ABSTRACT
In a 2004 interview with a South Korean scholar, a North Korean settler in South Korea remarked, “I’ve realized I’d have to die in order to survive in this society” (cited in Yoon 2009: 148, emphasis added). His use of the word “die” is not so much about literal physical death as it is about a removal of his North Korean identity marker in his daily encounters with his South Korean neighbors. Sociologist In-Jin Yoon’s (2012) recent survey reveals that only four out of 10 North Korean settlers in South Korea believe their North Korean background, culture, and knowledge are worth keeping and passing down to their descendants. The survey also reports that 87.1 percent of those settlers have no hesitation confirming that they have been trying their best to become “genuine South Koreans” since entering the country (Yoon 2012: 47). One of the implications of these survey results is that settlers’ successful social adaptation to their adopted country, South Korea, has something to do with a pious denial of their North Korean origins in identity. Embracing “South Korean values” seems essential to their survival in South Korean society. But is this act of embracing more than mere acceptance? Is it about subjection? In her ethnographic survey on North Korean refugees’ account of the famine in mid and late 1990s North Korea, Fahy (2011: 21) reports that their memories of the homeland are not entirely negative. She suggests, “As they compete for a living in a society that mostly rejects them and their past, they may more readily call up positive memories of their former lives as sources of comfort and national pride.” This chapter on the discursive formation of North Korean settlers via multiculturalism and liberal democracy feeds on the interpretation of their negotiation in social life, ambivalence in cultural identity, and resilience from painful memory.
