Presbyterians and the Cold Truth about the Hot War in North Korea, 1950–53

In the aftermath of the Korean War, the political economy of South Korea was inhospitable toward a reckoning with responsibility for atrocities committed above and below the 38th Parallel. A succession of authoritarian regimes in the South, each prioritizing industrial development, required a narrative about North Korea that made Communists responsible for untold numbers of civilian deaths. Fifty years later, in 2001, a literary work by Hwang Sok-yong titled Sonnim (The Guest) opened a crack in that facade. For South Korea’s Presbyterians, many of whom came South from the North, the novel reopened painful questions about responsibility for violent wrongs committed in the northern province of Hwanghae. Questioning both the South Korean narrative that made North Korea solely responsible and the North Korean narrative that the US military was solely at fault, Hwang claimed that Korean Presbyterians shared responsibility for the killings. Using archival materials, I examine Hwang’s hypothesis

Ancient history · Cold war · Economic history · Political science · History · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies