As a “camptown” (kijich’on), Dongducheon enters a constellation of narratives figuring South Korea-US relations as marked by neocolonialism, militarism, Cold War developmentalism, sex work, and commodity fetishism. Paying attention to the ways in which the Museum as Hub exhibition “Dongducheon: A Walk to Remember, A Walk to Envision” works to unpack the allegorical gesture that has informed this constellation for much of South Korean history, Theodore Hughes examines the relationship between violence and the everyday in Dongducheon.

Theodore Hughes, Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Studies in the Humanities (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University), received his Ph.D. in modern Korean literature from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002. His current research interests include coloniality; proletarian literature; collaboration and race; national division and sovereignty; Cold War visual culture. Publications include “Korean Memories of the Vietnam and Korean Wars: A Counter-History” (Japan Focus, 2007); “Korean Visual Modernity and the Developmental Imagination” (SAI, 2006); “Development as Devolution: Nam Chŏng-hyŏn and the ‘Land of Excrement’ Incident” (Journal of Korean Studies, 2005); “Producing Sovereign Spaces in the Emerging Cold War World Order: Immediate Postliberation ‘North’ and ‘South’ Korean Literature” (Naengjŏn segye chilsŏ sok esŏ ŭi haebang konggan: haebang chikhu ŭi nam/bukHan munhak) (Han’guk munhak yŏn’gu, 2005); Panmunjom and Other Stories by Lee Ho-Chul (Norwalk: EastBridge, 2005)