Transformation in the Ecosystem of Memory and Changes of the National Landscape in Korea - The Emergence of the Baekdudaegan, “Korean Tiger,” and Dokdo Syndromes -

Over the long 20th century, the national landscape of Koreans underwent significant transformation. During the colonial period, the national landscape of Koreans fluctuated between the lyrical space represented by “Heimat” and the epic space of the dynamic Baekdudaegan (mountain range). Colonialists sought to dominate even the inner world of Koreans by controlling physical space through large-scale urban construction and engineering projects, and by forcibly imposing their own mythological-religious rituals.<br/> Colonial landscape elements persisted for some time after liberation, but began to face serious challenges starting in the 1980s. The search for an alternative national landscape, spurred by the fusion of democracy, populism, and nationalism, led to demands for highly condensed symbolic axes. Mountain Baekdu and Mountain Halla, emerging as signifiers of the yearning for unification, became unified through the Baekdudaegan, aligning with Koreans’ traditional territorial perception system (feng shui). This made it possible to think about the national territory as a unified whole. Slightly later, Dokdo, whose significance rapidly grew amid conflict with Japan, became emotionally and conceptually linked to the issue of Japanese military “comfort women.” This propelled Dokdo to rapidly emerge as another pivotal axis of the national landscape. The identification of nation and nature became more solidified through analogical thinking associated with eco-nationalism. The invention of the “Korean tiger” is the crystallization of eco-nationalist thought in Korean society. The very aspiration to nationalize the tiger—a transnational being—reveals the pinnacle of Koreans’ collective mindset, which seeks not only to nationalize nature but also to historicize and naturalize the nation itself.