What is a grave? A consecrated space for the commemoration of the dead, a burial ground is often considered a symbol of well-maintained community. While “the tombs of the unknown soldiers” serve as a sacred reminder of a nation-state as an imagined community in the twentieth century, cemeteries inform us how the space of the dead has exploited the notion of community in drawing boundaries around who can claim the right to the space. At the same time, a burial ground can also be construed as sites of control and resistance in which the dominant strive to control by imposing meanings of what should remain sacred in urban space, whereas the subordinate resist such imposed meanings and definitions in order to make their own claims to the space. By focusing on such conflicts and tensions surrounding meanings of cemeteries, this paper examines litigations and negotiations swirling around Chinese cemeteries in South Korea during the Cold War years. In so doing, this paper investigates how burial grounds have become contested sites for landownership, identity and nationhood in modern cities.

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