- Publication date: June 26, 2021
- Publisher: Pureun Yeoksa
- About the book:
Manufactured war heroes… the assembly camp for repatriated ROK POWs on Yongcho-do
Revealing the Korean War beyond the smoke
This book is a “visual history” composed of carefully selected image materials, including more than seventy still photographs related to the Korean War, ten frame captures from footage films, and other materials such as comics, posters, and maps. It is not simply a picture book made by collecting hidden photographs. While the book is based on images and films gathered from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, including works by military photographers and civilian image-makers, the author approaches them through the idea of many “little Korean wars,” analyzing shooting intention, changing captions, and later uses in order to expose the hidden sides of the war.
As a result, the book succeeds in restoring the blind spots of battle-centered war history: the devastation and pain seen from the standpoint of demilitarized civilians and refugees, women and children, and the gaze and voice of prisoners of war. Rather than privileging the state or the center, it shifts attention to individuals, families, and regions, and moves beyond conventional narratives of combat and military heroism.
Who branded them rioters? Jeju 4.3 and Korean martial law
Part 1 of the book’s twenty-one essays across five sections deals with the background to the war. It addresses episodes such as the Dong-A Ilbo’s false report on the trusteeship decision, the Jeju 4.3 Uprising, and the National Assembly Frakcja Incident. One especially striking example is the footage of the Orare arson incident, a key precursor to Jeju 4.3. By uncovering aerial footage that captured police units entering Orare village at just the right moment, the author suggests the possibility that the narrative of “brutal rioters attacking the village, committing arson and murder” was in part scripted. The book also points out that although the martial law declared on Jeju lacked a proper legal basis, some 2,500 civilians were nevertheless tried by military court, and in many cases no litigation records survive.
The “heroes” of the Hungnam evacuation were not there
Part 2, which focuses on battle history through major engagements, pays particular attention to the essay “Hungnam Evacuation: History or Propaganda?” Using the well-known photograph of a young couple at Hungnam Port as a point of departure, the book notes that figures later said to have pleaded, “The ROK Army will retreat by land, so please take the refugees aboard,” including Major General Kim Baek-il, Brigadier General Song Yo-chan, and Brigadier General Choe Seok, had already withdrawn to places such as Mukho and Samcheok before the evacuation began on December 19, 1950. The book also exposes the lesser-known side of General Paik Sun-yup, often celebrated as a supreme hero of the Korean War: his service in the colonial-era Gando Special Force was mentioned in the Japanese edition of his memoirs but was scarcely discussed in Korea, and the victory at the Battle of Dabudong that launched his heroic reputation was inseparable from carpet bombing that killed large numbers of civilians.
Were refugees and repatriated ROK POWs “non-citizens”?
Parts 3 and 4, which treat figures often omitted from war history such as prisoners, refugees, war orphans, and military “comfort women,” are especially unsettling. After the armistice, more than seven thousand repatriated South Korean POWs were sent without delay to Yongcho-do near Hansan-do. There, in a site transformed from a North Korean POW camp into an assembly camp for repatriated ROK prisoners, they had to pass through screening for alleged collaboration and be remade into “ideologically certified warriors.” In the process of classifying them into categories A, B, and C, some in category B were punished or summarily executed under the law. The book asks similar questions about refugees. After the January 4 Retreat in 1951, the Eighth U.S. Army’s refugee-control policy limited escape routes to a few roads and even prohibited civilians from riding vehicles south of Daejeon. In the Pyongyang area, the military police commander Kim Jong-won even blocked evacuation itself; from December 5 onward, UN forces declared Pyongyang enemy territory and treated those crossing the river as hostile targets, subjecting them to bombing and strafing.
Rewriting war images as texts for peace education
In Part 5, which turns to the small wars that continued after the armistice, the author brings together photographs and stories related to Panmunjom, bridges, and war memorials. The book ultimately asks whether the stories of people captured in war photographs can be freed from military purposes and repurposed as texts for peace-oriented history education. Although most wartime photographs were taken by military photographers as part of organized “photo operations” and were therefore evaluated and censored in terms of wartime and regime victory, the author suggests that if we recover hidden intentions and overlooked blind spots through historical context, another reading remains possible.