In The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives , 2023
Forwarding a feminist refugee analysis, I argue that despite the portrayals of traditional mother... more Forwarding a feminist refugee analysis, I argue that despite the portrayals of traditional motherhood as ever sacrificing for their progeny and the risk of falling into patriarchal representations, Jero Yun's films can be seen as opening different women and motherly subjectivities. The refugee women's money-making and monetary remittances comprise tangible material evidence for their existence. The films’ use of close-ups on the women's faces, silence, and gendered mobility invokes the realization of the women's collaged subjectivity, which has never surrendered its totality.
This article examines the humanistic relationship between Korean Chinese and North Korean refugee... more This article examines the humanistic relationship between Korean Chinese and North Korean refugees on the Sino–North Korean border in Zhang Lu's film Dooman River (2010) and delineates how the ethical obligation to “our” people, or brethren (dongpo), is removed by understanding North Koreans as potential criminals. The first part conceptualizes Korean Chinese villagers’ ethical obligation toward North Koreans, which I call ethnic ethos, and focuses on how the director preserves the Korean Chinese's conscience by stereotyping North Korean border crossers as “dangerous refugees.” The second part focuses on the meaning of ethnic identity that the director pursues, offering insights into the crisis of community in the context of urbanization and globalization, or the “Korean dream.” The two types of border crossing—the crossing of North Koreans to China and the crossing of Korean Chinese to South Korea—offer clues to the causes of the crisis of community, in which collective ethics and responsibility to others have been eroded. This article answers questions about the death of a Korean Chinese boy, who voluntarily becomes a stranger by entering into the zone of “nonlife” or refugees. I argue that the boy's death is a sacrifice suggested to audiences by the director in an attempt to preserve the communitarian ethics of Korean Chinese and maintain the value of ethnic identity.
More than 70 percent of North Korean refugees who cross the Sino-North Korean border are women, a... more More than 70 percent of North Korean refugees who cross the Sino-North Korean border are women, and approximately 60 percent of them send money to family members that they left behind in North Korea. How does the North Korean refugees’ monetary remittances change the relationship with their family members? This article answers this question particularly focusing on Jero Yun’s trilogy about North Korean women: Mrs. B, A North Korean Woman (2016), Beautiful Days (2018), and Fighter (2021). By reading North Korean refugee issues as a part of dispersed families (isan’gajok) in the history of a divided Korea, the director delivers a strong message of motherhood through the North Korean women in his films. The women in the films, however, reveal how desperately they want to escape from the conventional image of “Korean mothers” who are supposed to sacrifice and devote themselves to their children. With monetary and emotional remittance to their family members, the North Korean women gradually turn over their hierarchy in the patriarchal family system and transform themselves into tearless mothers who do not apologize for their absence. By establishing their own moral boundary, these women not only cross the conception of clan-based family but bid farewell to the nation (North Korea), which is a collective of individual families.
Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 2020
Since the turn of the new millennium, the genre of North Korean defector autobiographies has rece... more Since the turn of the new millennium, the genre of North Korean defector autobiographies has received widespread attention in the English-speaking world. Remarkably, these English-language publications typically do not first go through a process of translation from their subjects' first language to their target language. This paper consists of two parts. The first takes up the question of whether it is possible to define a work about the experiences of North Korean defectors as an autobiography if the author is not the defector himself or herself. In examining this question, the paper juxtaposes these North Korean defector autobiographies against related genres such as autobiography, ghostwritten autobiography, authorized biography, and unauthorized biography, as well as Gulag memoirs and memoirs of Communist disillusionment. The second part of this paper explores the publication process of these North Korean defector English-language autobiographies involving cooperation between various parties, including defector authors, translators, transcribers, and English-speaking authors. Focusing on the distance between the English-writing authors and the defector authors whose first language is not English, this paper sets forth the meaning of what can be called North Korean defector vocal-writing.
In Rediscovering Korean Cinema. University of Michigan Press, 2019
This chapter analyzes Park Jung-Bum’s The Journals of Musan (2011) to see how a North Korean esca... more This chapter analyzes Park Jung-Bum’s The Journals of Musan (2011) to see how a North Korean escapee establishes his gender and class identity after arriving in his new country, South Korea. In the film, a North Korean—the male protagonist Seungchul, who may obtain political potentiality—becomes an underclass migrant worker in South Korea. South Korean society’s recognition of North Koreans as working migrants depoliticizes North Koreans from the old rhetoric of the Cold War. However, by adopting the capitalist grammar of consumption and absolution of his sins, the film shows how Seungchul becomes morally corrupted in a capitalist society and enters the realm of micro-politics. The specific focus of this chapter is on gender and class, especially in regard to South Korean masculinity. First, Seungchul meets South Korean men such as villainous employers, street bullies, and a male detective, and establishes his masculinity by learning violence and the male hierarchy. Second, throughout the film, Seungchul wants money and materials represented by clothes and shoes, in parallel with his desire for a South Korean woman, Sook-young. These paralleled desires demonstrate how Seungchul articulates his masculinity in his relationship with capital and with women in this patriarchal society. Third, going to church occupies an important part of Seungchul’s life in South Korea; thus, the film captures the religious character of capitalism by showing church goers’ weekly confessions. Sook-young, who feels guilty about her illegal karaoke management activities, believes that her sin is forgiven by her confession and continues the ongoing rituals of capitalism. In sum, The Journals of Musan showcases the ways in which a North Korean migrant becomes an underclass male, and illustrates the grammar of capitalism and the status of South Korean masculinity.
In The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives , 2023
Forwarding a feminist refugee analysis, I argue that despite the portrayals of traditional mother... more Forwarding a feminist refugee analysis, I argue that despite the portrayals of traditional motherhood as ever sacrificing for their progeny and the risk of falling into patriarchal representations, Jero Yun's films can be seen as opening different women and motherly subjectivities. The refugee women's money-making and monetary remittances comprise tangible material evidence for their existence. The films’ use of close-ups on the women's faces, silence, and gendered mobility invokes the realization of the women's collaged subjectivity, which has never surrendered its totality.
This article examines the humanistic relationship between Korean Chinese and North Korean refugee... more This article examines the humanistic relationship between Korean Chinese and North Korean refugees on the Sino–North Korean border in Zhang Lu's film Dooman River (2010) and delineates how the ethical obligation to “our” people, or brethren (dongpo), is removed by understanding North Koreans as potential criminals. The first part conceptualizes Korean Chinese villagers’ ethical obligation toward North Koreans, which I call ethnic ethos, and focuses on how the director preserves the Korean Chinese's conscience by stereotyping North Korean border crossers as “dangerous refugees.” The second part focuses on the meaning of ethnic identity that the director pursues, offering insights into the crisis of community in the context of urbanization and globalization, or the “Korean dream.” The two types of border crossing—the crossing of North Koreans to China and the crossing of Korean Chinese to South Korea—offer clues to the causes of the crisis of community, in which collective ethics and responsibility to others have been eroded. This article answers questions about the death of a Korean Chinese boy, who voluntarily becomes a stranger by entering into the zone of “nonlife” or refugees. I argue that the boy's death is a sacrifice suggested to audiences by the director in an attempt to preserve the communitarian ethics of Korean Chinese and maintain the value of ethnic identity.
More than 70 percent of North Korean refugees who cross the Sino-North Korean border are women, a... more More than 70 percent of North Korean refugees who cross the Sino-North Korean border are women, and approximately 60 percent of them send money to family members that they left behind in North Korea. How does the North Korean refugees’ monetary remittances change the relationship with their family members? This article answers this question particularly focusing on Jero Yun’s trilogy about North Korean women: Mrs. B, A North Korean Woman (2016), Beautiful Days (2018), and Fighter (2021). By reading North Korean refugee issues as a part of dispersed families (isan’gajok) in the history of a divided Korea, the director delivers a strong message of motherhood through the North Korean women in his films. The women in the films, however, reveal how desperately they want to escape from the conventional image of “Korean mothers” who are supposed to sacrifice and devote themselves to their children. With monetary and emotional remittance to their family members, the North Korean women gradually turn over their hierarchy in the patriarchal family system and transform themselves into tearless mothers who do not apologize for their absence. By establishing their own moral boundary, these women not only cross the conception of clan-based family but bid farewell to the nation (North Korea), which is a collective of individual families.
Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 2020
Since the turn of the new millennium, the genre of North Korean defector autobiographies has rece... more Since the turn of the new millennium, the genre of North Korean defector autobiographies has received widespread attention in the English-speaking world. Remarkably, these English-language publications typically do not first go through a process of translation from their subjects' first language to their target language. This paper consists of two parts. The first takes up the question of whether it is possible to define a work about the experiences of North Korean defectors as an autobiography if the author is not the defector himself or herself. In examining this question, the paper juxtaposes these North Korean defector autobiographies against related genres such as autobiography, ghostwritten autobiography, authorized biography, and unauthorized biography, as well as Gulag memoirs and memoirs of Communist disillusionment. The second part of this paper explores the publication process of these North Korean defector English-language autobiographies involving cooperation between various parties, including defector authors, translators, transcribers, and English-speaking authors. Focusing on the distance between the English-writing authors and the defector authors whose first language is not English, this paper sets forth the meaning of what can be called North Korean defector vocal-writing.
In Rediscovering Korean Cinema. University of Michigan Press, 2019
This chapter analyzes Park Jung-Bum’s The Journals of Musan (2011) to see how a North Korean esca... more This chapter analyzes Park Jung-Bum’s The Journals of Musan (2011) to see how a North Korean escapee establishes his gender and class identity after arriving in his new country, South Korea. In the film, a North Korean—the male protagonist Seungchul, who may obtain political potentiality—becomes an underclass migrant worker in South Korea. South Korean society’s recognition of North Koreans as working migrants depoliticizes North Koreans from the old rhetoric of the Cold War. However, by adopting the capitalist grammar of consumption and absolution of his sins, the film shows how Seungchul becomes morally corrupted in a capitalist society and enters the realm of micro-politics. The specific focus of this chapter is on gender and class, especially in regard to South Korean masculinity. First, Seungchul meets South Korean men such as villainous employers, street bullies, and a male detective, and establishes his masculinity by learning violence and the male hierarchy. Second, throughout the film, Seungchul wants money and materials represented by clothes and shoes, in parallel with his desire for a South Korean woman, Sook-young. These paralleled desires demonstrate how Seungchul articulates his masculinity in his relationship with capital and with women in this patriarchal society. Third, going to church occupies an important part of Seungchul’s life in South Korea; thus, the film captures the religious character of capitalism by showing church goers’ weekly confessions. Sook-young, who feels guilty about her illegal karaoke management activities, believes that her sin is forgiven by her confession and continues the ongoing rituals of capitalism. In sum, The Journals of Musan showcases the ways in which a North Korean migrant becomes an underclass male, and illustrates the grammar of capitalism and the status of South Korean masculinity.
Uploads
The specific focus of this chapter is on gender and class, especially in regard to South Korean masculinity. First, Seungchul meets South Korean men such as villainous employers, street bullies, and a male detective, and establishes his masculinity by learning violence and the male hierarchy. Second, throughout the film, Seungchul wants money and materials represented by clothes and shoes, in parallel with his desire for a South Korean woman, Sook-young. These paralleled desires demonstrate how Seungchul articulates his masculinity in his relationship with capital and with women in this patriarchal society. Third, going to church occupies an important part of Seungchul’s life in South Korea; thus, the film captures the religious character of capitalism by showing church goers’ weekly confessions. Sook-young, who feels guilty about her illegal karaoke management activities, believes that her sin is forgiven by her confession and continues the ongoing rituals of capitalism. In sum, The Journals of Musan showcases the ways in which a North Korean migrant becomes an underclass male, and illustrates the grammar of capitalism and the status of South Korean masculinity.
The specific focus of this chapter is on gender and class, especially in regard to South Korean masculinity. First, Seungchul meets South Korean men such as villainous employers, street bullies, and a male detective, and establishes his masculinity by learning violence and the male hierarchy. Second, throughout the film, Seungchul wants money and materials represented by clothes and shoes, in parallel with his desire for a South Korean woman, Sook-young. These paralleled desires demonstrate how Seungchul articulates his masculinity in his relationship with capital and with women in this patriarchal society. Third, going to church occupies an important part of Seungchul’s life in South Korea; thus, the film captures the religious character of capitalism by showing church goers’ weekly confessions. Sook-young, who feels guilty about her illegal karaoke management activities, believes that her sin is forgiven by her confession and continues the ongoing rituals of capitalism. In sum, The Journals of Musan showcases the ways in which a North Korean migrant becomes an underclass male, and illustrates the grammar of capitalism and the status of South Korean masculinity.