ABSTRACT
In the morning of November 21, 2007, I opened up my home-delivered copy of the Seoul edition of the International Herald Tribune and saw for the first time a photograph that has not ceased to haunt me. The photograph was part of an article entitled ‘Confronting Past, South Korea Digs up Killing Fields’ by the journalist Choe Sang-Hun. Choe’s article discusses the work of the South Korea Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was created in 2005 during the presidency of the late president Roh Moo-hyun in order to bring redress to the victims of war
atrocities and other political crimes. Noting the commission’s success in confirming stories of mass execution during the Korean War, Choe instances this photograph of prisoners before their execution by South Korean troops in Taejon in 1950.1 When I first saw the photograph, I was deeply struck by the unreadable expression on the young boy’s face – the boy who is lying on the ground, his feet held up by a blurred and faceless figure on the left, his arms locked around other young boys similarly immobilized before what is evidently the spectacle of their immediate future, a terribly shallow grave filled with dead civilian bodies. Why is he turning to look back, at whom, and why does his expression look so much like a smile?
