“Memory struggle” and contact zones in-between the two Koreas: the politics of representation in documentary films

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates the “Memory struggle” in-between the two Koreas presented in the documentary films after the April 2018 Panmunjom Declaration. The Children Gone to Poland and Shadow Flowers carry out politics of representation that create a new moment of cultural memories about borders normatively standardized by hostility and indifference. The two documentary films place the camera on the border of the Cold War, which connects the past and the present, which was either not recorded or was misrecorded by one side of the border and therefore erased off the surface of our memories. They are non-nationals in that they can be stateless or multinational, depending on the location of the border. As such, they disrupt the border as boundaries that have continued since the Cold War. On the other hand, the struggle of North Korean defectors to return home reveals the indifference and hostility of South Korean society over this fact, confirming the Red Complex, which eventually exists as a shadow of hospitality for North Korean defectors. In this way, the two texts invite us to confront history before the establishment of the border through war orphans or face the reality that the Cold War frontier has expanded infinitely through an individual of ambiguous identities, such as a North Korean defector.