Article ID: CBB001450066

Korean Prometheus? Mythifying Benjamin Whiso Lee (2014)

unapi

This article evaluates the role nationalism played in popularizing the myth of Benjamin Whiso Lee as the Imaginary Father of the Korean Nuclear Bomb in the early 1990s. The main argument is that nostalgic recollections of the Yushin dictatorship, anti-Japanese nationalism, and the desire for Korean reunification provided the ideological background for Lee's mythical image. But the image would never have attained the level of myth had physics not enjoyed remarkable popularity. Although Lee, a Korean American theoretical particle physicist, never collaborated with Korean dictator Park Chung-hee, in a series of novels he was portrayed as a martyr and collaborator who led South Korea's nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. Lee was also depicted as laying a cornerstone of nuclear scientific collaboration between North and South Korea. These two aspects of Lee's mythical image were deeply related to the various social contexts, and so powerful was the combination that many South Koreans came to approve of nuclear armament. The story of Benjamin Whiso Lee, a classic example of the relationship between science and nationalism, reveals far more.

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Description On nationalism and the literary mythologizing of a Korean nuclear scientist in the 1990s.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001450066/

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Authors & Contributors
Hyun, Jaehwan
Lunbeck, Elizabeth
Walker, David M.
Smith, Melissa
Siegert, Reinhart
Schulmann, Robert
Concepts
Public understanding of science
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Science and politics
Nationalism
Science and war; science and the military
Cold War
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
Enlightenment
20th century
18th century
Places
United States
Korea
Great Britain
Soviet Union
North Korea
Baltic States
Institutions
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Partial Test Ban Treaty; Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
United States. Department of Defense
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Federation of American Scientists
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