The Making of Post-Socialist Citizens in South Korea?: The Case of Border Crossers from North Korea

This paper aims to capture the complex process through which former socialist North Koreans are remade as South Koreans. I argue that the process by which border crossers from North Korea are remade into post-socialist subjects is complex and multi-dimensional. I address the interlocked nature of institutions and subjectivities in citizen-making processes. On the one hand, it involves the institutionalizations of border crossers with the purpose of screening out “dangerous socialist subjects” for security reasons, followed by “post-socialist” education at Hanawon. On the other hand, it also entails the cultural dynamics of the citizen-making processes. Border crossers are taught not only about political democracy and the economic market, but the cultural learning of resilience to cope with hardship and uncertainty in South Korea. This paper finds two distinctive responses to the cultural learning of resilience—fear and rejection. In this sense, the institutionalizations and the cultural teaching of resilience have unintended consequences. These citizen-making processes raise the question of what characterizes normal subjectivity in a modern, marketized economy. Rather than accepting these normal assumptions as given and natural, this paper tries to uncover hidden assumptions and to problematize the arbitrariness of these normative assumptions. What appears normal, rational, free, and democratic can be actually accidental, temporary, absurd, and socially constructed. This paper attempts to challenge and demystify the meaning of rational, free, democratic, resilient, and normative citizenships that tend to be taken for granted.

韩国后社会主义公民的制造？：以北韩越境者为例

关键词：公民身份；越境者；北韩；后社会主义；统一院。

本论文旨在展示前社会主义北韩公民重塑为韩国人的复杂过程。我提出，来自北韩的越境者被重塑为后社会主义主体的过程是复杂而多维度的。我入手解决的是公民塑造过程中的制度的互相交织的性质以及主体性问题。一方面，它涉及到对越境者进行的制度化， 其目的是出于国家安全考量， 对“危险的社会主义主体”加以筛除，随后在统一院进行“后社会主义”教育；另一方面，它也包含了公民塑造过程中的文化动态过程。越境者不仅被教授政治民主以及市场经济的内容，而且还要进行应对在韩国遇到的困难和不确定性所需要的韧性的文化学习。本论文发现对韧性的文化学习有两个突出的反应：恐惧和排斥。在这个意义上，对越境者的制度化和对韧性的文化学习产生了意料之外的后果。这些公民塑造的过程提出了在现代的市场化的经济中，何为正常的主体性的特征的问题。本论文试图揭示出隐匿的预设，并对这些规范性预设的武断性加以问题化， 而非将这些正常的预设视为理所当然和自然而然的。那些看似正常、理性、自由以及民主的预设实际上可能是偶然的、暂时、荒谬以及社会性地建构起来的。本论文试图挑战这些多被视为理所当然的理性、自由、民主、富于弹性以及规范性的公民身份的意义，并对其去神秘化。

Translated from English by Li Guo