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Greetings!
This issue features a series of articles
highlighting abuses of state power in Thailand under martial law, in South
Korea in the wake of the tragedy of the sinking of the Sewol ferry, and in
the transborder world of smuggling and espionage during the US occupation
of Japan.
Four months after the military coup d'état in Thailand, and in the wake of
the interim constitution, the ruling junta has accelerated the crackdown on
dissidents. While public protests have been crushed, other forms of
resistance continue. Human rights scholar Tyrell Haberkorn examines
recent restrictions on free speech and the persecution of dissidents,
including university-based democracy and human rights advocates, arguing
that the repression is tantamount to the criminalization of thought.
Repercussions
of the April sinking of the Sewol ferry that killed 324 passengers, most of
them high school students, reverberates throughout South Korean politics
and society. Jae-Jung Suh
documents the monumental failures of the rescue mission, including at the
highest levels of state, placing the public outcry over the tragedy and the
government response and coverup in the context of neoliberal reforms of the
Korean state that paved the way for the disaster.
Tessa
Morris-Suzuki presents the first part of her investigation into
the threads of espionage, counter espionage, smuggling, and "special
renditions" (in current usage) that linked American intelligence and
key figures of Japan's wartime military, drawing on recent scholarship and
her own investigation into newly declassified CIA and other documents.
Arguing for the need to understand this period as the "transwar"
rather than "wartime" and "postwar," the article looks
at the interface of intelligence gathering and political money laundering
during this time, including the role of the CIA and other US spy agences in
shaping the development of postwar politics.
What
of substance can be learned from visits to North Korea? Emma
Campbell reports on her field work over more than a decade.
Despite travelling as a tourist, she shows how her ability to function in
Chinese and Korean makes possible observations of daily life that
provide important insight into the closed nation, overcoming state attempts
to present a particular image through controlled tours. In particular, she
finds visible effects of the development of China, along with first-hand
confirmation of reports by international institutions such as the United
Nations.
Literature scholar Daniela
Tan analyzes the language in accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Examining the works of Hara Tamiki, Ōta Yōko, Hayashi Kyōko and Ōe
Kenzaburō, among others, she shows the diverse ways in which writers dealt
with their experiences of the atomic bombs, as a reflection of the
complexity of the memory of trauma, which lies in a "place that does
not exist." |
