ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the relationship between the two respective mnemonic lenses of the Korean War past in South Korea from 1953 to the present. It explores the politics of memory surrounding the war during the authoritarian years. Throughout these years, official memory of the war was dominated by the "June 25" anti-communist war narrative. However, though dramatically curtailed by the rigid anti-communist system, alternative narratives which focused on the war's devastating impact on the population proliferated throughout these decades. The chapter examines shifts in the Korean War memory landscape from 1980 until the present. In this epoch, the state's hegemony over the production of the Korean War waned, leading to the breaking of taboos and a broadening of the national dialogue surrounding the nation's division. In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, official memory of the conflict in South Korea was "subordinated to the hegemony of the nation state" and "manufactured" according to the state's political agenda.
