Patriots behind Enemy Lines: Hyperreality and the Stories of Self and Other in Recent North Korean War-Theme Graphic Novels

Abstract

Based on a study of North Korean war-theme graphic novels from the 2000s, “Patriots behind Enemy Lines” argues that the “behind enemy lines” theme walks a fine line between condemnation and becoming what it shows, between critiquing a hostile, foreign world and adapting its “art for art’s sake principle, antisocial fads ( nallarip’ung ), and creative freedom.” Like other cultural forms in North Korea, the message is firmly ideological, but the thematic—adaptable patriots temporarily transforming their minds and, in particular, their bodies into enemy Others—spins off images of Self as Other in excess, which makes for ambiguous interplay between entertainment and ideology. The radical alteration of spies in this theme allows the cultural workers to transcend the formula required for homeland patriots and provides entertaining images without transgressing regime politics. A key characteristic of this genre then is the adaptable heroes as they become heavily biased interlocutors between North and South in a disjunctured time-space. The mixed media negotiation of this time-space produces a characteristic go-stop routine—or rather circumscribed excess—in which borders of morality and self-perception are crossed only to be reestablished.