Patrick Vierthaler is currently enrolled as a PhD student of contemporary history at Kyoto University in Japan on a MEXT scholarship. Holding BAs in Korean studies and Japanese studies from the University of Vienna and an MA in contemporary history from Kyoto University. Recently, Vierthaler has spent time as a short-term RIKS scholar at Korea University on a Pony Chung Foundation fellowship. Being particularly interested in how “contemporary history” is memorized, his research has focused on historicizing mnemonic struggles in Northeast Asia: What is remembered, how, by whom, and why? How is the memory of division into two separate Korean states and the South’s “foundation” disputed? How did “conservative” collective memories in South Korea change since the 1990s? How did these allegedly “revisionist” memories, exemplified by the emergence of the so-called “New Right” movement, led to the outbreak and intensification of the South Korean “history wars”? His second major research interest has been the biography of Francesca Donner-Rhee, the Austrian-born wife of former President Syngman Rhee, and First Lady of South Korea from 1948 to 1960, and how she witnessed key moments in South Korean contemporary history from the very corridors of power.
