Kumgangsan [Mt.Kumgang]

Abstract

This chapter takes the culturally and scenically important Kumgang mountain range on the east coast of what is now North Korea as a starting point for exploring the complex and overlapping memories of landscape that both link and divide Northeast Asian countries. Kumgang (known in English as the Diamond Mountains) is an exceptionally beautiful and dramatic stretch of mountains which, from the earliest days of Korean Buddhism, became a significant site of pilgrimage, attracting visitors from China and even India. The mountains also became an important site of literary and artistic creation, and from the 17th century on were represented in some of the most famous examples of Korean "true view" landscape painting. From the late 19th century into the Japanese colonial period, Kimgang was developed as a focus of internatinoal tourism by Korea's Japanese rulers. Most recently, from 1999 to 2008, the mountains were the focus of reconciliation projects between North and South Korea. Focus particularly on a major 1999 South Korean art exhibition entitled "Dream Kumgang", this chapter examines problems of memory and forgetting, drawing both on the work of French scholar Pierre Nora and on critiques of Nora's work. Show more