베트남전쟁과 영웅 만들기 – 강재구의 신화화 과정과 그 의미

Abstract

This article aims to examine the mythologizing process of Kang Jae-gu’s death and its implications. To do so, this article first examines the media coverage of Kang’s death and mythologization process, followed by the nation-led compensation and public response. It also examines the censorship process and traces of intervention in the film Major Kang Jae-gu, which was planned, produced, screened, and compensated by various nation agencies, in order to understand the detailed process of hero-making during the Vietnam War. When the death of an ordinary officer named Kang Jae-gu became a national event rather than a personal one, he was immediately hailed as a ‘holy’ figure, a symbol of soldierly spirit and the embodiment of a great national spirit. His funeral and medal ceremony were held in an unusual manner and were covered extensively by the media, including daily newspapers and news films, amidst national mourning. In addition, his ‘sublime sacrifice’ was commemorated in various ways, leading to the creation of tangible and intangible monuments. Among them, the Jae-gu Battalion, named after Kang Jae-gu, achieved a variety of major victories in the war and created a village called Jae-gu chon(Hamlet), which was cited as an example of the Korean army’s successful civilian activities. Furthermore, the film Major Kang Jae-gu, which was made under the active involvement and control of the nation, from production to scenario, filming, distribution, and compensation, became another protagonist in the mythologization of Kang Jae-gu by casting a ‘desirable collective memory’. In the context of South Korea at the time, which was forced to participate in a war fought in another country called the Vietnam War, the narrative of Kang Jae-gu, who was martyred to protect South Korean troops on South Korean soil with the deployment of combat troops imminent, was very suitable to be appropriated as a national narrative. Moreover, the time and place of the incident were highly symbolic. The purpose of the exercise was the Vietnam War, but the location was Hongcheon, South Korea, and the fact that it took place a week before the deployment to Vietnam, where mass deaths were expected, meant that it was an event that took place on a border line of space and time, between the Vietnam War and not the Vietnam War. In this context, Kang’s death was either made into a ‘hero’s narrative’ that lacked a specific time and space, or it was transformed into a ‘national narrative’ by being appropriated as a symbol of the Vietnam War with the horrors of the Vietnam War parenthetically. The mythologization of Kang Jae-gu was a process that the military-based Park Chung-hee regime actively engaged in and controlled in order to legitimize its own history, spread the hegemony of anti-communist nationalism, and justify its sacrifices in the ongoing Vietnam War, a process that reveals a very direct politics.