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석사 2019 히다카 사와코 남북한 출신 청년이 만드는 접촉지대의 문화번역과 협력적 생애사 : A 독서모임을 중심으로
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2022.03.29
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문화인류학과
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지도교수 : 김현미


The aim of this thesis is to identify different shapes of power dynamics and identities that are constructed, exchanged and modified within a contact zone between young South Koreans and young North Koreans. Conducting a fieldwork on a book club organized by these young people called “Book Club A,” it finds that the gathering is a place of daily and micro-cultural activities where the cultural medium of books allows its members to share views. The club serves as a physical space of contact for the two groups of young Koreans and also deepens, psychologically and cognitively, their understanding of each other. The number of North Koreans who have defected to South Korea exceeded 30,000 in 2017. Ever since, South Korea has searched for ways to better support South Koreans and North Koreans to "coexist". A series of developments in the two Koreas’ 2018 international relations, including the inter-Korean summit and the North Korea–United States Summit, has heightened much of the South Korean society’s interest in its Northern counterpart. Some in the South have advocated that North Korean defectors should be integrated into South Korea referring to their shared ethnicity. Indeed, South Korea has been an active party of the inter-Korean relations in a macroscopic sense, and yet it has overlooked the fact that there emerged another form of inter-Korean relations at a
microscopic level – that between South Koreans and North Korean defectors. This thesis attempts to translate the varying terms through which the young people of two Koreas build their relationships in a cultural space of a book club, and to inquire into the ensuing changes in how they identify themselves in the course of such development. It employs participatory observation and in-depth interviews to reveal what conventions are mutually understood by the members and what their respective locations imply. It may be safe to assume
that young South Koreans are the majority while the young North Korean defectors are minority in the South Korean society. And it is an uncontested fact that power relations between them already exists in many areas. Book Club A becomes a space inconsistent with the outside world. Books lay the foundation for conversations led by shared interests while the formality and rituals set by the club endorse equitable social membership. Here in this quotidian and microscopic space, all members, those native to South Korea and those who defected from the North alike, encounter and practice mutual recognition that cannot be experienced beyond its doors. Also, the discussion about books is based on their life experience, which heals them related to the historical division of Korean peninsula and forms mental bond between them. This process can be analyzed through the concept, Collaborative Life History as well as the example of German reunification and separated
Korean people. Book Club A is different from public institutions in that it does not provide financial supports to the young North Korean defectors in the South Korean society. Its impact, after all, lies in offering the young North Koreans with the experience of social recognition and interaction that are as crucial to a settlement in the Korean society as is any public support. The presence of this space has a great social significance; it signals to the young generation of the Korean society, whose ethnic diversity exhibits continuous growth in the face of globalization, to explore the possibility of interaction and communication with the minorities of their society.