Right to Mourn

Abstract

Abstract Right to Mourn illustrates how suppressed trauma is manifested at the transient interactions among bodies, objects, and rituals in the sites of Korean War memorials. In a highly politicized memory space, many bereaved families of the Korean War have long been deprived of their rights to mourn the loss of their loved ones. These suppressed mourners comprise mainly survivors and victims’ families of the atrocities committed by the US-allied South Korean forces before and during the Korean War. The book explores dialectic roles that memorial sites can play in communicating suppressed trauma: Can a memorial facilitate empathic mourning in which trauma possibly could be transmitted—as incomprehensible, incommunicable, and inaccessible as it is? To further explore such a query, the book critically introduces the specific sites of Korean War memorials in South Korea that were recently built to commemorate the atrocities of the US-allied South Korean forces: the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, the Memorial for the Gurye Victims of Yŏsun Killings, and the No Gun Ri Peace Park. Unpacking these nascent sites of the Korean War, the book provokes readers to look at the nearly seven-decade-old war in the most updated context of the acts of mourning.