ABSTRACT
An increasing number of studies on diverse adoption-related issues, from adoption policies to portrayals of adoptees in pop culture, have appeared, and several have analysed the imagery of Korean orphans and adoptees in visual culture. Orphan images almost always make it to the cover of the catalogues and programs, evincing the desire to remember the Korean War through the figure of an orphan, consistently invoking the metaphor of an orphan nation and the narrative of sunansa. The chapter examines the reproduction of orphan photographs as a medium of collective remembering in commemorative publications and exhibitions and questions what it means to remember the Korean War through orphan photographs. It also examines the ways in which the seemingly 'innocent' use of orphan photographs encapsulates a desire to reconfirm the metaphor of the nation as an orphan, ultimately inhibiting ways to reimagine, especially through varying imagery, the war.
