Cold War Ruins

Yoneyama, Lisa

doi:10.1215/9780822374114

Cited by 103 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…25 For Korean postcolonial subjects, such sex tourism made it apparent that the colonizer/colonized relationship still remained in the sexualized, racialized, and classed conditions of uneven development in East Asia under the Cold War. 26 In short, considering that through haunting, colonial violence repeatedly return(ed) to Korean postcolonial subjects, haunting was one way that Korean postcolonial subjects were informed that what had been excluded, marginalized, and expelled was, in fact, breathing and present in the social pathology of neo-imperialist global politics. 27 Haunting, proposed by Avery Gordon as a sociological concept, 28 has been discussed in various cultural geographical studies.…”

Section: Korean Postcoloniality Melancholia (Unending Mourning) and Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They bitterly criticized that the colonizer/colonized relationship remained in the sexualized, racialized, and classed conditions of uneven development in East Asia under the Cold War. 52 Undoubtedly, Yun and scholar-activists in South Korea and Japan unearthed the issue of Japan's sexual slavery during WWII. However, at the same time, the repressed and unresolved violence against women was not entirely buried: it made itself known through haunting.…”

Section: A Historical Injustice Summoned By Comfort Women Through Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…60 That is, the Korean comfort women issue exposed not only the wartime sexual violence inflicted on the colonized women, but it also exposed how the colonizer/colonized relationship had been repeated in a sexualized, racialized, and classed form under the (US-sponsored) South Korean/Japanese Cold War security arrangement. 61 Moreover, genealogically speaking, Koreans' perception of failed decolonization was deeply related to South Korea's transition from a military dictatorship to a democratic regime in the late 1980s. After the democratization of South Korea in 1987, Korean scholars and activists called attention to the fact that the US had supported Korean autocratic regimes, collaborating with Japanese imperialists from the 1950s until the 1990s to gain strength over the communists.…”

Section: A Historical Injustice Summoned By Comfort Women Through Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Melancholia is (geo)political! Postcolonial geography in the Wednesday Demonstration in Seoul

Lee

2021

cultural geographies

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This article examines how melancholia constitutes a psycho-geopolitical space interweaving Korean subjects’ psychic and political lives with the dynamics of the (post) Cold War alliance between Japan and the US. The Wednesday Demonstration is the weekly protest in Seoul that calls for an official apology and legal compensation from the Japanese government for comfort women who worked in the sexual slavery system under the Japanese Empire during WWII. The fact that the weekly protests have continued for 30 years since 1992 signifies that the comfort women issue has remained an unresolved (geo)political issue between South Korea and Japan for three decades, despite apologies and monetary compensations by the Japanese government. This article offers a psychoanalytic-geopolitical rationale for the endless grief of Korean postcolonial subjects who cannot accept the measures of the Japanese government regarding the comfort women issue. Based on 1-year’s participant observations and in-depth interviews with Korean activists who engaged in the Wednesday Demonstration from September 2019 to August 2020, this article aims to accomplish three goals. Firstly, this article shows how Korean postcolonial subjects were/are haunted by colonial past. Secondly, I examine why Koreans cannot complete mourning for comfort women in the context of ROK-US-Japan geopolitical relations. Lastly, this article interrogates how ethno-nationalists intervene to turn melancholia into a motivation for ethnic solidarity and how their attempt might have failed by exploring a Korean postcolonial subject’s psychic lives. In doing so, I argue that the wounds of Koreans related to the comfort women issue are not simply from colonial history, but they are postcolonial wounds that have not healed ‘appropriately’ under the (US-sponsored) South Korean/Japanese (post-)Cold War security arrangement.

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Section: Korean Postcoloniality Melancholia (Unending Mourning) and Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Historical Injustice Summoned By Comfort Women Through Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Historical Injustice Summoned By Comfort Women Through Hauntingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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