Contested Memories, Precarious Apology: The Vietnam War in Contemporary Korean Art

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines art works that problematise the contested memories of the Vietnam War in South Korea. The collective memories of the Vietnam War in South Korea are contested by the official memory, constructed by the military regime, and the counter-memories, generated by activists who call for Korea to apologise to the Vietnamese people for the atrocities committed by Korean soldiers. IM Heung-soon’s publication This War (2009) and the single-channel video Reborn II (2018) present memories of South Korean veterans and Vietnamese rape victims. Kim Seokyung and Kim Eunsung’s statue Vietnam Pieta (2015–2016) was installed in Vietnam and Korea as a gesture of apology for Korean soldiers’ rape and murder of Vietnamese women and children. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs’ concept of collective memories and Jacques Derrida’s conditional apology, this article examines how these art projects represent the contested memories of the Vietnam War in Korea and the conditional apology suggested by Korean activism, relating them to the redress movements of historical justice for wartime atrocities in a transnational context. Analyses of these artworks suggest aesthetic, ethical and political limitations and possibilities in representing memories of wartime sexual violence and (un)conditional apologies in visual art.