북한 과학환상문학에 나타난 로봇이라는 타자와 언캐니 그리고 신적 폭력

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the otherness of robots in North Korean science fiction. Robots make frequent appearances in science novels as materials since they are both interesting and reproduce the pending issues of society including aliens, minorities, monsters, and gender. In North Korean science fiction, robots exhibit those universal qualities and also have peculiar aspects. In North Korean science fiction, robots are internal others born in the North Korean society, whereas aliens are external others. Those works depict a Utopia based on robots, but there is strong anxiety and fear for robots suppressed behind them. An uncanny feeling is, in particular, caused in the aspect that there is an attempt to bring down the suppressed hierarchy between the creators and their creations behind the external similarity. Furthermore, the overturn of hierarchy expands to divine violence. Excessive passion about scientific technologies and robots drives robots into a violent state of making everything nihil. They are originally programmed to serve the mankind, but their massive violence brings people to their end. The North Korean works put an emphasis on strict hierarchy and "conscience" to put down such anxiety. North Korean science fiction has a compulsive aspect of emphasizing hierarchy and conscience constantly and repetitively in order to prevent the suppressed from returning.