Korean Han and the Postcolonial Afterlives of "The Beauty of Sorrow"

Bibliographic Data

ID18970352
AuthorsSandra So Hee Chi Kim (corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume41
Issue1
Pages253-279
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueKorean studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0145-840X • E-ISSN: 1529-1529
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ks.2017.0026
OpenAlexW2589914361
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited16

In this article, I depart from the typical discussion of the Korean sociocultural concept of han as a collective feeling of unresolved resentment, pain, grief, and anger that runs in the blood of all Koreans. Scholars, artists, writers, and critics frequently characterize han as "the Korean ethos" and the soul of Korean art, literature, and film. It is said to be unique to Koreans and incomprehensible to Westerners. I argue, however, that its contemporary biologistic-oriented meaning emerged first during the Japanese colonial period as a colonial stereotype, and that tracing the afterlife of han gives us a postcolonial understanding of its deployment in culture. I examine how han originated under the contradictions of coloniality, how it evolved from a colonial construct to its adoption into Korean ethnonationalism, and how it travels into a completely new context through the Korean diaspora. Rather than dismissing han as nothing more than a social construct, I instead define han as an affect that encapsulates the grief of historical memory—the memory of past collective trauma—and that renders itself racialized/ethnicized and attached to nation

Aesthetics · Afterlife · Art · Collective memory · Colonialism · Diaspora · Ethos · Literature · Political science · Sociology · Sorrow · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture

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Open DOISci-HubOpen Access