Sketching Geopolitics: Comics and the Case of the Cheonan Sinking

Abstract

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) and International Political Sociology (IPS) has made significant contributions to the study of images. Chief among such studies on visual politics has been the focus on popular visual media including cartoons, film, photography and video games. This paper takes a look at another prominent medium: the comic. Comics provide ample potential starting points for IR scholars and political sociologists: the comic’s aesthetic qualities, that is the way in which it narrates geopolitical events to public audiences through condensed image–word relations, reveals a distinct politics of representation. Thus, the study of comics contributes to a better understanding of visuality—theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. This paper complements existing work by engaging an example outside of familiar European-language contexts. It discusses a comic booklet that was published by the South Korean Ministry of National Defense in the aftermath of the sinking of the Cheonan: a navy vessel that was allegedly sunk by a North Korean torpedo in 2010. Recognizing comics as narrative sites of (geo)politics, the paper explores the booklet’s own way of seeing by discussing its dramatic structure and rhetorical devices. In this way the paper provides an exemplary reading of comics, which can serve as a conceptual basis for future studies in the field.