Book Talk: After the Korean War: An Intimate History


  • Date: September 12th, Tuesday, 2023, 10:00 – 12:00
  • Location: Room 303, SNUAC (Bldg. 101)

This book reveals how the environment of human intimacy in the Korean traditional community became the major target in the politics of the Korean War, and how it became the core of national discipline during the long period of the Cold War that followed. The Korean War is also one that made the world as it is today. It is a major event in the early days of the global Cold War system, which also bears the roots of the New Cold War structure between China and the U.S. that has newly risen. In understanding the position that the Korean War, a representative civil war of the 20th century and the most violent civil war, takes on the wide horizon of world history, this book will open up a new horizon.

The author focuses on the efforts driven by the regional community that bravely faces the hidden scars of the war. The village-level efforts that started in Jeju developed into official events like commemoration ceremonies, and even expanded overseas, now bearing characteristics of a global civil society. This book analyzes how societas and civitas have fought through the ideological trend of the modern and contemporary world that separates the community from society and have invented an amazing political space. Through discussing this book, we will explore the possibility of community-civil society within Asia where scars of colonialism, war, and the Cold War are shared.


  • Presenter: Heonik Kwon (SNUAC HK Professor)
  • Discussant: Keunshik Jung (Dept. of Sociology, SNU Professor Emeritus / Former Chairman of Committee for Truth and Reconciliation)