ABSTRACT
For Japan, Gunkanjima serves as a symbol of its rapid industrialisation during the Meiji period, but for Korea, it conveys a dark history of the use of forced labour during the Asia-Pacific War. The two conflicting historical narratives of Gunkanjima rose to attention when the island was registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, as a part of “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining”. Leading up to and following the UNESCO bid, there has been a marked increase in Japanese and South Korean popular culture and media featuring Gunkanjima, including in television, film, and social media. This chapter analyses the representations of the island on entertainment television shows in Japan and South Korea, to show how the island has been portrayed dichotomously as an “industrial miracle” by the Japanese and a “hell island” by Koreans. In analysing how television informs public memory, this chapter examines the ways in which popular culture creates opposing discourses of Gunkanjima and contributes to the already tense relationship between the two nations over wartime atrocities and historical memory.
