Despite the fact that many countries participated in the Vietnam War, their war stories tend to marginalize one another. In this study, I use a transnationalist critical lens to compare the ethnocentric stories of the U.S. and South Korea. Instead of presenting transnationalism as a focus on the changes that arise through travel between different cultures, I rely on another meaning of transnationalism as a form of consciousness. In order to compare differing perspectives on the Vietnam War as represented in the U.S. and South Korea, I compare Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods and Suk-Yong Hwang’s The Shadow of Arms, based on the writing style of the texts, the shared theme of friendly fire, and representation of the My Lai massacre. As a result, this comparison challenges readers in each nation to recognize perspectives on the Vietnam War which they may have missed.