Politics of Memory in KoreaHannes B. Mosler

ASIEN – Nr. 154/155 (2020) pp. 5–9

Memory politics, or the politics of memory, is about “who wants whom to remember what, and why” (Confino 1997: 1393). This struggle over memory is, besides directly writing and teaching history in publications and educational institutions, fought by way of (repetitive) performative acts at the site of statues, monuments, and memorials taking the form of rituals — such as holding commemorative speeches, worshipping, and mourning. Of course, “[the] remaking of the past is not the monopoly of modernity” (Kim 2010: 578), and thus political remembrance does not exhaust itself in those macropolitical commemorations referring to Korea’s contemporary history alone. It can also be found in activities maintaining traditions, in practices of historiography, and in everyday culture — which extends much further into the past. Against this backdrop, this special issue draws together five papers that explore multiple different forms of political remembrance in Korea over the centuries, at diverse memory sites, and regarding various ways of performing them…