Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea : Crossing the Divide

Focusing on regional geopolitics, social dynamics, watershed political rituals, and family narratives, this book explores the cultural process of moving from enmity to engagement amidst the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War following the Inter-Korean Summit of June 2000.

Drawing on reinterpretations of melancholia and collective remembrance, Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide explores the multi-layered implications of divided Korea''s liminality, or its perceived "in-betweenness" in space and time. Offering a timely reconsideration of the pivotal period following the inter-Korean Summit of June 2000, this book focuses on a series of emotionally charged meetings among family members who had lost all contact for over fifty years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. With the scope of its analysis ranging from regional geopolitics and watershed political rituals to everyday social dynamics and intimate family narratives, this study provides a lens for approaching the cultural process of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of recognition and engagement amid the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.