Photograph is an image of Prof. Baik’s mother who grew up during the Park Chung-hee military dictatorship era in Korea.

What does it mean to live with a 70-year war when its manifestations, hypervisible and deeply sensed, are perceived as everyday formations delinked from militarized violence and state brutality? Professor Crystal Mun-hye Baik and members of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development address this question by discussing the Intergenerational Korean American Oral History Project, a diasporic memory archive that encompasses contested stories of dispossession, militarized migration, and fraught relationships anchored in the un-ended Korean War. Based on an excerpt from Professor Baik's book, Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique (Temple University Press, 2020), this collaborative talk will address the possibility of crafting an oral/aural archive of the present, rather than defining the Korean War through terms affiliated with the "post" or "after." Throughout the talk and Q&A segment, participants will also discuss what it means to draw on oral/aural history to amplify the urgent importance of anti-racist organizing, as well as the complications that emerge in attempts to document prolonged histories of transnational war. 

Crystal Mun-hye Baik is Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies (GSST) at the University of California, Riverside and a graduate of the OHMA Program (2010). Prof. Baik's recently published book, Reencounters: On the Korean War & Diasporic Memory Critique examines the everydayness of the Korean War and its consequences through a diasporic feminist archive of memory works, including oral history projects, performances and video installations. Facilitating jolting moments of opening or reencounters with the mundane, these cultural memory works reckon with the Korean War's normalized ramifications, even as they underscore decolonizing possibilities that challenge the now 70-year US militarized occupation of Korea.

Based in New York City, Nodutdol is a community of first through fourth generation Koreans living in the U.S. We are a community that has families in both the south and north of Korea. We are diverse in our backgrounds and perspectives, but bound together by our shared sense of the Korean homeland that continues to suffer under division [with the understanding that the concept of ‘home’ may vary]. We are part of the Korean diaspora spread throughout the globe made up of artists, filmmakers, teachers, students, workers, professionals, young families, etc. who believe in social justice.

These events are open to all. For more information or if we can make any of these events more accessible to you please contact Rebecca McGilveray at rlm2203@columbia.edu.