Kang Inhye

10.18399/acta.2015.18.2.005

The Chosŏn Grand Exposition Colonial Exposition Battlefield Tourism Wartime Visual Culture

The opening event of the Chosŏn Grand Exposition, which took place at East Kyŏngsŏng Station in Seoul on 1 September 1940, was replete with spectacular military images, from warships and tank parades to various tributes to the war dead. This article extends the reading of this exhibition from a display of wartime propaganda more toward wartime battlefield tourism to discuss how colonial youth were mobilized in the war. This article is particularly focused on probing the similarities of two separate sites: battlefield tour sites and war-related pavilions in the exposition of 1940. By relating the two different sites, I argue that war images are associated with redefining belonging and creating boundaries. By juxtaposing the wartime exposition and the tour sites, this article investigates how the visual mechanism of battle site images functioned to create a sense of belonging for colonized people as imperial subjects—by posing to them the questions of who they were meant to grieve and for whom they fought.