Beyond Death ― The Politics of Suicide and Martyrdom in Korea

Suicide and martyrdom are closely intertwined with Korean social and political processes. In this first book-length study of the evolving ideals of honorable death and martyrdom from the Choson Dynasty (1392–1910) to contemporary South Korea, interdisciplinary essays explore the changing ways in which Korean historical agents have considered what constitutes a sociopolitically meaningful death and how the surviving community should remember such events.

Among the topics covered are the implications of women's chaste suicides and men's righteous killings in the evolving Confucian-influenced social order of the latter half of the Choson Dynasty; changing nation-centered constructions of sacrifice and martyrdom put forth by influential intellectual figures in mid-twentieth-century South Korea, which were informed by the politics of postcolonial transition and Cold War ideology; and the decisive role of martyrdom in South Korea's interlinked democracy and labor movements, including Chun Tae-il's self-immolation in 1970, the loss of hundreds of lives during the Kwangju Uprising of 1980, and the escalation of protest suicides in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Charles R. Kim is Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jungwon Kim is King Sejong Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Hwasook Nam is the James B. Palais Endowed Associate Professor in Korea Studies at the University of Washington, where she has a joint appointment in the Jackson School of International Studies and the Department of History. Serk-Bae Suh is associate professor of Korean studies at the University of California, Irvine. The contributors are Jung-hwan Cheon, Ho Kim, Jungwon Kim, Sun-Chul Kim, Yerim Kim, George Kallander, Hwasook Nam, Franklin Rausch, Youngju Ryu, Young Chae Seo, and Serk-Bae Suh.