HAE SEO KIM, "North Korean Migration to South Korea"

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the migration of North Koreans to South Korea from a critical theoretical perspective. To historicize the division of the Korean peninsula, I examine how the bio-power to “make live” worked in tandem with sovereign power to “take life” in order to construct North Korea and the post-colonies as “death-heterotopias.” To highlight the spatial declension of such necropolitics, I frame the First World as a biopolis, and the “developing” world as a necropolis. I examine how the body that moves from the necropolis to the biopolis pose challenges to bio-sovereign power. I specifically look at how the South Korean state tries to manage the challenge posed by North Korean migrants by organizing their mimetic transformation through the Hanawon, pro-bono cosmetic surgery, and TV programs. Lastly, I end by examining the challenge posed towards biosovereign power by a migrant body that refuses a biopolitical transformation and instead chooses suicide.