A011: Forged in the Crucible of Militarism: Technology, Ideology, and Race in the Making of Modern South Korea

Organizer(s)

• 

  Peter Kwon

  University at Albany, SUNY, United States

Chair(s)

• CE

  Carter Eckert

  Harvard University, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• 

  Sungik Yang

  Harvard University, United States
• 

  Sung Eun Kim

  University of California, Los Angeles, United States
• PC

  Patrick Chung

  University of Maryland, College Park, United States
• 

  Peter Kwon

  University at Albany, SUNY, United States

Discussant(s)

• SM

  Seungsook Moon

  Vassar College, United States

Session Abstract:
While communist North Korea is widely regarded as one of the most highly militarized nations in the world today, the irony of deeply embedded militarism in democratic South Korea remains an understudied topic. This panel explores the governmental, institutional, and transnational forces that have had profound militarizing effects on South Korea’s modern structures and identity. Focusing on governance and industry in the country’s postwar political and socioeconomic transformation, the presenters examine how the national body politic, racial relations, the semiconductor industry, and scientific development have been mobilized through military mechanisms and for military purposes in South Korea, from the Korean War years to the present. The panel also opens new pathways for understanding the larger conjoined processes of Cold War militarization and modernization that operated on regional and global levels.

Sungik Yang examines the evolving nationalism of postwar South Korea as reflected in the militarized conduits of the Korean conservative movement; Sung Eun Kim explores the weaponization of racialized Korean soldiers in the Korean War; Patrick Chung dissects the United States’ militarization of the Pacific during the Cold War as a catalyst for the rise of the Korean semiconductor industry; and Peter Kwon reveals the technological transformation of civilian society under the Park Chung Hee regime’s militarization of science. Collectively, these studies provide new sources and perspectives on the contours of South Korea’s “militarized modernity,” which has been shaped by contentions and convergences between military and civilian agencies, authoritarianism and democracy, nationalism and imperialism, and militarism and capitalism.

Presentations:

• Military Moral Education and the Changing Role of Nationalism in South Korean Right-wing Political Ideology
  

  Paper Presenter: Sungik Yang – Harvard University
• Crossroads of Empire: Segregation, Integration, and Korean Augmentees to the French UN Forces in the Korean War
  

  Paper Presenter: Sung Eun Kim – University of California, Los Angeles
• Militarized Circuits: Kang Ki Dong, the US Military, and the Rise of the South Korean Semiconductor Industry, 1953-1983
  

  Paper Presenter: Patrick Chung – University of Maryland, College Park
• Scientization of All People: Park Chung Hee and the Militarized Creation of Technology in South Korea
  

  Paper Presenter: Peter B. Kwon – University at Albany, SUNY