Abstract
Memory and emotional responses were collected from Korean young and old people one week, three months, and six months after Korean president Roh's sudden death and North Korea's nuclear crisis occurred around the same time. President Roh's death had more emotional impact than North Korea's nuclear crisis on young and old people. Old people experienced more intense emotions in both events and they had still lingering emotion on Roh's death over six months. However, both groups revealed no difference in recalling their episodic details when they heard about the two events, while recalling more about Roh's death than nuclear crisis. In the case of nuclear crisis memory performance decreased as time passed. On the contrary, in the case of Roh's death memory performance decreased at first but did not decrease after 3 months. This study showed some conflicting results with previous studies on flashbulb memory, which was discussed later.
