Beyond Death

The Politics of Suicide and Martyrdom in Korea

Charles R Kim editor Jungwon Kim editor Hwasook B Nam editor Serk-Bae Suh editor Clark W Sorensen editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Washington Press

Published:1st Feb '19

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Beyond Death cover

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 Chosŏn 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 Chosŏn 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.

ISBN: 9780295745640

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 567g

390 pages