The Gateway Korea Foundation is excited to announce a new webinar series for GKF members and the general public. This monthly webinar will cover a variety of topics related to Korean Culture, Society, History, and Art featuring many experts in the field from the U.S., Korea, and around the world. This series gives GKF an opportunity to connect and engage with people on a new level, educating and enlightening them so they can build a better understanding of South Korea, while inspiring cross-cultural appreciation and cooperation among the peoples of the world. We hope you find such inspiration in this connection to Korean culture.
March 2024 Webinar
Date: March 13 2024
Time: 3:30pm-5:00pm CST
Location: Hybrid (in person at the University of Missouri-Columbia S304 Memorial Union. and via zoom)
THE KOREAN WAR REMEMBERED
Contested Memories of an Unended Conflict
Michael J. Devine’s Bio:
Dr. Michael J. Devine served as the director of the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, MO, for thirteen years, 2001-2014. He was also an ex-officio member of the Executive Committee of the Board of the Truman Library Institute for National and International Affairs. He has more than forty years of experience in the management of major historical organizations. From 1985-91, he served as Illinois State Historian and Director of the Illinois State Historical Society.
Dr. Devine has published widely on the Truman era, U.S. diplomatic history, Illinois history, and the history of the American West. He has twice served as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer (Argentina, 1983 and Korea, 1995), and in 1998, he was named the Houghton Freeman Professor of American History to the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Graduate Center in Nanjing, China. In 1999, he was elected President of the National Council on Public History, and in 2014, he was given that organization’s Dr. Robert Kelley Memorial Award for life-time distinction.
A former Peace Corps volunteer to Korea (1968-70), Dr. Devine is the editor of Korea in War, Revolution and Peace: The Reminiscences of Horace G. Underwood (Yonsei University Press, 1999). Dr. Devine received his MA (1968) and Ph.D. (1974) from Ohio State University.
Reviews
“Highly engaging. Perhaps most impressive about The Korean War Remembered is the extent of the coverage, not just over time but also geographically, with insightful sections on the People’s Republic of China and the two Koreas. Michael Devine shows an equally impressive grasp of how, say, Hollywood portrayed the war in the 1950s versus how various states, as well as the National Mall, have memorialized the conflict in recent decades.”—Steven Casey, author of Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion, 1950–1953
“The strength of this study is the author’s effort to take a broad chronological overview that underscores change over time. While focused on the American memory of the Korean War, Michael Devine also places it in an international context.”—G. Kurt Piehler, author of A Religious History of the American GI in World War II.”
Michael J. Devine provides a fresh, wide-ranging, and international perspective on the contested memory of the 1950–1953 conflict that left the Korean Peninsula divided along a heavily fortified demilitarized zone. His work examines “theaters of memory,” including literature, popular culture, public education efforts, monuments, and museums in the United States, China, and the two Koreas, to explain how the contested memories have evolved over the decades and continue to shape the domestic and foreign policies of the countries still involved in this unresolved struggle for dominance and legitimacy. The Korean War Remembered also engages with the revisionist school of historians who, influenced by America’s long nightmare in Vietnam, consider the Korean War an unwise U.S. interference in a civil war that should have been left to the Koreans to decide for themselves. As a former Peace Corps volunteer to Korea, a two-time senior Fulbright lecturer at Korean universities, and former director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Devine offers the unique perspective of a scholar with a half a century of close ties to Korea and the Korean American community, as well as practical experience in the management of historical institutions. Michael J. Devine is an adjunct professor of history at the University of Wyoming. Previously he was the director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and a professor of history and director of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. He is the author of John W. Foster: Politics and Diplomacy in the Imperial Era, 1873–1917.
Past Webinars
Webinar recordings (when available) can be found on the detailed information page for each of our past webinars listed below.