacre (Lee 2010), were telling signs of the types of
limitations the TRCK’s recommendations on history revision would face
in the textbook production process.
As noted previously, the 2016 national history textbook has been dis-
continued and put aside by the Ministry of Education. The impeachment
of President Park Geun Hye on March 9, 2017, and the new administra-
tion of President Moon that pushed for a new progressive agenda against
old corrupt political interests has put an indefinite hold on the history
textbook initiative. Nevertheless, the new State Guidelines for History
Education and Textbook Writing Criteria from President Moon’s govern-
ment have brought the discussion on how memory ought to be shaped in
history textbooks to the forefront once again. The TRCK’s recommenda-
tion on rectifying history as part of the symbolic reparations, then may
once again be a subject of debate for a future government initiative that
will also involve political struggles of memory production. As the produc-
tion of a history textbook involves the consideration of the sufferings of
the victims and their memories of trauma, in addition to the evidence that
confirms these events, the TRCK’s Final Report will once again serve an
important role as a guideline for the state to address the memory of the
truth of past human rights violations in South Korea.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this chapter has appeared in the journal Memory Studies:
Ñusta Carranza Ko, “Collective Memory of Past Human Rights Abuses—
South Korea,” Memory Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/175069801880
6938. Copyright © 2018 (Ñusta Carranza Ko). Reprinted by permission of
SAGE Publications, Ltd.
2. During Roh Tae Woo’s government (1988–93) Congress opened 17 hear-
ings from June 1988 to February 1989, calling on 67 witnesses, including
300 Ñ. CARRANZA KO
the former president and dictator General Chun Doo Hwan, to testify
before the congressional committee to uncover the truth about the May 18
Democratization Movement in Kwangju (also known as the Kwangju
Massacre). The committee’s hearings did not materialize in any legal pro-
ceedings. The following government of President Kim Young Sam (1993–
98) revisited the Kwangju case, enacting the Special Law on the May 18
Democratization Movement (TRCK 2010a: 4–6).
3. While no specific reference was made to Jörn Rûsen’s theory on historical
consciousness, the TRCK’s recommendations to revise and correct history
were reflective of Rûsen’s ideas on how historical consciousness functions to
“aid us in comprehending past actuality in order to grasp present actuality”
(2004: 67).
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Index1
A Anticolonial Korean nationalism, 170

Abe Shinzō (Japan’s Prime Minister), 52 Anti-communism, 241–243
Absence of husband, 96, 109–116 Anti-Communist Association of
Absentee landlords, 133 Families of the Jeju April 3
Academy of Korean Studies, 290 Incident Victims, 81
Active civil societies, 76 Anti-communist consolation, 26–37
Agency in Bangkok, 190 Anti-communist militarism, 26, 31,
Agrarian service movement (nongchon 32, 34, 35, 37
bongsa hwaldong), 231, 233 Anti-communist political regime, see
Air Force chief of staff Hoyt Anti-communist state
Vandenberg, 165 Anti-communist state, 77, 80
Air University at Maxwell Air Force Antigone, 89
Base, 165 Apology, 53, 60, 61, 65, 67, 282, 286
Ambassador’s residence, 183, April 3 atrocities, see April 3 incident
188–190, 194, 197 April 3 incident, 77, 79, 80, 84
Ancestors Aristocrats, 213
ordinary, 82 Asian Women’s Fund (AWF), 59–61
patriotic “anti-communist,” 82 Asia-Pacific Bureau of the Korean
Ancestral rituals, 75–92 Foreign Ministry, 187
Ancient Kingdom of Kokuryo, 3 Asia-Pacific War, 26, 28–31, 33–37,
Androcentric representation, 54 42n18
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

Fragmentation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05906-4
306 INDEX
Authoritarianism, 5 Chinese Red Army, 146

Authoritarian regimes, 80 Choe Jang-jip, 226
See also Authoritarianism Chong-Tae-Hyop, 53, 59, 61–64, 68,
Authoritarian system, see 68n4, 68n5
Authoritarianism Chŏn’guk Nodong Chohap
Autobiographies, 262 Hyŏbŭihoe, see Korea Trade
Autonomia, 239, 252 Union Congress
Chŏnnohyŏp, see Korea Trade Union
Congress
B Chosŏn Dynasty, 5, 10
Balance of power, 77, 90 See also Chosŏn period
Balance of terror, 77 Chosŏn monarch, see Chosŏn period
Bando Trading, 262 Chosŏn period, 24, 31, 37, 41n4
BBC, 192, 193 Chun Doo Hwan, 241, 254
Behavioralist paradigm, 158 Chun Tae-il, see Jeon Tae-il
Big Powers, 6 CIA, 164
Bipolar ideologies, 75–77, 89, 91 Citizen (gungmin), 210, 211, 213,
See also Bipolar politics 214, 217, 218, 220, 223–231,
Blue House, 186 234
Bok-dong Kim, 51, 65, 68 Citizens’ Court on Peace, 203
Books of ideology (inyŏm sŏjŏk), 272 Civic responsibility, 61
Buon Ma Thuot, 185 Class Consciousness, 259–260,
Bureau of Public Information, 29 274
Butterfly Fund, 64, 65 “Class struggle” theory, 139–141
Cold War, 24, 30, 32, 38, 182, 202,
203
C Cold War developmentalism, 24
California’s Travis Air Force Base, 166 Cold War Orientalism, 164
Cambodia’s Extraordinary Chambers Collective memory, 281, 284, 285,
in the Courts (ECCC), 285 287
Capitalist development, 26, 37 College-student-turned-labor-activists,
Ch’angdŏk Palace, 24, 29, 46n58, see Hakch’ul
47n67 Colonial
Ch’anggyŏng garden, 23–40 history, 56–59
Cheju, 34, 39 imaginaries, 55, 57
Chewŏn, Kim, 169 psychic terrain, 56, 57
Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei, subjection, 3
59, 60 Coloniality, 55, 56
Chi Hoa Prison, 190 Colonization, 53, 55, 56
Children’s Day, 31, 42n22 Colonization of consciousness, see
Children’s education, 113–116 Colonial psychic terrain
Chinese barbarians (orangk’ae), 162 Combat zone residents, 96, 99
INDEX 307
Comfort Women, 2, 10, 52–54, D

58–60, 62–66 Daewoo Apparel, 273
Commander of the Far East Air Forces Danang, 185
(FEAF), 166 Decolonization, 24, 26, 27, 38,
Commemoration, 282, 285 40
Committee Investigating the Truth Defense Security Command, 274
about the State-Sponsored Deficit of self-reflection, 6–7
History Textbook Production, Deleuze, Gilles, 238, 239, 252
288 Democracy, 211, 221–223
Commoner, 213, 216–218 Democracy movement, 8, 14–16, 258,
Communal life, 76 259, 261, 262, 266–268, 271,
Communal relations, see Communal 272, 276
life Democratic Citizens’ Struggle
Communism, 32, 34 Committee, 244
Communist Democratic family, 75, 76, 90
insurgents, 80, 81 Democratic Labor Party (Minju
partisans, 77, 81, 82, 87 Nodongdang), 270
subversives, 81 Democratic Youth Alliance, 139, 140,
Community of fraternity, see Fraternal 154n20
community Democratization movement, 14, 15
Compensation, 286 Detainees (struggle), see Detention
Compressed/high-pressured Detention, 182, 183, 185–198,
modernization, 4–6, 9, 10 201–203
Conspiracy of amnesia, 157, 173 Deterritorialization, 239
Constitutional Assembly (CA), 264, Developmentalism, 214, 215, 217,
277n4 234
Consul Ahn Hee-wan, 190 Developmental state, 230
Cosmopolitan nations, 76 Diaries, 262, 272
Council, see Chong-Tae-Hyop Discrimination against ethnic
Counselor Lee Sang-hoon, 185 minorities, 8
Counterinsurgency military campaigns, Disentanglement of grievous feelings,
77 78
Cream of Korean social scientists, 167, Division, 3, 14, 17n10
169 DMZ, 182
Criminal prosecutions, 281, 284 Dokcheong Disturbance, see Riot of
Crossing the Dead Line, 183 Gapja-myeon
Cultural movies (munhwa yeonghwa), Domestic turmoil, 3
223 Dong Choon Kim, 34
Cultural politics, 24 Dongil Textile, 229
Cultured state (munhwa kukka), 30 Dongmyung Timber, 295
Culture of political protest, 79 DPRK, 164
Cumings, Bruce, 26 Dynamic oppositional agency, 66
308 INDEX
E Financial crisis, 5
East Asia’s hegemonic rivalry, 6 Flag-carriers of modernization, 215
Economic growth, 5, 6, 8 Flight from Sovietization (of Seoul,
Economic miracle, see Miracle of the Two South Korean Rural
Han River Communities), 168
Education, 213, 214, 220, 224, 231, Fractured identity, see Ideational
232, 235n4 fragmentation
Education project, see Education Fragmentation of memories, see
Egalitarian integration, 210–217, 232 Fragmented memories
Egalitarianism, see Egalitarian Fragmented cognitive functions, see
integration Fragmented memories
Egalitarian pressure, see Egalitarian Fragmented/fragmenting memories,
integration 3, 7–10, 14, 16
Em, Henry H., 158, 173 Framework Act on Clearing up Past
Emergency Decrees, 209, 291, 293 Incidents for Truth and
Emotional alchemy, 26, 32, 34 Reconciliation (Law No. 7542),
Equalization, see Egalitarian 287
integration Fraternal community, 239, 243–250,
Equitable distribution of wealth, see 253
Life satisfaction Fratricidal civil war, 3
Eurocentric modernity, 5 Fratricidal Korean War, 182
Evacuation (plan, attempt), 183, French, see Japanese embassy
185–191, 194 Friendship, 246–249, 253
Executive Order 38, 186 From Rags to Riches, see Miracle of
Experience the Han River
of village communities, 130
of war and post-war, 96
Export soldiers, see Industrial warriors G
Gaddis, John Lewis, 91
Gender equality, 78
F Gen. MacArthur, 166
Fanon, Frantz, 23–25 Ghosts, 54, 57–59, 65–67
Farmers’ Union, 139 Giddens, Anthony, 75–77, 88–90, 92
Federation of All Korean Farmers’ Globalist memory, 182
Union, 135 God-sent gift to Korea, see Vietnam’s
Federation of Korean Trade Unions civil war
(FKTU), 261, 269 Gold Collection Drive, 6
Female refugee, 99–108 Gongdori, 231
Feminist activists, 78 Gongsuni, 231
Feminist perspective, see Post-colonial Government-General Building, 27
Feminism Government of Thailand, 187
Final night, 250–254 Grall Hospital, 189, 193, 194
INDEX 309
Great Labor Struggle of 1987, 231 Ho Chi Minh, 185

Gwangju civil militia, 237–254 Holocaust (survivors), 51
Gwangju People’s Uprising in 1980, Homogeneous mass, 217
228 Homogeneous nation, see
Gwangju Settlers’ Protest in 1971, Homogeneous mass
215 Hot Wars, 24, 26, 35–37
Gyeongsangnam-do, 146 HRRI, see U.S. Air Force’s Human
Resources Research Institute
Human irony, 4
H Human rights, 209, 213
Hagui, 84–87 language, 282
Hagui village, see Hagui violations, 281, 283, 285–287,
Hagui villagers, see Hagui 289–299
Hakch’ul, 258–262, 264, 265, Hyosung Corp, 273
267–270, 273–275
Hak-soon Kim, 53
Halbwachs, Maurice, 2 I
Han (恨), 3, 14, 16n2 Ideational fragmentation, 259
Han’guk Textiles, 269 Identities/identity, 257–276
Hangul alphabet, 6 Ideological appellation, 213
Hankuk Chongshindae Munje Ideological bifurcation, see Bipolar
Taech’aek Hyopuihoe, see ideologies
Chong-Tae-Hyop Industrialization, 211, 215, 219, 220,
Han River, 103, 104 226
Han Sunim, 262 Industrial warriors, 215, 225–231
Hardt, Michael, 238 Inequality
Hegel’s “The Night of the World,” sexual, 230
251, 252 social, 213
Hegemonic narrative, 262 Institutional reforms, 281
High suicide rates, 8 Intellectuals (chisigin), 260, 261,
Historical/compressed contradiction, 263–265, 267, 268, 271,
4, 8 273–275
Historical consciousness, 210, 225 Intermediaries, 158, 169
Historical honor, see Historical pride Internalized colonization, see Colonial
Historical justice, 80 psychic terrain
Historical monuments, 80 International Monetary Fund (IMF),
Historical pride, 3, 8, 9, 19n20 5, 6
Historiography of Korean War, 158, International sporting competitions,
173 6
History education, 282, 283, 285, Interviews, 96, 97, 104–115, 118,
286, 288, 290 120–123, 125
History from below, 130 See also Testimonial document
310 INDEX
“An island of peace and human Kim Sŏngsu (1891-1955), 33

rights,” 81 King Sunjong, 24
Itō Hirobumi, 27 King Taejong, 24
IT technology, 8 Kinship, 75, 77, 88–91
Kluckhohn, Clyde, 166, 167
Knowledge projects, 157, 164, 172
J Kono Statement, see Chief Cabinet
January 4th Retreat, 104, 107 Secretary Kono Yohei
Japanese colonization, 24 Korean (detainees/residents), 182,
Japanese embassy, 185, 187–189, 193, 183, 186–191, 193–202
194 Korean Central Intelligence, 190, 194,
Japanese Imperial Army, 57 196
Japanese military sexual slavery, 51–68 Korean civil war, see Fratricidal Korean
Japanese nationalism, 60, 61 War
Japanese occupation, 6 Korean Confederation of Trade
Jeju, 77–85, 90, 92 Unions (Minju nochong), 225,
See also Cheju 226
Jeju 4.3 Commission, 286 Korean Council, see Chong-Tae-Hyop
Jeju Island, see Jeju Korean Council for the Women
Jeju Peace Park, see Memorial park Drafted for Sexual Slavery by
Jeju Province, see Jeju Japan, see Chong-Tae-Hyop
Jeon Tae-il, 211, 215, 218, 234n1 Korean Democratic Party (KDP), 212,
Jeunesse Ouvrière Catholique (JOC), 213
269, 270 Korean embassy (personnel,
Journals, 262 employees), 183, 185, 188–190,
Judicial truth, 284 202
Jung Keun-sik, 243 Korean historiography, 2, 3
Korean Intelligence Bureau, 190
Korean memories, 1–16
K Korean nationalism, 60, 61
Karibong Electronics, 272, 273 Korean People’s Army, 139, 153n9
Katsuva, Rebecca Masika, 65 Korean People’s Party, 135
Kenney, George (General), 165, 166, Korean War, 6, 10–14, 25, 29–31, 35,
168 37, 41n13, 42n18, 75–92,
Ki-baik, Lee, 2 95–126
Kim Dae Jung/Kim Dae-jung, 241, The Korean War and Vietnam War,
292 183
Kim Il-Sung, 29, 35 Korea’s civil war crisis, see Korean War
Kim Ku (1876–1949), 33 Korea Shipbuilding Corporation
Kim Kyusik (1881-1950), 33 (KSC), 227, 228
Kim Miyŏng, 261, 263, 265, 268, 276 Korea’s Labor movement (in the
King Sejong, 24 1980s), 257–276
INDEX 311
Korea’s Vietnam War, see Vietnam’s M

civil war Manual workers (nodongja), 260, 265,
Korea Trade Union Congress, 261 267, 268, 270, 273
Korea War Dead Military and Police Martial law, see Martial Order
Widows Association, 96, 97 Martial Order, 241–243
Kurim village, see Kurim villagers Mass (minjung), 209–234
Kurim villagers, 83 Mass (taejung), 260, 274
Kuro Industrial Complex, 263, 272 Massacre of civilians during the
Kuro Solidarity Strike, 262, 263, 274, Vietnam War, 7
275 Mass politics, 216–218, 234
Kwangju Massacre, 7, 287, 294, 297, May 16th military coup of 1961, 214
300n2 May 18, absolute community of
Kwangju’s Democratization Gwangju Uprising, 237–254
Movement, 294–299, 300n2 Mediators, 158, 169
Kyŏngbok Palace, 27, 44n41 Memoirs, 262
The Memoirs of the Escape by Second
Secretary Kim Chang-geun, 183
L Memorandum of Some Diplomats, 183
Labor Day, 266, 267 Memorial for Patriotic Spirits, 84
LaFeber, Walter, 91 Memorial park, 80, 84
“The lamentations of the dead,” 78, Memories of labor, 257–276
79 Memory fragmentation, see
Landing Ship Tank (LST), 186–188, Fragmenting memories
191 Memory in East Asia, 286
Landlords, 213 Memory politics, 203
Land reform, 136, 141–145 Militarized modernization, 24, 36, 37
Latour, Bruno, 158 Military comfort stations, 57
Leaflet (bomb, 8141, 8289), 159–163 Military service, 215
Leasing agents (Mareum), 133, 134, Minister Lee Dae-yong, 183, 185,
143 188, 190, 195, 202
Lee Gi Dong, 290 Ministry of Education, 231, 288, 289,
Lee Hyo-jae, 63 291–293, 296, 299
Left or right, see Bipolar ideologies Ministry of Internal Affairs, 189
Legal responsibility, 59, 61, 67 Minju (democratization) movement,
Legislative changes, 281 see Democracy (movement)
Liberal democracy, 5, 15, 241–244, Minjung (people’s) Party, 261, 268,
253, 254 272
“Liberation of the marginalized,” 258 Miracle of the Han River, 7, 8
Life satisfaction, 7, 8 Miss Saemaeul, see Industrial warriors
Lifton, Robert, 4 Mixed economy, 76
Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, 51 Mnemonic crack, 5, 7
312 INDEX
Mnemonic fragmentations, see National revival (minjok jungheung),

Fragmented memories 214
Mnemonic rupture, 4 National Security Act, 135
Mobilization National Security Emergency
developmental, 210 Committee, 295
mass, 209–234 National subject, see Citizen
massive, 209, 211 Nation-building, see Nation-state
state, 209, 211, 227 formation
Modernity, 257 Nation-building ideology (kŏn’guk
Mohanty, Chandra, 56, 66 inyŏm), 170, 174
Moon Jae In, 289 Nation-state formation, 130, 150,
Moral responsibility, 61 152n6
Moscow of Icheon, 129–152 Negri, Antonio, 238, 239
Moscow Village, see Moscow of Neo-imperialism (imperialist), 55, 58
Icheon New Democratic Party, 213, 228
Multitude, 238, 239 New kinship, see Kinship
Multitude in Autonomia, see New subjectivity, 237–254
Autonomia 1953 Korean War armistice, 203
Mun Sihyŏk, 29 1953 San Francisco Peace Treaty, 59,
Myŏngdong Cathedral, 266, 267 60
Myth of Dangun, 3 1965 Korea-Japan Agreement, 67
Myth of historical progress, 4 1972 Yushin Constitution, 291–293,
298
1988 Olympic Games, 6
N Nomad subject, 238, 239, 252
Nakdong River, 103, 104 Non-combat zone residents, 96, 99
Nanking (Nanjing) Massacre, 57 Nora, Pierre, 2
Nation (minjok), 210, 213, 214, 216, North Korea, see North Korean
217, 226, 228, 231–233 delegation
National (Koku-min, people of Japan) North Korean delegation, 182, 190,
Fund of Asia’s Peace for Women, 194, 195, 197, 200, 201
61 North Korean People’s Army, 99
National Democratic Youth and
Student Alliance, 292
National equalization, 232 O
National flag (Taeguk-gi), 242–244 Occupations of war widows, 95–126
National Guidance League (Massacre), Odu-ri Land Committee, 140, 143,
139, 140, 153n10, 153n15 144
National Institute of Korean History, Odu-ri People’s Committee of
ROK government, 183, 187 Icheon-gun, 135, 140
Nationalism, 213, 215, 226, 233, Official sphere, 212
234 Operation Cross, 186–187
INDEX 313
Oppression vs. resistance, 130 Post-colonial Feminism, 54–56

Oral history method/oral history data, Postcolonialism, 25, 55–59, 66
131, 152n3 Postcolonial Korea, 77
Oral history testimonies, 262 Postcolonial militarism, 23–40
Oral statement, 96, 97, 126n3 Post-1987 democratization, 3
Oral testimonies, see Testimonial Post-structuralism, 237, 239
document Pregnancy/pregnant, 106–109, 124
Other-directedness, 6, 8 “A Preliminary Study of the Impact of
Our Grandfather (Hyun Gil-eon), 79, Communism Upon Korea,” 168
86 Presentism, see Presentist
Owners of voices, 97–99 Presentist, 1, 4, 8, 9, 18n18
Present preoccupation, see Presentist
President Thieu, 185
P Privileged consciousness, 212
Pak Sunhiŭ, 261, 268, 275, 276 Process of modernization, 210
Pak Ŭnsik, 163 Pro-Japanese collaboration, 26
Paper revolution, 143 Proletarianization process (of the
Park Chong Woon, 296 workers), 226, 227
Park Chung Hee, 3, 5, 14, 209–234 Propagating, Korean War, M105 A1,
Park Geun Hye, 288, 289, 298, 299 159, 160, 164
Park Jong Chul, 296 Proud historical pasts, see Historical
Park regime, see Park Chung Hee pride
Park Yu-ha, 52, 60–62 Psycho-historical dislocation, 4
Passive revolution, 219 Psycho-historical fragmentation, 1–16
Patriarchal familial order, 75 Psychological Warfare Research Report
Pelzel, John C., 165–168, 171 No. 1, 168
Pensions for war victims, 122–123 Psychological Warfare Section (G3) of
People’s Revolutionary Party, 291, the Eighth U.S. Army in Korea
292 (EUSAK), 159
People’s Volunteer Corps, 141–145 Public ethics, 213
Perceptive fissures, see Mnemonic crack Public sphere, 213
Pérez, Emma, 57
Phuoc Long Province, 185
Phu Quoc Island, 186 Q
Policidal, see Policide Quality of living, see Life satisfaction
Policide, 34, 35 Quasi compensation, 59
Political activism, 79
Political violence, 79, 83
Politics of desire, 209–234 R
Post-Cold War, 75, 76, 90, 92 Radio, 187, 191, 192
Postcolonial condition, see Recipient to donor nation, 173
Postcolonialism Recognition, 286
314 INDEX
Reconciliation, 61, 62, 66, 283, 284, S

286, 287 Saemaeul undong (New Village
The Record of Detainment in Saigon, Movement), 210–214, 218–231
183 Saigon, (Korean, American)
Red Chinese Army, 103 diplomat(s), 181–203
Red elements, see Communist Schramm, Wilbur, 165–169, 171, 172
subversives Schwartz, Barry, 3, 6, 7
Red hunt, 82 Science of coercion, 158
“Red” island, 82 Secondary National Troops, 146,
See also Jeju 153n13
Red menace, see Red hunt Second World War, 181, 187
“Reds,” 139 Secret Garden (Piwŏn), 29, 46n58
The Reds Take a City, 164, 168, 172 Self-annihilation, 4
Red Village, 131, 136, 137, 145, 147, Self-blame, 3, 6
150, 151 Self-defense, 244, 245
Relations of dominance, 55 Self-esteem, 6
Relations of ruling, 66 Self-reliance (jajuseong), 214
Remarriage, 96, 113–116, 126n6 Sense of fraternity and camaraderie,
Renan, Ernest, 2, 5, 7 248
Reparations, 281, 282, 284, 287, 298, Seoul Labor Movement Alliance
299 (SLMA), 261, 262, 264, 267,
Republic of Korea (ROK), 160, 161, 268
163, 169, 171, 172, 211, 216 Seoul Nodong Undong Yŏnhap, see
Resacralization, 40 Seoul Labor Movement Alliance
Residual traditionalism, 9 (SLMA)
Resistance, 3, 4, 6, 8, 14, 15 Seoul Women’s Vocational Training
Resistance movement, 6, 14 Center, 117
Revolutionary’ village, see Red Village Serial numbers 8141 and 8289, 159
Rhee, Syngman, 25, 26, 29, 30, 35, Sexual violence against women, 52
36, 44n41, 44n43, 45n47 Shamanic spirit consolation rite, 79
Riley, John W., Jr. (Jack), 165–169, Shame-provoking events/-provoking
171, 172, 175 aspect, 6–9, 17n10
Riot of Gapja-myeon, 137, 139, Shintō shrines, 25, 26, 41n1
153n9 Shrine of spirit consolation, 85
Rising inequality, 8 Simpson, Christopher, 158
Rituals of resistance, 79 Sin Ch’aeho, 163
Robin, Ron, 158, 164, 171, 172 Sites of mass burial, 80
Roh Moo Hyun, 287 SLMA, see Seoul Labor Movement
ROKA Psywar, 163, 174 Alliance
ROK Army, 201, 203 Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 189
ROK National Assembly, 161, 163 Social science, 157, 158, 174
ROK national police force, 163 Sŏ Hyegyŏng, 262, 271, 276
ROK-UN forces, 103 Song Shin-do, 60
INDEX 315
Sŏnoryŏn, see Seoul Labor Movement Testimonial document, 182, 183, 191,
Alliance (SLMA) 192, 194, 197, 198
South Korean Truth and Textbooks, 282–293, 295–299
Reconciliation Commission Third way, 76, 90
(TRCK), 282, 283, 286–299 Third-world woman, 54
South Vietnamese government, 185, 38th parallel, 159, 165
186, 193, 202 “The three Min,” 268
Soviet Union, 158 minjok (the nation), 268
Special parliamentary inquiry, 80 minju (democracy), 268
The spirits of the dead, 78–80 minjung (people), 268
Spivak, Gayatri, 54 Transitional justice (processes),
Spring of Seoul in 1980, 269 281–284, 286, 298
State-building projects, 25 Transnational Cold War (Korean
State Guidelines for History Education agency), 157–175
and Textbook Writing Criteria, Trauma, 191–194
289, 299 Traumatic memories, 4
State-led decolonization, 27 Truth-seeking, 281, 282, 284–287,
State responsibility, 59, 61 289, 298
State’s anti-communist terror, 81 Tsugunai (Atonement) Fund, see Asian
States without enemies, 76 Women’s Fund (AWF)
State vs. people, 130, 146 2002 World Cup competition, 6, 17n5
State violence, 130 2007 Seventh National Curriculum
Stratemeyer, George, 166, 168 Reform, 288
Struggle over memories, 151 2015 (Verbal) Agreement, 53, 67
Subalterns, 54, 55, 63–67
Subject, see New subjectivity
Subjectivation, 238, 239 U
Subject of the real, 238 U.N. armies, 159
Sungkonghoe University’s Research United Nations Entity for Gender
Institute of Society and Culture Equality and the Empowerment
(Sahoe Munhwa Yŏn’guwŏn), 262 of Women (UN-Women), 52
Superintendent Seo Byeong-ho, 190 University students’ agrarian service
Symbolic (order, mandate), 239, 241, movement, 231–234
244, 245, 250, 252, 253 Unsettled historiography, 3
Symbolic reparations, 282, 284–287, Uprising, 77, 85
297–299 Urban Industrial Missions (UIM),
263, 266
U.S., see Japanese embassy
T U.S. Air Force, 165, 169
T’aegŭkki arae mungch’ija (let us unite U.S. Air Force’s Human Resources
under the t’aegŭkki [flag]), 160 Research Institute (HRRI), 157,
Taehan Textiles, 269 158, 165, 166, 168, 169,
Taizong, Koguryŏ (Emperor), 162 171–173
316 INDEX
U.S. Office of Military Government, Widows police, 95–97, 99, 109, 113,

165 114, 118–126
U.S. psychological warfare, 163, 164, Women’s redress movement, 51–68
172 Women’s Union, 139
Won-ok Gil, 65
Wonpoong Textiles Union, 261,
V 265–267, 269
Vanguards (chŏnwi), 260, 263–265, Worker-student alliance (nohak
274, 275 yŏndae), 258–260, 276
Vast ancient territory, 8 Working class, 225–231
Veterans Association (Jedaegunin Wrongdoings of politicians, 6
Dongjihoe), 148–150
Victim(-hood), 4, 6, 8
Vietnam Y
civil war, 181–203 Yangban (high class), 133
Communist, 182, 191 Yasukuni Shrine, 32, 33, 35
Emergency Plan, 185 Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion, 105, 106
North, 185 YH workers, 228
South, 185, 198–200 Yi Oksun, 261, 263, 265, 266, 275, 276
War, 85, 87 Yi Sŭngman, see Rhee, Syngman
Village community, 214 Yŏn Kaesomun, 162, 163
Village elders, 142, 146 Yongsan district, 163
Village of Revolutionaries, see Yoon, Mi-hyang, 67
Red Village Yoshiaki, Yoshimi, 53, 57–59
Violation of North Korean refugees’ Yŏsu-Sunch’ŏn Uprisings, 34
human rights, 8 See also Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion
Youth Association and Farmers’ Union
of Gapja-myeon, 135
W Yu Chin O (Yu Chino), 169, 171, 172
War and Women’s Human Rights Yun Bo-seon, 217
Museum in Seoul, 64 Yushin Constitution, see Yusin
Western imperialism, 55 Yusin, 209, 221–223
Westernization, 214
White Christmas, 187, 191–194
Widows military, 95–97, 99, 109, 113, Z
114, 118–126 Zizek, Slavoj, 238, 239, 252

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KOREAN

Korean Memories and

ISBN 978-3-030-05905-7 ISBN 978-3-030-05906-4 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

Painter, Teacher, and Writer

The Academy of Korean Studies publication grant (AKS-2017-P05) was a

1 Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical Fragmentation:

Part I Japanese Colonial Legacies 21

2 From War to War: Ch’anggyŏng Garden and Postcolonial

3 Women’s Redress Movement for Japanese Military Sexual

Part II The Cold War Residuals and the Korean War 73

4 Legacies of the Korean War: Transforming Ancestral

5 Experience of the Korean War and the Means of

6 Memories of the Korean War among Rural Communities:

7 Forgetting Korean Agency in the Transnational Cold War157

8 Korea’s Vietnam War and the Fall of Saigon:

Part III Democratization, the People, and Political Leaders 207

9 “Politics of Desire”: Ruling Discourse and Mass

10 The Subjectivity of Civil Militia in May 18 Gwangju

11 Memories of Labor, Identities of the Time: Workers and

12 Truth, History Revision, and South Korea’s Mnemonic

Ñusta Carranza Ko is an Assistant Professor of Global Affairs and

and Subject (Hanul Academy, 2014). Hwang served as the editor of

Won Kim is an associate professor at the Social Sciences Division of the

English, and Japanese, covering the topics of Japanese military “comfort

Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical

Memory, History, and Korea

© The Author(s) 2019 1

In 1882 the French scholar Ernest Renan presented a lecture on the

Fast-Forward: Compressed Modernization

Retrospect: Deficit of Self-Reflection

“Why do I want to be rich?,” “What makes me happy?,” and “What kind

­ iscrimination against ethnic minorities, violation of North Korean refu-

questionnaire items of “I think Korean history has more to be proud of

Volume Organization and Its Topics

Japanese Colonial Legacies

example of transnational coalition. It was started by Korean victim-­

The Cold War Residuals and the Korean War

form, their recollection embeds “voices of the people” as counter-hege-

and ally themselves with survival in the perceptual modality of binary

Democratization, the People, and Political Leaders

exercised both coercion and the politics of consent in the mobilization

interior world of workers. By looking into the tension-ridden relationship

Proud of Korea Proud as Korean citizen

Proud of Korea 1.0000000 0.8057007

13. Pride>Shame Personal Personal

Pride>Shame 1.0000000 0.2141379 0.2377999

Min 1Q Median 3Q Max

−1.8763 −0.5814 −0.1329 0.7135 3.0084

Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)

(Intercept) 1.40174 0.15439 9.079 <2e-16∗∗∗

tangible and desired social changes serving as a source of historical pride.

Nora, P. 1986. Les Lieux de Mémoire, Volume 2: La Nation [Realms of Memory,

Japanese Colonial Legacies

From War to War: Ch’anggyŏng Garden

This article is an abridged and revised version of Henry (2016), reprinted by

© The Author(s) 2019 23

bourgeois elements intent on promoting their own legitimacy, leaders of

at channeling the energies of the masses in directions that would promote

The Postcolonial Politics of Anti-communist

1909, assassinated—Itō Hirobumi (1841–1909), the first Resident-

result of these transformations, the number of people who visited

As in the former metropole where, by 1949, a nationwide chorus

1 Korean Memories and Psycho-Historical Fragmentation:

Part I Japanese Colonial Legacies 21

2 From War to War: Ch’anggyŏng Garden and Postcolonial

3 Women’s Redress Movement for Japanese Military Sexual

Part II The Cold War Residuals and the Korean War 73

4 Legacies of the Korean War: Transforming Ancestral

5 Experience of the Korean War and the Means of

6 Memories of the Korean War among Rural Communities:

7 Forgetting Korean Agency in the Transnational Cold War157

8 Korea’s Vietnam War and the Fall of Saigon:

Part III Democratization, the People, and Political Leaders 207

9 “Politics of Desire”: Ruling Discourse and Mass

10 The Subjectivity of Civil Militia in May 18 Gwangju

11 Memories of Labor, Identities of the Time: Workers and

12 Truth, History Revision, and South Korea’s Mnemonic

iscrimination against ethnic minorities, violation of North Korean refu-

example of transnational coalition. It was started by Korean victim-

alking … seeking refuge. I went to the shelter where my mother-in-law