From Philadelphia to Pusan: Korean Replies to a Student’s Homicide during the Cold War

This talk investigates the homicide of In Ho Oh (1930-1958), a student from South Korea who was attending the University of Pennsylvania when he was killed in the street. Within twenty-four hours, eleven African American teenagers were arrested for murder on the suspicion that they had randomly and brutally attacked the first person coming along. Rather than a whodunnit, the puzzle to be solved here lies in why and how this crime entered in and circulated through the public space of post-war America and Korea. In other words, who cared from Philadelphia, where the victim died, to Pusan, where his parents lived? The focus will be on the letters sent by two kinds of South Korean actors—family and government representatives—in response to this sensational killing.