Education
- BA, Korean History, Korea University
- MFA, TV Production, Brooklyn College
- Ph.D. , Mass Media and Communication, Temple University
Biography
Growing up in South Korea, I was part of the postwar generation of the Korean Peninsula. I did not experience the war, yet I have lived with copious memories of it. Since I migrated to the United States, I have been intrigued further by the notion that collective memories influence the way in which one (individual, community, and nation) negotiates the self and the other in a deeply complex and increasingly violent global community. My first book, titled Embattled Memories: Contested Meanings in Korean War Memorials (2014, University of Nevada Press), introduces how diverse narratives of the Korean War competed for hegemony in the discrete sites of media including newspapers, human bodies, archives, memorials, and statues. My second book, titled Right to Mourn: Trauma, Empathy, and the Korean War Memorials (2019, Oxford University Press) illustrates how suppressed trauma is manifested at the transient interactions among bodies, objects, and rituals in the sites of Korean War memorials.