State and church in the making of post-division subjectivity : North Korean migrants in South Korea

This paper provides a historical overview of the shifting identity politics of the South Korean state with respect to North Korean migrants, and an ethnographic study of intra-ethnic contact zones in which North Korean migrants and their southern counterparts interact and negotiate a new citizenship in envisioning a reunified nation. The presence of North Korean migrants and their daily struggles in adjusting to South Korean society gives rise to questions about the narrow-minded South Korean-centric nationalism which was once believed to be ingrained and that descended through „our“ blood. This essay posits that Korean ethnicity should not be taken for granted as a self-evident unit that shares a homogenous identity, but rather as a product of the complex social processes of boundary making. By examining gradual changes from national anticommunist celebrities to new settlers, I want to punctuate how state powers and interests influence the Northerners‘ processes of re-subjectification in South Korea, and further illuminate the ways in which the different terms of „North Korean migrants“ end up serving as quasi-ethnic markers. Micro-levels of empirical data are crucial in dismantling the assimilationist tendency in the policies towards the Northerners and a reunification rooted in a belief of Korean ethnic homogeneity