Heonik Kwon - After the Korean War: An Intimate History

Robert Gerwarth, University College Dublin

Jay Winter, Yale University

In recent years the field of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories. These are the social and cultural history of armed conflict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history.

Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare presents the fruits of this growing area of research, reflecting both the colonization of military history by cultural historians and the reciprocal interest of military historians in social and cultural history, to the benefit of both. The series offers the latest scholarship in European and non-European events from the 1850s to the present day.

A full list of titles in the series can be found at:

www.cambridge.org/modernwarfare

After the Korean War

An Intimate History

Heonik Kwon

University of Cambridge

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the Universitys mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

Heonik Kwon 2020

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-108-48792-4 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

This book would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many interlocutors. Among others, I thank the village elders in Andong who so generously tolerated my intrusive inquiries into their shared yet divisive past trajectories. Special thanks are also due to members of the Hagui Village Development Assembly in northern Jeju, who made my research in the village possible, as well as many others elsewhere in Korea who kindly shared their family histories with me. My research in South Korea received generous support from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2016-LAB-2250005). Seoul National Universitys Department of Anthropology kindly provided a space, in the form of a distinguished visiting professorship, during a crucial stage of writing. I am indebted to numerous other institutions for giving me opportunities to discuss with students, colleagues, and the general public in Asia, Europe, and North America on the one hand, different ways to rethink the history and legacy of modern civil warfare, and, on the other, the fate of communitas in modern politics. This book has grown out of the thoughts we exchanged in these two separate investigative spheres, which I set out to bring together in this book. The present book also grows out of my earlier engagement with Vietnam War history. Marilyn B. Young, a towering scholar of the Vietnam War and US foreign policy, offered unfailing support while I was struggling to migrate from one gigantic historical milieu of human struggle against political violence to another. When I first met her, Marilyn was preparing a similar journey, having started her eminent career from the study of China in civil war. We shared the conviction that this move was necessary for coming to terms with the living ruins of the global civil war, which we habitually call the Cold War. This book is dedicated to her memory.

An elderly woman keeps shaking her head each time she encounters a stranger. She has no control over her unusual bodily reaction, which originates from an incident in the early days of the Korean War that tragically claimed her sons life. Her only son was in hiding in a nearby village. A group of armed men suddenly confronted his mother while she was tending to the familys rice paddy. Taken by surprise, she began to shake her head vigorously as a way of saying that she had no knowledge of her sons whereabouts. She believed that these men were after him, and this was what her young daughter-in-law had asked her to do if such a situation should arise. The young woman knew that her mother-in-law was not good at lying. When the petrified woman recovered her senses shortly afterward, she came to the painful realization that she had made the gesture of denial before the men even began questioning her about her son.