Deconstructing the DMZ: Derrida, Levinas and the phenomenology of peace

Abstract

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has been a global symbol of perpetual conflict, hatred and distrust since its establishment in 1953 after the Korean War. The 155-mile ceasefire line has given birth to moral pathologies in the minds of Korean people that include ‘otherness is evil’, ‘containment of war is peace’ and ‘restoration of the same is unification’. The purpose of this article is to reduce these moral pathologies through Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive approach and Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the Other. Through tripartite reduction of these moral ideologies of the DMZ, an ethical thesis is developed that peace is not a mere state of the absence of war, but rather a welcoming of radical others and differences. It is also argued that unification is not about restoring the same ‘original we’, but about co-reconstruction of the ‘democratic we’.