@article{M3A20D8BB,
title = "Recasting the ‘Inter-Korea’ in National Reconciliation",
journal = "Academia Koreana",
year = "2012",
issn = "1520-7412",
doi = "10.18399/acta.2012.15.1.009",
author = "Minkyu Sung",
keywords = "National Reconciliation, North Korea, Nationalism, Otherization, Human Rights",
abstract = "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."
}