Cold War Futurity on Display: New Techno-Environment Staged in South Korea and Japan through Models and Miniatures

Abstract

This dissertation traces how new techno-environments were displayed in cold war Japan and South Korea, especially concerning the intricate temporal senses of futurity in them. It aims to demonstrate the ways in which emerging, publicly exhibited techno-things and novel environments were associated with certain dreams and imagination for futures that were, in turn, molded in the historical context of cold war geopolitics. My argument is that the cold war was the era of display since this period witnessed not only various processes of each nation or region becoming a showcase in the context of global confrontation, but also a great number of global and local expositions and exhibitions, which became a visible stage for advanced science and technology, new materials, and eye-opening attractions. Specifically, I explore things new displayed mostly in exhibitions, including new science and technology, new media, and new life environment, which were seen as soon-to-be actualized in people’s everyday lives. In so doing, I argue that publicly displayed models and miniatures played a role in persistently (re)producing collective dreams for the futures in cold war South Korea and Japan. The three-dimensional physicality of these displayed things functioned as a training medium for the audience, and people were able to learn about new goods, technological products, and novel circumstances in concrete and tangible ways using their corporeal senses. Moreover, I attempt to show how futuristic dreams were envisioned and (re)created in Japan and South Korea unevenly and disparately, even though the two nations appear to have shared the allegedly indistinguishable temporal senses of the cold war. I argue that this was because the cold wars were heterogeneously and vernacularly experienced in accordance with the entangled geopolitics and histories of each society in East Asia, which I will unveil in my dissertation through these two countries’ presentations of models and miniatures.