Tina Ni ’26

This January, I had the privilege of traveling to Seoul, South Korea, as a part of my thesis research with the Evalyn Clark Memorial Fellowship. My thesis examines how Korean historical memory of the Japanese occupation period has shaped the lives of present-day South Korean people. There is a strong focus on how it has affected education—both the traditional academic education, and the kind of cultural education gleaned from exposure to mass media and popular culture. To further understand the ways in which Korean history is disseminated in public view, my time in Seoul was spent visiting various museums and memorials around the city to examine how certain events and history involving the occupation period are framed. In addition to being archival centers and places of public learning, these museums are physical representations of dominant Korean expressions of national identity that are projected on to both Korean citizens, and visiting foreigners through the selection of foreign language translations available at every site.

While I combed through over half a dozen museums for my research during this trip, and many of them were rich in valuable insight of how information about the colonial period is framed, there were a few sites that particularly stood out to me in terms of their emotional and educational impact. The Seodaemun Prison History Hall is a museum located within the physical site of a prison built by Imperial Japan in 1908 in the titular Seodaemun district to imprison Korean independence activists. The War & Women's Human Rights Museum is a small museum nestled within a quiet neighborhood in the Mapo-gu district. Along with its mission toraise awareness of and remember the history of Japanese military “comfort women”—victims of Japanese military sexual slavery—it also serves as a space for solidarity and action against ongoing issues of sexual violence against women in conflict zones.

This research trip has been essential for not only my concrete thesis research, but it has also helped me gain a stronger understanding of modern Korean history and culture through both the examination of museums and time spent wandering the streets of Seoul.