Author ｜
Lan Shi-chi
Abstract ｜
In modern Taiwanese history, the Korean War is one of the most crucial events. However, it has rarely been discussed in present-day Taiwan. This paper examines how such a significant event was remembered and then forgotten in collective memory over the past sixty years in Taiwan. This paper first analyzes the process in which the Korean War became known and commemorated in Taiwan in the 1950s. It finds that during this period, the Korean War was widely represented through state media and mass mobilization as a symbol of Republic of China (ROC) — (South) Korea solidarity and ROC/Taiwan’s own victory over communism. At the height of ROC’s fight against communism, memory of the Korean War—centered on the arrival of more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war or later known as the “anti-communist righteous heroes”in 1954—became the base on which the ROC government strengthened its ruling legitimacy in Taiwan. This paper then examines the remembrance of the Korean War between the 1960s and the 1980s. It finds that following the diplomatic setback and international isolation of the ROC throughout this period, the (memory of the) Korean War lost its significance into the official “anti-communism” discourse and became marginalized in collective memory in Taiwan. Furthermore, since the 1990s, with the emergence of a new Taiwan-based political identity and deterioration of ROC-Korea relationship, very limited narratives or activities continue to commemorate the Korean War. Under what is known as “concerted forgetting”, the Korean War became the “forgotten war” in Taiwan. The changing memory of the Korean War in Taiwan as analyzed in this paper illustrates how historical memory has been shaped by present-day political concerns; at the same time, contemporary political ideas have been shaped by historical memory.
keywords ｜
the Korean War, historical memory, Republic of China (ROC) government, “anti-communist righteous heroes”