Mobile Bodies and Transnational Zones in Korean Cinema

• In Event: Cinematic Transnationalism and East Asia

Abstract

In the context of global cinema, transnational mobility is often manifested in films through thematic and visual tropes of traveling and navigating geographically complex spaces and trajectories. As a product of cross-cultural collaborations, many aspects of contemporary cinema (e.g., themes, narratives, visual images, and mediated sensations of mobility) are symptomatic of a transnational experience. East Asia produces many region-specific examples of bodies existing in or moving through transnational zones. In alignment with our panel theme, “Cinematic Transnationalism and East Asia,” this paper considers the (often violent) relationship between circulations of the human body and capital in the context of East Asia, particularly in regard to the issues of labor migration, human trafficking, and transnational crime. This paper examines contemporary Korean films that narrativize cross-border journeys through the experiences of ethnic Koreans from mainland China (“Joseonjok”) who enter the modernized spaces of South Korea to earn money, as well as newly emerging cosmopolitans that traverse national borders as easily as the boundaries between legal and illegal acts. This paper focuses particularly on circulations of human bodies that embody the fractured psyche of nationalism in transnational zones that exist within, outside, and across national territories. I consider how these film narratives are symptomatic of broader geopolitical conflicts of the region (e.g., Cold War ideology, Korean War, territorial disputes) and the dramatic restructuring of economic relations in recent history.

Author

• Hye Jean Chung, Kyung Hee University