Abstract
Conceived to commemorate the victims of South Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War, the statue of the Vietnam Pieta invites us to question who shapes the memory of this neglected facet of the conflict. The present article analyzes the various actors involved in this contentious process in and across both countries, starting with the South Korean activists behind the statue’s making and the movement for recognizing the crimes committed by their army. Examining these activists’ advocacy work since the late 1990s, the article argues that they are triply situated in the fight over remembering South Korea’s intervention in Vietnam. Truth advocates first appear in a position of privilege and leadership vis-à-vis Vietnamese victims of South Korean military wrongdoings, which raises the issue of the material and political asymmetries at stake in the construction of memory. Simultaneously, the same advocates occupy a position of marginality vis-à-vis the dominant public discourse held on the war by Hanoi and Seoul, whose common interest lies in deepening their mutually beneficial but unequal economic partnership. Thirdly, the memory of the conflict pits truth activists against another group within their own civil society: veterans’ organizations aggressively denying all war crimes accusations. Ultimately, remembering the war is not the object of a bilateral dispute between the South Korean and Vietnamese states, but rather a site of domestic tensions within South Korea itself.
Highlights
The statue of the Vietnam Pieta represents a woman cradling in her arms a newborn child
Truth advocates first appear in a position of privilege and leadership vis-à-vis Vietnamese victims of South Korean military wrongdoings, which raises the issue of the material and political asymmetries at stake in the construction of memory
The lost lives to which the sculpture pays tribute are not the ones usually honoured in commemorations of the Vietnam War in the United States or of the American War in Vietnam, a conflict that both countries officially remember with different names on different dates.[1]
Summary
The statue of the Vietnam Pieta represents a woman cradling in her arms a newborn child. Its members were accused of serious violations of international humanitarian law or jus in bello, such as the principle of distinction between combatants and noncombatants according to which the latter cannot be deliberately targeted These violations were perhaps first openly denounced at the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Vietnam, a civil-society body convened by Bertrand Russell and chaired by Jean-Paul Sartre twice in 1967 in Sweden and Denmark.[6] It is claimed that ROK soldiers carried out about eighty civilian massacres in which more than 9 000 Vietnamese were killed, including seventy-four in the villages of Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất as well as 135 in the village of Hà My.[7]. Far from being a monument to the collective memory of the war, the Vietnam Pieta embodies the fight of a segment of South Korean civil society to bring to light both a bilaterally neglected and domestically contested past
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
