분단, 탈분단 그리고 통일의 상상력 넓히기

Abstract

The controversy over a single team of South-North Korean women’s ice hockey at the last PyeongChang Olympics has several implications. That is to say, it is difficult to say unification of Korea with just the necessity of ‘nation’ as in the past. It also showed that universal values such as freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace are gaining strength in the issue of unification. As a result, the ‘discourse of post-division’, which is distinguished from the existing discourse of unification, emerged. The discourse of post-division reflects the various contradictions and structural distortions that the division has brought on our society, and it gives priority to the elimination of the contradictions within ourselves rather than the immediate reunification. In addition, the post-devision raises a new unification strategy within the consciousness that the overcoming of the division is not necessarily a unification. The discourse of post-division shows the differentiation from the viewpoint of the existing division by giving priority to the universal values and negative the ‘nation-nationalism’ up to now. The discourse of post-division is positive in that it reflects a changed reality, and it is beyond narrow national ideology in that it pursues new ways beyond the existing schematized thinking about unification. However, the unification by the universal values based on the discourse of post-division is likely to show a hegemonic attitude toward the North by raising the values familiar to us as values of unification. Also, there are concerns that many people can overlook the real power of ‘nation-nationalism’ as the value of unification. In this sense, the discourse of post-division needs to be more cautious about nation and universalism. More importantly, reunification is about creating a “consensual value” that can be agreed upon by both Koreas beyond universal and special.