Mobile North Korean women and their places in the Sino-North Korea borderland

Abstract

This article explores the situations of people living at the China-North Korea borderland. Contrary to the general understanding of North Korean migrants – as victims of the North Korean brutal state and economic impoverishment – many North Koreans at the Sino-North Korea borderland cross the border (a border river) as a matter of everyday practice. This article thus contests the general restrictive stereotypes that frame North Korean mobility, and argues that many of them are calculative agents actively balancing the costs and benefits of migration. A decision of migration often takes into account North Koreans’ spatial perception, intimate human network of relatives, and sense of familiarity with language, feelings and emotions for place and people, with little reference to the political persecution or economic deprivation usually depicted by the media.