Memories of Murder:

Abstract

This paper argues that the Other Korean Warin Viet Nam hardly means foregrounding Asians solely as victims or noblenatives. Such re-centering means acknowledging the full subjectivity of Asians, includingtheir agency, their complicity, their cruelty, and their own strategic designs forpower and profit at the expense of the weaker ones in their own societies and theirenemies and neighbors. HowKorea deals with Viet Nam of the present, the Viet Nam of its past, and the shadowof its American patron has everything to do with Korea’s transformation from oneof the world’s backwater provinces, humiliated by Japan and subordinated by theUnited States, to a chic and sleek global minipower whose projection of itself takesplace notonly in the factory, the boardroom, the stock market, and the UnitedNations, but in movie theaters, on family televisions, in the hands of readers, and inarchitecture signifying might and prowess, meant to intimidate and impress bothcitizen and tourist.