Making and Unmaking the Korean National Division: Separated Families in the Cold War and Post -Cold War Eras

Abstract

My dissertation also explores the diverse effects of the Post-Cold War transformation on separated family members. It demonstrates how the issue of separated families have again been mobilized, but in a different configuration, to promote a new nation-building project in the era of "national reconciliation" and "neoliberal global competition." It examines how diverse separated family members are reinterpreting their histories and repositioning themselves at this contemporary historical juncture. By doing so, I highlight the social process of change from the perspective of these national subjects in relation to ongoing social and political transformation. I examine this transformation not as a linear movement between two exclusive states but as a reconfiguration of a social field.