Paper short abstract:

I examine recent formation of Korean maternal health services in Ethiopia as an exercise to rewrite histories of both donor and recipient of global health. I explore the ways in which historical memories of war, developmental state, and religion helped foster these new forms of care in Ethiopia.

Paper long abstract:

During the Korean War, Ethiopia dispatched six thousand soldiers to fight on behalf of the South. Today, the primary trope of Korean development assistance in Ethiopia is "paying back the historical debt of the Korean war." International health programming is a moral act of care, but might it also be means for managing the past and imagining the future? To Korean aid workers, Christian medical missionaries, family planning and rural development projects in Ethiopia bring memories of mass mobilization under the Korean developmental dictatorship in the 1970s. The incumbent government in Korea, headed by the daughter of the former military strongman, aims to invoke memories of the Korean War and heydays of military dictatorship through global health projects. In 2010, a Korean maternal health center was built in a rural town, Itheya, Arsi Zone, Ethiopia. Near Itheya center sits the Aanolee Memorial Monument, a statue of an amputed arm holding a severed breast. It stands to memorialize the Oromo people who were mutilated and humiliated by the conquest of the Menelik II after years of fierce resistance in 1886. Itheya is a birthplace of pan-Oromo national movements where hundred thousands Oromos gathered in 1966. Since then, Arsi Oromo peasants have been the primary target of a foreign aid-funded agricultural development and forced villagization. This research examines multiple layers of histories in conflict for rewriting spaces of experiences in pasts and horizons of expectations through global health with the case study of Korean maternal health project in Ethiopia.