In the aftermath of the Korean War, ordinary South Koreans saw childrearing as a crucial way to reconstruct their war-torn nation. Above all, they dreamed of raising children who would embody the ideals of a newly democratic nation: choice, autonomy, freedom, individuality, and independence. Parents, writers, architects, psychologists, childrearing experts, and advertisers built these values into their homes and debated what it meant to raise children who embodied them. Their children, they agreed, needed to grow up as free, healthy, racially Korean individuals who could help build and sustain a strong, anti-communist nation. In these everyday efforts, Koreans worked out a Korean version of Cold War liberalism and claimed a new position of racial equality (or even superiority) in the Cold War global order. Drawing from a wide array of archival sources, Na Sil Heo takes the readers beyond the monochromatic photos of homeless war orphans to reveal the vivid colors of postwar life in Korea. In sites of everyday reconstruction-eugenics and family planning, children's art, educational testing, and bedrooms-this book asks new questions about the deep impact of colonialism, division, and the Korean War on ordinary lives. It sheds light on an important history that is often eclipsed by military and diplomatic histories of the Korean War and macroeconomic approaches to Korea's postwar reconstruction.
