Hyun Kyung Lee

• Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Frontiers of Memory in the Asia-Pacific explores the making and consumption of conflict-related heritage throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Contributing to a growing literature on ‘difficult heritage’, this collection advances our understanding of how places of pain, shame, oppression, and trauma have been appropriated and refashioned as ‘heritage...

Amid increasing interest in city branding in East Asia, the municipalities of Gunsan (South Korea) and Chiayi (Taiwan) chose colonial heritage-making as their city branding strategies to recreate their cities' identities and regenerate their economies. Both cities were mostly built by Japanese imperial authorities and thrived in the 1920s and 1930s...

Based on a transnational study of decommissioned, postcolonial prisons in Taiwan (Taipei and Chiayi), South Korea (Seoul) and China (Lushun), this book offers a critical reading of prisons as a particular colonial product, the current restoration of which as national heritage is closely related to the evolving conceptualization of punishment. Focus...

The Japanese Government-General Building (JGGB) was the headquarters of the Japanese administration during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea. The debates in the post-liberation period over whether the JGGB should be conserved or demolished were due, in part, to its location at Gyeongbokgung Palace: an important symbol of Korean tradition. F...

Lee explores how the symbolic and physical landscape of Seoul, as a visual representation of national identity, has changed according to shifts in political power, starting from the pre-Japanese colonial period (Joseon Dynasty), moving to the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, and finally to the present day. She provides a chronological examina...

Built in 1925, Dongdaemun Stadium was Korea’s first modern sports stadium, located in the capital city, Seoul. Lee investigates the transformation of Dongdaemun Stadium to the modern day Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park, tracing its place biography from the pre-colonial period, across the colonial period, to the post-colonial period. To illuminate...

Established by the Japanese authorities during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, Seodaemun Prison was the first modern system of formal control in Korea. Lee uses place biography to trace the changing roles of Seodaemun Prison from the pre-colonial period, throughout the colonial period, and to the post-colonial period, focusing on its cha...

In this concluding chapter, Lee reflects on the relationship between Japanese colonial occupation architecture and Korean national identity, considering how the stories associated with architectural heritage sites strengthen national myth and collective memory. Lee concludes that Japanese colonial occupation architecture has become ‘difficult herit...

Within the discipline of Heritage Studies, Lee investigates the relationship between difficult heritage and national identity formation, focusing on the problematic past of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea and its architectural legacies. In this chapter, Lee provides an overview of the historic relationship between Korea and Japan, paying...

In this chapter, Lee relates the three case studies (Seodaemun Prison, the Japanese Government-General Building, and Dongdaemun Stadium) to the overarching question regarding the relationship between difficult heritage and national identity formation. She places the three case studies in their wider heritage-scape, classifying twenty-two instances...

This book explores South Korean responses to the architecture of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea and the ways that architecture illustrates the relationship between difficult heritage and the formation of national identity. Detailing the specific case of Seoul, Hyun Kyung Lee investigates how buildings are selectively destroyed, preserved...

Built in 1925 during the Japanese colonial period, Dongdaemun Stadium was the first modern sports stadium in Seoul, the capital of Korea. During the Japanese colonial occupation and after liberation, especially in the 1960s-80s, Korean sports fans experienced numerous significant victories at Dongdaemun. This article investigates how Dongdaemun Sta...

The recently increased interest in transnational, serial nominations for UNESCO World Heritage status and comparable forms of official recognition demonstrates the critical role of heritage as diplomacy. There are both opportunities and challenges, nevertheless, when treating difficult heritage as diplomacy, such as in the case of colonial prisons...