The 'truth politics' of anti-North Koreanism: The post-ideological cultural representation of North Korea and the cultural criticisms of Korean nationalism

Abstract

This essay questions the 'truth politics' of anti-North Koreanism in which a 'genuine' figuration of North Korea is presumed to be achievable at the popular level. I define the truth politics of anti-North Koreanism as the political-cultural discursive formation obscuring the ideological powerfulness of anti-North Koreanism that hinges on 'the normality of nationalism'. The truth politics reinscribes and reinforces the populist and functionalist belief in national unification that justifies developmentalist agendas for North Korea. As an alternative, I discuss the post-colonial cultural criticism that calls into question the identity politics of popular nationalism, which implicitly performs along the lines of the Sunshine Policy guidelines to naturalize the normality of nationalism under economic developmentalism. The questionable formation of nationalism prevents South Koreans from gaining self-reflexive access to the way in which heterogeneous tropes of the nation rupturing in the discursive practice of popular nationalism are exploited. But I also critically interrogate the analytical framework presumed within the criticism, because it constrains its own scope and abilities of questioning the truth politics of anti-North Koreanism the criticism ostensibly targets.