Right to Mourn

Trauma, Empathy, and Korean War Memorials
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-19-085524-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 180 Seiten, Format (B × H): 142 mm x 213 mm, Gewicht: 340 g

In the highly politicized memory space of postwar South Korea, many families have been deprived of their right to mourn loved ones lost in the Korean War. Only since the 1990s has the government begun to acknowledge the atrocities committed by South Korean and American troops that resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee, new laws honoring victims, and construction of monuments and memorials have finally opened public
spaces for mourning. In Right to Mourn, Suhi Choi explores this new context of remembering in which memories that have long been private are brought into official sites. As the generation that once carried these memories fades away, Choi poses an increasingly critical question: can a memorial
communicate trauma and facilitate mourning?

Through careful examination of recently built Korean War memorials (the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, the Memorial for the Gurye Victims of Yosun Killings, and the No Gun Ri Peace Park), Right to Mourn provokes readers to look at the nearly seven-decade-old war within the most updated context, and shows how suppressed trauma manifests at the transient interactions among bodies, objects, and rituals at the sites of these memorials.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Choi, Suhi

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Gebäudetypen Denkmäler, Mahnmale
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie Gedächtnis
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Suhi Choi is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah at Salt Lake City. She is the author of Embattled Memories: Contested Meanings in Korean War Memorials (2014).