Estate Struggle and War Memory in the Reconstruction of Regional Identity : Focusing on the Jangsung-Gun Case

Abstract

This research commenced from the questions on how the reconstruction of regional identity has been related with the collective memories and experiences of Korean war in Jangsung-Gun, Chonnam. Jangsung has been symbolized as Munhyang, county of literature, by local historians during 1970’s. This research investigates the estate struggle and War memory using an oral history approach to reveal the silenced aspect of the formal history.BR Jangsung had blood-shed sarcifices due to the conflict between the ruling group and the lower group during the war. In such conflict, estate, education levels, and classes played great roles. Although belonging to the same social rank, each expaned family group experienced different social struggles depending on their orientation for the nation building process and social discrimination against lower estate.BR The regional regime after the war was led by the right wing camp and they appropriated the War experiences and memories ideologically and represented in the form of War memorials.BR In conclusion, we have to reconsider the corresponding relation between the level of democratization of authoritarian regime and the representing of the past memories. The emergence of newly narrated stories is contingent on the fading memory of the authoritarian memory. There remains a crucial methodological question: since the oral history is constituted through the exchange of the interviewer and the interviewee, the interviewer’s question focusing on the estate aspect could have led to the interviewee’s narration of the war memories with the emphasis on the estate aspect.