Session 4 (10/14) - Korea Since 1800

[Guadalupe Moreno]

The Korean war is one of the most forgotten wars within the United States. If asked many remember the World War's, the Cold War, the Vietnam war, but normally we do not mention the Korean War. I have learned that in San Perdro there is a gift given to the Americans by the Koreans called the "Friendship Bell" in as a symbol of friendship and thankfulness of the support given by the US to the Koreans during the war. In art, much of the historical and cultural aspects of Korea can be used to teach students who are of Korean decent and those of different cultures the similarities and differences that unite us. One activity that can connect situations that are occuring in contemporay America and in Historical Korea such as the involunteary suffering of women and war is a poetry format called Sijo. Sijo is a short poem that can be used to express the situations students are experienceing at the moment and embelish it with a drawing to fully express their feelings and emotions. Students can connect the maltreatment of women and children in the ICE detainment camps to those of "comfort women" into the suffering of the Korean war to that of the Armenian Geniocide that is once again repeating itself. 

[Katherine Caneba]

I didn't realize that there is a Comfort Women Memorial in Glendale, but it is now on my list of must-visit places. I sought out and read a book about the comfort women while I was in undergrad, and the biggest question I had had at the time (Why don't we hear about more people being descended from comfort women?) was answered: they forcibly sterilized the majority of those women and girls. I believe there were a small number of comfort women who did still get pregnant, but I am not sure on the specific data or whether the pregnancies were allowed to go to term vs. ending in forced abortions. I notice that of those surviving comfort women with living family members, the family are all great-nieces and nephews or other more removed relatives, not direct children or grandchildren. Not only did these women and girls go through life being ostracized by society for their sexual enslavement, but they were also denied any reproductive future that they may have wanted. Forced sterilizations have happened throughout modern history in many countries, including in China in Jinxiang (Uighur territory), North Korean gulags (concentration camps), and in the US with ICE detention camps. A medical ethics/eugenics/reproductive justice discussion of forced sterilization and its ongoing oppression of people with female reproductive systems would make for a salient learning experience for students.

[Guadalupe Moreno]

I think this is an amazing idea! If you would like to take this into an art/music form, the stduents can create two abstract drawings of how they feel when listening to the music. One can be music of their culture while the other can relate to the Korean radio (of that time or contemporary). Students would then have to research and listen to Korean music causing them to be more involved and to express how it makes them feel compared to their own cultural sound. 

[Guadalupe Moreno]

I too recently learned about comfort women and did not realize Dutch women were within the forced prostitution. From what I had previously learned in seminars and through reading was that many of the women where from other regions in Asia inculidng Japanese. Further, I find it infurtiating that due to the culture of silence within Korea only soilders confrotned by Dutch women were punished for the crimes.

[Guadalupe Moreno]

It is amazing to be able to find stories about youth during these hard times allowing students to connect at a deeper level. Another book that can be used is "Daughters of the Dragons" which focuses on a young girl that was tricked into the prostitution camps. It gos further into how it affected her life and those of her future generations. I feel like this would allow students to see multiple perspectives of those who are affected in the war. Students would be able to relate in many ways to those within these stories. 

[Katherine Caneba]

I agree with all of you that with the rise of South Korea's "soft power" through cultural exports, educators should strive to increase the amount of instructional time spent on Korean history, society, and culture to balance students' awareness of pop culture with the historical and cultural background of the country that gave birth to these forms of modern entertainment. Whereas students can potentially learn about a country's history through watching movies, TV, or anime in the case of Japan, my opinion is that there is not as much potential for learning these topics just through popular music and music videos. Particularly with K-pop, it is geared towards an international market now, so the visuals and sound are generally very Westernized (save for the Asian-looking K-pop stars and mostly Korean lyrics). Korean movies, TV dramas, and variety shows are all of potential interest to students as well. Ultimately, I think it would be beneficial to incorporate more sources from the cultures themselves, not just Western perspectives like M*A*S*H that take place in Korea during the Korean War but focus on American characters.

[Cynthia Jackson]

Personally, I know very little about slavery systems in places outside of the Americas, so learning that it existed in Korea was very surprising to me. It was even more surprising to hear its description. The idea of people working small plots of land that they paid rent to- in food and/or money- helped me to draw parallels between Korean slavery and American sharecropping. Sharecropping was a system designed and sustained so that recently freed black would never be able to build wealth to pass down over the generation. People stopped discussing the large racial factor in the relationship between sharecroppers and land owners because people said it was a race-less class issue. In a similar way, Korean conversations did not strongly associate slavery with race-based issues, but a class that would never sustain wealth because of “natural ineptitude.”

[Cynthia Jackson]

I talked about this a little during our seminar but wanted to add this here in case this helps anyone else. If you’re considering a geography specific lesson that could utilize students' geographer skill sets, a lesson about Korea as a fought over colony would be engaging. It would allow students to view Korea as a whole and not a split peninsula divided by tensions and nuclear power. A lesson on this topic would answer the question: How did their location contribute to Korea becoming first a tributary state and then a colony? In seeking the answer to this question, students would have to use map features such as the compass rose, the scale bar, and the legend to discover what drew China and Japan toward Korea based on Korea’s location.

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