Fifteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Marking the 70th anniversary of establishing the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK) in 2021, this study explores the design principles of remembering the military fallen in the war cemetery. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the UN Command constructed the UNMCK to pay tribute to the 2,311 fallen soldiers from 11 UN allied nations in Busan, Korea. As the only UN official cemetery, this graveyard is embedded with the UN emblem, various symbols, and designs representing the 11 UN allied nations. Based on the ethnographic research methods of interview and literature review, the author demonstrates that the UNMCK vividly visualizes a dead soldiers’ society through the symbolic images of the UN. The research finding highlights that this burial ground may serve as a forum to share multidisciplinary perspectives on the correlations of architectural space, meaning, and raison d’être of design in society.