Strategically Breaking the Silence: How Memory Entrepreneurs Shape Intergenerational Transmission in Korean American Divided Families

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 21. Second generation

Abstract

One of the most enduring human legacies of the unended Korean War is the separation of families across the Korean Peninsula and the diaspora for more than 75 years. The marginalization of the conflict in US national memory as the “Forgotten War” and a culture of silence among Korean American families suggest that these memories would fade away with the now-elderly generation who experienced them firsthand. However, recent interest among younger generations and grassroots mobilization in resurfacing memories of the Korean War presents a theoretical puzzle.

By exploring the role of “memory entrepreneurs” who engage in mnemonic struggles at the meso level, this paper expands on Jillian LaBranche’s framework that distinguishes between “structural memory” imposed at the macro-level and “communicative memory” shared through micro-level social interactions. The study centers around the question, how do memory entrepreneurs shape the agency of families to share memories that are taboo and transmit this identity across generations?

I engaged in participant observation of multiple stages of an intergenerational oral history project called “Letters to My Hometown” produced by the organization KoreanAmericanStory.org (KAS). I accompanied KAS staff for interviews with eight Korean American families in Southern California and the East Coast, later comparing these original interview transcripts with edited versions that KAS published online using grounded theory and qualitative coding.
I find that the intervention of KAS as a memory entrepreneur disrupts a culture of silence in the family and mediates the intergenerational transmission of memory. Furthermore, my analysis reveals a strategic curation of narratives to further the organization’s agenda of collective identity formation. This paper contributes to the sociology of memory and cultural production through the context of the Korean American community by highlighting the agency of younger generations and grassroots actors to complicate a linear pathway of memory transmission and co-construct diasporic identity.

Author

• Paul Kyumin Lee, University of Notre Dame