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Nam Center Colloquium Series | A Song of Dissent and Democracy: "March for the Beloved" and the Politics of Resistance in South Korea

Susan Hwang, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
4:30-6:00 PM
Room 120 Weiser Hall Map
In early 1982, a group of writers, labor activists, and musicians gathered at a remote house in the southwestern city of Kwangju. Under the watchful eye of Chun Doo Hwan’s military dictatorship, the group clandestinely performed and recorded “March for the Beloved” (Im ŭl wihan haengjingok), a song to honor the “soul marriage” of late activists Pak Kisun and Yun Sangwǒn. Born in a city that had yet to recover from a brutal massacre of civilians staged by the military state in May of 1980, the song moved vastly beyond its original intent of commemorating those massacred and consoling the bereaved. Over the decades to follow, the song would emerge as the most powerful and widely sung anthem for counter-state movements, often finding itself at the center of much controversy over how to remember the tumultuous 1980s. This paper examines the bizarre twists and turns the song has undergone since its original inception, as occasions for thinking about the culture of protest and the politics of memory that shape the legacies of democratization in South Korea.

Susan Hwang is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Korean Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. Her current research focuses on the changing relationship between literature and politics from the 1960s to the present in South Korea.
Building: Weiser Hall
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Asia, Music
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Nam Center for Korean Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures