{"title":"The Crime of Leprosy: The Red Threat and U.S. Hansen’s Disease Policy in Cold War Korea","authors":"Ka-eul Yoo","doi":"10.1080/00447471.2022.2036536","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines how and why Hansen’s disease (leprosy) patients in South Korea emerged as a Cold War ideological battleground. Against the backdrop of U.S. wars of intervention in Asia, I argue that Cold War narratives of contagion used medical terms to conflate “infectious” ideologies and Hansen’s disease. Through reading Litany of Hope (1962), a film produced by the United States Information Service and loosely based on the life of Korean poet and former Hansen’s disease patient Han Ha-un, I analyze how U.S. Cold War ideology characterized Hansen’s disease patients in South Korea as recuperable internal enemies in need of humanitarian medical intervention.","PeriodicalId":44285,"journal":{"name":"AMERASIA JOURNAL","volume":"47 1","pages":"330 - 350"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AMERASIA JOURNAL","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00447471.2022.2036536","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines how and why Hansen’s disease (leprosy) patients in South Korea emerged as a Cold War ideological battleground. Against the backdrop of U.S. wars of intervention in Asia, I argue that Cold War narratives of contagion used medical terms to conflate “infectious” ideologies and Hansen’s disease. Through reading Litany of Hope (1962), a film produced by the United States Information Service and loosely based on the life of Korean poet and former Hansen’s disease patient Han Ha-un, I analyze how U.S. Cold War ideology characterized Hansen’s disease patients in South Korea as recuperable internal enemies in need of humanitarian medical intervention.
期刊介绍:
Since 1971, the Press has published Amerasia Journal, the leading interdisciplinary journal in Asian American Studies. After more than three decades and over 16,000 pages, Amerasia Journal has played an indispensable role in establishing Asian American Studies as a viable and relevant field of scholarship, teaching, community service, and public discourse.