Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War

• Published in: Journal of Asian studies Vol. 69; no. 1; pp. 280 - 282
• Main Author: Moon, Katharine H. S.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pittsburgh Cambridge University Press 01-02-2010; Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subjects: 20th century; Asian studies; Atrocities; Biological & chemical weapons; Diaspora; Historiography; KOREA; Korean language; Political activism; Secrecy; Social history; Trauma; War; Vietnam; South Korea; United States > US; China; Pacific Ocean; Vieques; North Korea
• ISSN: 0021-9118; 1752-0401
• DOI: 10.1017/S0021911809992270

The book is not an empirical analysis of military prostitution or the political economy of the camptown that produces the yanggongju. The personal and the political are inextricably bound in Haunting the Diaspora, as the author seeks to unbury the silences of the individual and collective past that bind Koreans and Americans together. [...]the constant disturbances and damage that residents of Vieques and Maehyangri suffered because of U.S. bombing exercises were constructed into a larger narrative about the haunting aspects of American militarism because activists forged the connections through the Internet, conferences, and individual travels. [...]South Koreans, for all their criticism of the United States' role in the past, present, and future of the peninsula, have selectively ignored and actively written out their own participation in the Vietnam War.