Founding Father or National Traitor? Contested Memories of Syngman Rhee in Mid-1990s South Korea

Abstract

Abstract:

The present study focuses on the 1990s as a pivotal era in the mnemonic landscape of post-authoritarian South Korea, and bridges the gap between the ample literature on the revolutionary 1980s and the "history wars" of the 2000s–2010s. Through a case study of the cultural memory of Syngman Rhee (1875–1965) and his role in the division of the Korean peninsula, this mnemohistorical account investigates how his memory became pivotal to South Korean mnemonic disputes in the 1990s. Contestations over the memory of Rhee during this period are dissected using critical discourse analysis, beginning with the "re-discovery" of Syngman Rhee in the early 1990s by conservative journalists and intellectuals. The article then explores how Chosun Ilbo and Joongang Ilbo, two of South Korea's largest newspapers, led extensive Syngman Rhee "re-evaluation" efforts in 1995 to revise South Korean cultural memory, before addressing how such efforts were met by fierce opposition from progressives. Although ultimately unsuccessful, these conservative re-evaluation efforts and the opposition that ensued veritably mapped the mnemonic coordinates for South Korea's later "history wars." As such, the present study provides an insight into the origins of the mnemonic polarization that characterized South Korea in the mid-2000s. As a first historical dispute initiated by conservatives post-democratization, this "re-discovery" and "re-evaluation" of Syngman Rhee as South Korea's "founding father" arguably provided conservatives with a historical narrative for the post-Cold War era, cementing a pillar of conservative functional memory that would eventually merge into a "foundation"-centered narrative after the late 1990s.