Reconciliation and Justice in East Asia

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The course will explore the politics of memory and reconciliation in East Asia, focusing on three core countries, China, Japan, and Korea, but not limited to them. While there are rising demands on building cooperation among countries in East Asia, these core countries also have shown great difficulty to resolve historical issues. As the various narratives of nation-building are intricately intertwined with ideology, war, and colonial experiences, the region has grown a sense of hostility that is difficult to resolve wounds of war violence, Orientalist demeanor, and insoluble hatred for each other. Many international relations scholars tend to regard this difficulty of historical reconciliation only as an obstacle to creating international cooperation in this region, but because historical issues in East Asia are rooted in deeper identity issues, we need to diagnose this problem more carefully. In order to understand this phenomena, we need to look at issues such as nationalism, politics of memory, transitional justice, reconciliation, and post-colonialism, with a view that crosses the disciplines of academic fields over anthropology, sociology, political science, and international politics. The course first focuses on the scholastic debates on memory and reconciliation in East Asia. International relations, international laws, transnational justice, political science, and memories studies look differently on the issue. The course will cover the key literature on the issue to understand different layers and perspectives to deal with the issue. Second, the course will investigate the salient issues regarding memory problems and future reconciliation in different parts of East Asia.