Towards Archival Justice: The Case of Nogŭn-ri Massacre During the Korean War

Abstract

This paper discusses the social production of archives with a focus on the archive of the Nogŭn-ri Massacre, a case of mass violence against South Korean civilians by US forces during the Korean War. Recent scholarship has criticized views of archives as stable repositories for documents, and instead has shown the process through which archives are constructed through divergent social forces. Moreover, scholars have encouraged archivists to actively function as conduits for the voices of marginalized counterpublics. The archive of the Nogŭn-ri Massacre itself is shown to have been formed by survivors and activists who demanded an apology and redress from the US military for the massacre. This counterpublic archive was first formed of oral testimony, but increasingly accumulated a growing number of written US military documents repurposed by the activists in the service of archival justice.