This essay argues that the success of South Korea's COVID-19 responses-called "K-Quarantine"-is s... more This essay argues that the success of South Korea's COVID-19 responses-called "K-Quarantine"-is symptomatic of the country's liberal politics in crisis. The therapeutic politics of K-Quarantine is enacted by an amalgam of moral guilt and legal liabilities for damages to the community, framing the COVID-stricken public as potential criminals against community. In this political context characterized by potential guilt, the public feel culpable if they resist the overshadowing power of public security. This essay offers a critique of the public security rhetoric, examining the case of an LGBTQ South Korean charged on violations of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act amid the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. A critical evaluation of invasive and punitive measures found in the case demonstrates that the K-Quarantine strategy contradicts its own underlying liberal ideal of the autonomous subject because its public health deliberation reproduces a guilt mandate by constructing a perpetrator/victim binary.
This paper examines the border as an assemblage of surveillance technologies that exert a content... more This paper examines the border as an assemblage of surveillance technologies that exert a contentious claim to algorithmic accuracy based on raceembedded biometric data processing. I offer the term surveillance racism-a regime of normalization in which the technical reification of race for the biometric database configures anti-migration and anti-refugee discourses for the well-being of a population or nation. I put forward the border as a biopolitical enclosure in which biometric monitoring through security and risk calculations of threat to the state generates, propagates, and maintains discourses of racism. A discussion of South Korea's Integrated Border Management System uncovers the workings of a biopolitical enclosure that is committed to constructing a claim about the survival of the Korean nation pitted against the peculiar racial category of unhealthy immigrants from non-Western, developing countries.
While the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by ... more While the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by unraveling the discursive complexity of their activism, little attention has been paid to the way in which that activism compromises the discursive dynamic of the defector community desiring to contest the power of a ruling paradigm within political culture. A critical analysis of North Korean defector balloon warriors who have crusaded against the North Korea regime through airborne leaflet drops at the South–North Korea border illustrates how their uncritical and unquestioned acceptance of liberal human rights can only leave the defector community vulnerable to charges of being politically-futile disparate citizens. The invocations of transnational liberal hegemonic norms obscure and undermine North Korean defectors’ agency of collective engagement in acts of liberal democratic citizenship. Understanding the propagandistic dimension of their dissenting voices can help expand the scope of analysis of liberal democratic posthumanitarian citizenship.
This study explains how apparatuses of the state-society network have played a significant role i... more This study explains how apparatuses of the state-society network have played a significant role in the discursive infrastructure of Cold War politics in South Korea. It argues that the nationwide Candlelight Protests in winter 2016-2017 were not only popular struggles to restore representative democracy, but also calls for critical reflection on the sustained, complex entwinement of voices manufactured from, and negotiated with, the discursive infrastructure of Cold War politics. Sustaining the Cold War discursive infrastructure does not mean the mere revival or reproduction of the Cold War mentality, but rather intensifying the hegemonic discourse through a particularly reminiscent set of apparatuses (e.g., pseudo-civic organizations, policy) deployed in the present. From this perspective, I propose that understanding South Korean right-wing groups as a patriotic Korean collective protecting Park Geun-hye from the threat of jongbuk helps us critically engage with the discursive conditions that operate the Cold War mentality of post-Cold War South Korea.
This essay aims to critically examine body politics, which characterize North Korea as the hyper-... more This essay aims to critically examine body politics, which characterize North Korea as the hyper-feminine—as well as hyper-masculine—nation-state, and to contribute to a historical critique of our current inter-Korean situation, wherein South Korea’s cultural superiority to North Korea is unquestionably presumed and legitimized. I discuss what I call the biopolitical Otherization of North Korea, which I define as the discursive formation of the incessant purification of degenerate, inferior North Korean populations along the lines of the problematic formation of national belonging. This discursive politics of Otherizing is located within the allegorical composition of eyewitness reports of North Koreans written by South Korean reporters during the historic first official post-war inter-Korea talks—emerging from the “July 4 North-South Joint Communiqué”—held in Pyongyang from 29 August to 2 September 1972, which hinder the subject’s ability to deliberate anxieties about national identification.
In this essay, I argue that anti-communist authoritarianism has still survived into the 21st cent... more In this essay, I argue that anti-communist authoritarianism has still survived into the 21st century South Korean public sphere, having been intensified in the idea of jongbuk. Jongbuk combines jong (to follow) and buk (North Korea) ideologically labeling people who are presumed to blindly follow, or be willfully serve North Korea’s totalitarian regime. People who are labeled jongbuk, pro-North Korea followers, are not only stigmatized and marginalized socially, but they are also subject to legal sanctions in their civic participation under the National Security Law. Especially under Park Geun-hye, daughter of military dictator and former President Park Chung-hee (1961-1979), I present how jongbuk has served as continued politicized commitments to national security and public safety used to justify the illegitimate and indiscriminate online surveillance and censorship of civilians and artists, as well as Park’s political opponents, to safeguard her regime.
This essay aims to provide a critical view of South Korean intellectuals and unification policy m... more This essay aims to provide a critical view of South Korean intellectuals and unification policy makers who stress the undisputed role of nationalism, across the diverse ideo- logical spectrums, in constructing ‘inter-Korea’ reconciliation in South Korean society. They contend that meanings of counter-hegemonic practice against anti-North Korean ideology are already determined within the politics of national identification. However, this mode of thinking remains a predicament of the South Korean public’s critical engagement with the way in which a moral claim to national identification is conflated with inter-Korea economic collaboration along the lines of neo-liberalism. But I also want to illuminate the connection that neo-liberalism and new conservatism in South Korea make in the attempt to help anti-North Koreanism survive democratic challenges. My critical evaluation of the connection suggests a discursive condition of what I call ‘inter-Korea sociability’, in which the South Korean public can appropriate social and historical claims about the inter-Korea relationship that range from the atrocious and violent events in the war to the so-called North Korean human rights crisis. I argue that two Koreas’ reconciliation can come through resisting the romanticization of Koreans’ own normative commitment to idealized national authenticity and liberal human rights.
This paper presents how the concept of multiculturalism, when applied to North Korean settlers in... more This paper presents how the concept of multiculturalism, when applied to North Korean settlers in South Korea, falls short of a viable solution to the identity negotiation process these settlers continually undergo while living in South Korea. In the liberal national formulation of multiculturalism, North Korean values and lifestyles cannot be cherished, and these refugees cannot express or take pride in their culture. Instead, it is when they express their pain, sorrow, anger, and frustration about their experiences in North Korea and during their refugee life that they can be hailed as brave, autonomous, reliable, and responsible citizens. I argue that this is an abuse of culture that depoliticizes these refugees. North Koreans living in South Korea are often mobilized to witness the persistent cruelty of human rights abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime, which has been considered a significant contribution to the strengthening of liberal democracies. But these refugees are rarely invited to provide critical commentary about the liberal democratic regime in which their subject formation as competent citizens is always questionable. To catch a glimpse of the insight into North Koreans as avant la lettre for unification of the nation, we Others to them should be better prepared to respond to the political implications that are made and carried through multiculturalism ventriloquizing the ideal liberal citizenship that they can never attain without a constant denial of the self.
Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_395117.sgm 10.1080/14649370902949457 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14... more Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_395117.sgm 10.1080/14649370902949457 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online) Original Article 2009Taylor & Francis 10300000September 2009 MinkyuSung minkyusung@gmail.com ABSTRACT This essay questions the 'truth ...
This essay discusses how North Korean settlers in South Korea are engaged in the rubric of neo-li... more This essay discusses how North Korean settlers in South Korea are engaged in the rubric of neo-liberal citizenship to program the idea of an enterprise of free and autonomous selves. I call into question the psychiatric intervention in the North Korean population deprived of ...
This essay argues that the success of South Korea's COVID-19 responses-called "K-Quarantine"-is s... more This essay argues that the success of South Korea's COVID-19 responses-called "K-Quarantine"-is symptomatic of the country's liberal politics in crisis. The therapeutic politics of K-Quarantine is enacted by an amalgam of moral guilt and legal liabilities for damages to the community, framing the COVID-stricken public as potential criminals against community. In this political context characterized by potential guilt, the public feel culpable if they resist the overshadowing power of public security. This essay offers a critique of the public security rhetoric, examining the case of an LGBTQ South Korean charged on violations of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act amid the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. A critical evaluation of invasive and punitive measures found in the case demonstrates that the K-Quarantine strategy contradicts its own underlying liberal ideal of the autonomous subject because its public health deliberation reproduces a guilt mandate by constructing a perpetrator/victim binary.
This paper examines the border as an assemblage of surveillance technologies that exert a content... more This paper examines the border as an assemblage of surveillance technologies that exert a contentious claim to algorithmic accuracy based on raceembedded biometric data processing. I offer the term surveillance racism-a regime of normalization in which the technical reification of race for the biometric database configures anti-migration and anti-refugee discourses for the well-being of a population or nation. I put forward the border as a biopolitical enclosure in which biometric monitoring through security and risk calculations of threat to the state generates, propagates, and maintains discourses of racism. A discussion of South Korea's Integrated Border Management System uncovers the workings of a biopolitical enclosure that is committed to constructing a claim about the survival of the Korean nation pitted against the peculiar racial category of unhealthy immigrants from non-Western, developing countries.
While the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by ... more While the identity politics of North Korean defector-activists at home and abroad is revealed by unraveling the discursive complexity of their activism, little attention has been paid to the way in which that activism compromises the discursive dynamic of the defector community desiring to contest the power of a ruling paradigm within political culture. A critical analysis of North Korean defector balloon warriors who have crusaded against the North Korea regime through airborne leaflet drops at the South–North Korea border illustrates how their uncritical and unquestioned acceptance of liberal human rights can only leave the defector community vulnerable to charges of being politically-futile disparate citizens. The invocations of transnational liberal hegemonic norms obscure and undermine North Korean defectors’ agency of collective engagement in acts of liberal democratic citizenship. Understanding the propagandistic dimension of their dissenting voices can help expand the scope of analysis of liberal democratic posthumanitarian citizenship.
This study explains how apparatuses of the state-society network have played a significant role i... more This study explains how apparatuses of the state-society network have played a significant role in the discursive infrastructure of Cold War politics in South Korea. It argues that the nationwide Candlelight Protests in winter 2016-2017 were not only popular struggles to restore representative democracy, but also calls for critical reflection on the sustained, complex entwinement of voices manufactured from, and negotiated with, the discursive infrastructure of Cold War politics. Sustaining the Cold War discursive infrastructure does not mean the mere revival or reproduction of the Cold War mentality, but rather intensifying the hegemonic discourse through a particularly reminiscent set of apparatuses (e.g., pseudo-civic organizations, policy) deployed in the present. From this perspective, I propose that understanding South Korean right-wing groups as a patriotic Korean collective protecting Park Geun-hye from the threat of jongbuk helps us critically engage with the discursive conditions that operate the Cold War mentality of post-Cold War South Korea.
This essay aims to critically examine body politics, which characterize North Korea as the hyper-... more This essay aims to critically examine body politics, which characterize North Korea as the hyper-feminine—as well as hyper-masculine—nation-state, and to contribute to a historical critique of our current inter-Korean situation, wherein South Korea’s cultural superiority to North Korea is unquestionably presumed and legitimized. I discuss what I call the biopolitical Otherization of North Korea, which I define as the discursive formation of the incessant purification of degenerate, inferior North Korean populations along the lines of the problematic formation of national belonging. This discursive politics of Otherizing is located within the allegorical composition of eyewitness reports of North Koreans written by South Korean reporters during the historic first official post-war inter-Korea talks—emerging from the “July 4 North-South Joint Communiqué”—held in Pyongyang from 29 August to 2 September 1972, which hinder the subject’s ability to deliberate anxieties about national identification.
In this essay, I argue that anti-communist authoritarianism has still survived into the 21st cent... more In this essay, I argue that anti-communist authoritarianism has still survived into the 21st century South Korean public sphere, having been intensified in the idea of jongbuk. Jongbuk combines jong (to follow) and buk (North Korea) ideologically labeling people who are presumed to blindly follow, or be willfully serve North Korea’s totalitarian regime. People who are labeled jongbuk, pro-North Korea followers, are not only stigmatized and marginalized socially, but they are also subject to legal sanctions in their civic participation under the National Security Law. Especially under Park Geun-hye, daughter of military dictator and former President Park Chung-hee (1961-1979), I present how jongbuk has served as continued politicized commitments to national security and public safety used to justify the illegitimate and indiscriminate online surveillance and censorship of civilians and artists, as well as Park’s political opponents, to safeguard her regime.
This essay aims to provide a critical view of South Korean intellectuals and unification policy m... more This essay aims to provide a critical view of South Korean intellectuals and unification policy makers who stress the undisputed role of nationalism, across the diverse ideo- logical spectrums, in constructing ‘inter-Korea’ reconciliation in South Korean society. They contend that meanings of counter-hegemonic practice against anti-North Korean ideology are already determined within the politics of national identification. However, this mode of thinking remains a predicament of the South Korean public’s critical engagement with the way in which a moral claim to national identification is conflated with inter-Korea economic collaboration along the lines of neo-liberalism. But I also want to illuminate the connection that neo-liberalism and new conservatism in South Korea make in the attempt to help anti-North Koreanism survive democratic challenges. My critical evaluation of the connection suggests a discursive condition of what I call ‘inter-Korea sociability’, in which the South Korean public can appropriate social and historical claims about the inter-Korea relationship that range from the atrocious and violent events in the war to the so-called North Korean human rights crisis. I argue that two Koreas’ reconciliation can come through resisting the romanticization of Koreans’ own normative commitment to idealized national authenticity and liberal human rights.
This paper presents how the concept of multiculturalism, when applied to North Korean settlers in... more This paper presents how the concept of multiculturalism, when applied to North Korean settlers in South Korea, falls short of a viable solution to the identity negotiation process these settlers continually undergo while living in South Korea. In the liberal national formulation of multiculturalism, North Korean values and lifestyles cannot be cherished, and these refugees cannot express or take pride in their culture. Instead, it is when they express their pain, sorrow, anger, and frustration about their experiences in North Korea and during their refugee life that they can be hailed as brave, autonomous, reliable, and responsible citizens. I argue that this is an abuse of culture that depoliticizes these refugees. North Koreans living in South Korea are often mobilized to witness the persistent cruelty of human rights abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime, which has been considered a significant contribution to the strengthening of liberal democracies. But these refugees are rarely invited to provide critical commentary about the liberal democratic regime in which their subject formation as competent citizens is always questionable. To catch a glimpse of the insight into North Koreans as avant la lettre for unification of the nation, we Others to them should be better prepared to respond to the political implications that are made and carried through multiculturalism ventriloquizing the ideal liberal citizenship that they can never attain without a constant denial of the self.
Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_395117.sgm 10.1080/14649370902949457 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14... more Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_395117.sgm 10.1080/14649370902949457 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1464-9373 (print)/1469-8447 (online) Original Article 2009Taylor & Francis 10300000September 2009 MinkyuSung minkyusung@gmail.com ABSTRACT This essay questions the 'truth ...
This essay discusses how North Korean settlers in South Korea are engaged in the rubric of neo-li... more This essay discusses how North Korean settlers in South Korea are engaged in the rubric of neo-liberal citizenship to program the idea of an enterprise of free and autonomous selves. I call into question the psychiatric intervention in the North Korean population deprived of ...
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