ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the postcolonial recasting of 'international problems' as 'intercultural problems' has fundamental, reverberating implications on how one go about encountering, engaging with, intervening in, worrying about and imagining politics, the international and a problem like North Korea. It focuses to lay a theoretical foundation for the cultural turn. The chapter explores how critical traditions in International Relations (IR) have gone about problematizing the prevailing approaches to international relations that see social, political and ethical problems solely or primarily as policy problems requiring the production of the most accurate facts and the most sophisticated assessments. The chapter focuses on that 'speaking nearby' the 'North Korea problem', by grafting and playing, might produce a more fruitful engagement. The theoretical approach is not aimed at producing an 'improved' template of knowledge that seeks to know North Korea better but has as its goal alternative modes, processes and terms of engagement with 'North Korea'.
