Suk-Young Kim is a professor of theater and Asian studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book Illusive Utopia addresses North Korean state propaganda and rituals, and she is the coauthor of Long Road Home, which documents the oral history of a North Korean labor camp survivor.

Klappentext

The Korean demilitarized zone is among the most heavily guarded places on earth, yet provides passage for defectors, spies, political emissaries, war prisoners, activists, tourists, and others who test the limits of Korean division. This book focuses on a diverse selection of inter-Korean border crossers and the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than constitutional delineation. Using their physical bodies and emotions as optimal frontiers, these individuals resist the state's right to draw geopolitical borders and define their national identity. Drawing on a wide range of sources, such as North Korean documentary films, museum exhibitions, theater productions, protester perspectives, and interviews with South Korean officials and activists, this volume recasts the history of Korean division and draws a much more nuanced portrait of the region's Cold War legacies. The book ultimately helps readers conceive of the DMZ as a dynamic summation of personalized experiences rather than as a fixed site of historical significance.

Inhalt

AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Contesting the Border1. Imagined Border Crossers on Stage2. Divided Screen3. Twice Crossing and the Price of Emotional Citizenship4. Borders on Display: Museum Exhibitions5. Nation and Nature Beyond the BorderlandNotesWorks CitedIndex