This book explores diverse cultural issues of the Vietnam War, including body, race, gender, and nation, based on the experiences of Koreans and Americans. In contrast with American writers such as Tim O'Brien, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, Joan Didion, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Bobbie Ann Mason, who focus primarily on how Americans perceived the war and its affect on American society, three Korean writers, Hwang Suk-young, Park Young-han, and Ahn Junghyo, testify that the war also played a crucial role in changing Korean society and the culture of the era. They maintain that Koreans were more concerned with national and racial issues than with troubled individuals, and that Korean soldiers were sensitive to material aspects of the war, regarding themselves as American mercenaries. The book also considers the contrasting perspectives in the narratives of O'Brien and Hwang, who both examine the My-Lai massacre. Narratives of the Vietnam War by Korean and American Writers is a useful resource for courses in comparative literature, English literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and Asian studies. This book explores diverse cultural issues of the Vietnam War, including body, race, gender, and nation, based on the experiences of Koreans and Americans. In contrast with American writers such as Tim O'Brien, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, Joan Didion, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Bobbie Ann Mason, who focus primarily on how Americans perceived the war and its affect on American society, three Korean writers, Hwang Suk-young, Park Young-han, and Ahn Junghyo, testify that the war also played a crucial role in changing Korean society and the culture of the era. They maintain that Koreans were more concerned with national and racial issues than with troubled individuals, and that Korean soldiers were sensitive to material aspects of the war, regarding themselves as American mercenaries. The book also considers the contrasting perspectives in the narratives of O'Brien and Hwang, who both examine the My-Lai massacre. Narratives of the Vietnam War by Korean and American Writers is a useful resource for courses in comparative literature, English literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and Asian studies. Acknowledgments ix Chapter One Introduction: The Vietnam War Which is Not One 1 Chapter Two Bodies in the Vietnam War 13 Making a Soldier: Building Soldier Bodies 13 Once a Machine, Always a Machine 22 Body Parts 23 Racial Bodies 27 Body Injury 32 Chapter Three Women and the Vietnam War 35 Why Gender and the War? 35 Writing Off Nation on Female Bodies 36 How Gender Operates in Barracks 40 When Women Write: Memoirs of Women in Country 53 When Women Write: Jayne Anne Phillips, Joan Didion, and Bobbie Ann Mason 61 "Machine Dreams" 61 "Democracy" 67 "In Country" 70 Chapter Four The Colonized Colonizers: Korean Experiences of the Vietnam War. 76 Mercenaries or Allies?: The Identity of Korean Soldiers 76 The Specificity of Korean Writers 84 Mixing Ideology in the Stream of Humanism: Pak Yong-han's "River of Songba" 87 PX, Black Market, and Colonial Desire in "The Shadow of Arms" 89 "Their War", the Vietnam War 98 Chapter Five My Lai Revisited: Tim O'Brien's Postmodern Narrative Vs. Hwang Suk-Young's Realistic Narrative 100 Two Stories about One History 100 Lost on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 104 The Vietnam War as an Image War 116 The Vietnam War in a Montage 119 "In the Lake of the Woods": A Guerrilla Text 122 Notes 131 Bibliography 145