ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates pain as masquerades and/or masquerades as pain in international relations (IR). In conventional terms, masquerade or mask is regarded as something that negates a true nature. The chapter discusses the case of Korean air flight 858 and Hyunhee Kim and gives some brief accounts of the theme of masquerade and fictional IR before addressing the politics of pain. The chapter focuses on the two characters: Hyunhee Kim, an actual character based on the South Korean government's official narrative and Mirryung, an imaginary character and Kim's unidentified conversation partner. Mirryung comes from the word mirror. It seems to the author that people usually look at the mirror as if it reflects images as they are. The mirror image is something that has the right side of the original object on the left and vice versa. In other words, a reversed version of images is assumed as something real.
