Silencing Survivors’ Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story?

Abstract

This essay examines how the U.S. media has remembered and forgotten again the incident in which U.S. troops killed South Korean civilians who were taking refuge on the trestles of the No Gun Ri bridge in an early stage of the Korean War. Through textual analysis and oral history interviews, the research identifies narratives from both front stage (the U.S. media) and back stage (survivors’ testimonies). The study concludes that through reaffirming the official account of the Korean War—America’s mission of saving Koreans from Communist aggression—the U.S. media largely silenced South Korean survivors’ counter-narratives. As a result, the No Gun Ri story became sanitized as just another anecdotal war story that asks to be forgotten.

Narrativas periodísticas y memoria colectiva de una catástrofe urbana: el caso de las explosiones del 22 de abril en la prensa de Guadalajara

“…Dentro del mundo periodístico, existen distintas vías para observar cómo es el proceso de construcción de memoria colectiva. Una de estas vías es estudiar cómo es que los periodistas recuerdan y conmemoran episodios significativos como guerras (Choi, 2008), actos guerrilleros (Martin & Jaramillo-Marín, 2014) catástrofes naturales (Su, 2012), o la muerte de una celebridad (Hearsum, 2012).…”

In Situ Rhetoric

“…Participatory rhetorical approaches have embraced Denzin and Lincoln's (2011) notion of the bricoleur, who patches together multiple perspectives and methodologies into the analysis of cultural phenomena. This means that participatory rhetorical researchers have taken up a variety of topics and theories, including environmental (justice) crises (E. Dickinson, 2011;Druschke, 2013;Endres, 2009;Endres, Sprain, & Peterson, 2009;Herndl et al, 2011;Pezzullo, 2001Pezzullo, , 2007Senda-Cook, 2012Senda-Cook & Endres, 2013), vernacular discourses and everyday rhetoric (Ackerman, 2003;Cintron, 1998;Clair, 2011;Hauser, 1999Hauser, , 2011Hess, 2011;Pezzullo & Depoe, 2010), media production and consumption (Dunn, 2012;Herbig & Hess, 2012), memory and museum rhetorics (Aoki, Dickinson, & Ott, 2010;Armada, 2010;Blair, 2001;Blair & Michel, 2000;Chevrette & Hess, 2015;Choi, 2008;Clark, 2010;Hess & Herbig, 2013;Kelly & Hoerl, 2012;Owen & Ehrenhaus, 2014;Smith & Bergman, 2010;Taylor, 2010), theories of place/space (Aiello, 2011;Aiello & Dickinson, 2014;Edbauer, 2005;Ewalt, 2011;Fleming, 2009;…”

Agency in illness narratives

“…Several scholars have undertaken rhetorical analyses of oral histories (Choi, 2008;Cloud, 1999;Duffy, 2007;Waddell, 1990). Cloud (1999) examined the documentary The Uprising of '34 and its associated interview transcripts to argue that silence about the 1934 cotton mill strike that took place across the Piedmont region of the southern United States was fundamentally linked to a system of combined race-, gender-and class-based oppression and exploitation. Using oral histories and textual analysis, Choi (2008) discussed how the U.S. media remembered and forgot the incident in which U.S. troops killed South Korean civilians taking refuge on the No Gun Ri bridge early in Korean War.…”