ABSTRACT
Conflict and tensions between the two Koreas prioritise the militaristic security concerns of the Peninsula. This article, however, analyses the situation through the heuristic prism of feminist security studies and of Agamben’s state of exception, which is described as the suspension of the legal system in order to protect the state from internal or external threats, to identify the insecurities of feminised citizens in the South Korean state. The article starts with the historically gendered ideologies which promote the discursive construction of the state of exception. The article then explores the way in which the military build-up on the peninsula generates a security dilemma of extreme dimensions between the two Koreas, which in turn legitimates a gendered state of exception, and finally, the article examines the efforts of the women’s movement to challenge the state of exception.
