Chungmoo Choi - Healing Historical Trauma in South Korean Film and Literature

Through South Korean filmic and literary texts, this book explores affect and ethics in the healing of historical trauma, as alternatives to the measures of transitional justice in want of national unity.

Historians and legal practitioners who deal with transitional justice agree that the relationship between historiography and justice seeking is contested: this book reckons with this question of how much truth-telling from a violent past will lead to healing, forgiving, forgetting and finally overcoming resentment. Nuanced interpretations of South Korean filmic and literary texts are featured, including Park Chan-wooks Oldboy, Bong Joon-hos Mother and literary texts of Han Kang and Choe Yun, whilst also engaging the ethical and political philosophy of Levinas, Hannah Arendt, and others. Also offered is new and extensive research into the hitherto hidden history of thousands of North Korean war orphans who were sent to Eastern European countries for care. Grappling with the evils of history, the films and novels examined herein find their ultimate themes in compassion, hospitality, humility and solidarity of the wounded.

Healing Historical Trauma in South Korean Film and Literature will appeal to students and scholars of film, comparative literature, cultural studies and Korean studies more broadly.

Chungmoo Choi teaches cultural studies, critical theory, gender, literature, film and religion of Korea in the East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she serves as an associate professor. Her publications include Dangerous Women: Gender and Nationalism in Korea and The Discourse of Decolonization and Popular Memory: South Korea. She has served various journals as editorial collective member.

Routledge Advances in Korean Studies

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Chungmoo Choi

2021 Chungmoo Choi

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In memory of my parents

With love and gratitude to Roger, Carolynn and Garrett

Ariel Dorfman, a Jewish Argentine-Chilean-American playwright, reflects in the afterword of his most renowned play, Death and the Maiden (1990), How do we keep the past alive without becoming its prisoner? How do we forget it without risking its repetition in the future? In Healing Historical Trauma in Film and Literature in South Korea, I think along the lines of Dorfmans question seeking ways of healing historical wounds beyond forgetting. How does a society free itself from its evil past and how could a society move forward leaving behind its historical trauma? How does a society overcome resentment and hard feelings of its members who have wronged and been wronged in the course of its tumultuous and violent history? How do they mend broken relationships and restore a shattered community? These questions have become increasingly urgent in South Korea, especially so in recent years as the concept transitional justice is gaining a wide-based currency intertwined with South Koreas unprecedented economic growth and the attending global status as a member of the G20 group. I begin my journey with the question as to how the South Korean people should deal with the nations tragic modern history, which has left deep scarsand bleeding wounds in some casesin the lives of many South Koreans beyond the never-ending pursuit of truth-telling, heartfelt apologies, monetary reparations, ceremonial remembrances, and even political retaliations, none of which ever seem to be right or satisfactory from the perspectives of the wronged. How do we ever free ourselves from this terrible and seemingly endless curse of history? In the ensuing chapters, I will examine the ways in which South Korean filmmakers and writers address these questions situated between individuals and the state(s).