In her innovative research, Inha Park, a rising third year Ph.D. student in Italian Studies, explores the little discussed Cold War connections between Italy and Korea.
In the summer of 2023, with funding support from the Nanovic Institute and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, Park travelled across northern cities in Italy, and was selected to participate in the University of Notre Dame's prestigious Rome Archive Seminar.
During this time she mapped out and explored the Italian peripheral districts known as Corea ("Korea" in Italian), neighborhoods that were established during Italy's postwar period. Park sought out the motivations for naming these areas Corea, a term that is still widely referred to across Italy.
In her article, "Discovering Peripheries in Italy: Korea within European Cities" for the Nanovic Navigator, Park writes:
"Italy was so invested in the Korean War that the Corea districts became a convergence of both local and global issues. On one hand, they represented Italy’s internal matter of coping with mass migration from the South to Milan. On the other hand, they embodied the global issue portrayed by the image of war-ravaged Korea during the Korean War."
The fascinating outcomes of Park's research trip shed new light on Italy's fraught perception of its national identity in the post-WWII era.