This article aimed to identify the characteristics of the characters who disrupt the dichotomous boundary of the divided regime or provide recognition beyond it by examining the female characters appearing in the dramas on the division of Korea. Along...
This article aimed to identify the characteristics of the characters who disrupt the dichotomous boundary of the divided regime or provide recognition beyond it by examining the female characters appearing in the dramas on the division of Korea. Along with the prolonged division status, the characters appearing in the dramas on the division of Korea are subalterns oppressed by the dichotomous boundaries of the divided regime. However, they tended to be embodied as beings exhibiting paradoxical potential that shakes the stability of the division system. Therefore, this researcher selected 9 works of the dramas on the division of Korea as the target text, which selected women, one of the most oppressed subaltern of the divided regime, as central figures to acquire narratives and perspectives that help to understand these works.
The dichotomous boundary in the divided regime dichotomizes and hierarchizes various elements/categories. However, the female figures in the text above are changed as beings that shake the stability of the divided regime by traversing and intersecting between different kinds of elements/categories. This article defines these female figures as condensed ‘Borderlands’. Gloria Anzaldúa, a third world queer feminist scholar, defines Borderlands as spaces where a third space is constantly created between two or more mutually heterogeneous races, languages, genders, nations, peoples, and cultures.
This researcher redefined the concept of borderlands to match the characters in the dramas on the division of Korea with reference to the discussion of Gloria Anzaldúa. This article regards the characters of the dramas on the division of Korea as borderlands which are the subject and space where change and transition occur because the characters or their bodies are a space where ideology, system, culture, norm, and order are projected and realized with the operation in the divided regime, and it is also a space where the possibility of performance and opposition arises from this. Accordingly, this researcher defined the figures as borderlands in the dramas on the division of Korea as subjects/topos. It is an existence outside the existing dominant domain which solidifies the division status of South and North Korea and changes between various elements/categories such as divided ideology, state, culture, norm, and gender in the divided regime. Change and transition above mean not only the figure's personal status (attitudes, values, roles, identity, etc.) but also contributing to the transformation of society at the same time. In other words, this means a change that helps to disrupt the dichotomous paradigm that oppresses the people in an intersecting way in the divided regime.
The figures as borderlands in the dramas on the division of Korea are divided into the following three stages: ① [stage of separation], ② [stage of crossing], and ③ [stage of creation]. It is appropriate to regard these divisions as stages rather than types because the figures as borderlands appearing in the dramas on the division of Korea in common show the appearance of disturbing the dichotomous boundary of the divided regime, and the appearance gradually develops into separation-crossing-creation. ① Characters who belong to the stage of separation show their departure from the domain of the existing dominant order, discourse, culture, and norms which maintains and operates the divided regime as well as the categories of state, people, ethnicity, ideology, specific class and gender. ② Persons belonging to the stage of crossing are not bound by the ideology, norm, order, attitude, and value system specified by the divided regime, and select and adjust these to suit the situation encountered in the divided regime, or remain ambiguous between them. ③ Characters belonging to the stage of creation form new perceptions that go beyond the dichotomous paradigm of the divided regime between mutually different kinds of elements/categories.
Through these theories, chapter III studied ‘characters who violate gender norms and are separated from post-war patriarchy’. These female figures become the subject of breaking out of the patriarchal order after the war by violating the gender norms that have been strengthened in post-war society. This researcher showed that these characters become subjects who reject the identity of virtuous women, subjects who resist ‘misogyny’ after the war, and subjects who deviate from the duty of protecting the home by reproducing private experiences, emotions and desires.
Chapter IV studied ‘a person who crosses spatial boundaries and reaches a fluid state’.
In other words, the figure of women choosing and adjusting a specific ideology, norm, order, attitude, or identity to harmonize with the situation they faced without being bound by these concepts above was analyzed. The characters in the dramas become a subject with multi-layered and mixed elements, a subject with contradictory and mixed elements such as different ideologies, norms, and order of the South and North and a subject who escapes from the space of modernization after the war by crossing spatial boundaries.
Chapter V studied ‘a person who hybridizes new perceptions by fusing heterogeneous elements/categories’. In the above work, the female characters fuse heterogeneous elements/categories with each other, but they are not fixed to anything and are mixed with the third worldview. In this way, this researcher revealed that the characters in the dramas are the subjects of perception, and they connected themselves and others, the old and the next generation after the war, and the diverse groups dichotomized in the divided regime.
This study identified the process by which female figures as borderlands appearing in the dramas on the division of Korea become the subject of creating a perception that disturbs the dichotomous boundary of the divided regime or creates a crack in the paradigm without the political intention to break the division system. They also conducted viability, negotiating power, and executive power to overcome the personal contradictions they face in the divided regime. It is meaningful that this study interpreted the work that has been missing or has not received adequate attention in the history of the dramas on the division of Korea and rediscovers its value despite the fact that this work embodies a female figure who overcomes the contradictions of division. It is also valuable that this study presents a new perspective for discovering possible narratives and texts that can overcome the contradictions of division.