Choo, Hae Yeon (2006) Gendered Modernity and Ethnicized Citizenship: North Korean Settlers in Contemporary South Korea. Gender and Society, 20(5), pp. 576-604
North Korean settlers are expected to get rid of ethnic markers as North Koreans and transform themselves into modern citizen-subjects of South Korea. The problematic portrayal of North Korea as backward and underdeveloped is particularly salient in regard to their gender relations, as reflected in South Koreans' description of North Korean men as patriarchal and authoritarian and of North Korean women as victims. These images are opposed-sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly-to the rhetoric of gender equality in South Korea, which is described as a developed, modern society [577]
Such rescue ideology and making of the victim-subject continue in the contemporary context. For example, Hughes (2005) describes North Korean women in China as helpless victims wanting to be saved: "The women are raped by sellers and buyers. . . . Once a woman is sold she is completely powerless." Hughes's account fails to represent North Korean women in their own terms and instead constructs North Korean women as victim-sub jects for whom she and other Western feminists are responsible. The prob lem of the victim-subject is that "the person designated a victim tends to take on an identity as victim that reduces her to a passive object of others' actions" (Agustin 2005, 107), and she is thus deprived of her agency. Such depictions of North Korean women as victims, particularly utilized by North Korean human rights advocates with politically right-wing and reli giously evangelical Protestant leanings, is part of a larger gendered politics that has taken center stage after September 11. In a similar vein, Afghan women's human rights were used to justify American military intervention (Alexander 2005; Enloe 2004). [579]
Being able to purchase expensive clothing is closely related to one's class, yet Young Hwa frames it as exorcising ethnicity, removing the "North Korean dust" that clings to and distin guishes the body's appearance. Young Hwa's effort to change her dressing style is not only a reaction to the pressure of South Korean society to get rid of her ethnic markers. As Huisman and Hondagneu-Sotelo show in the study of the dress practices of Bosnian women in Vermont, Young Hwa is in the "agentic processes" of remaking herself and planning her future life in South Korea (2005, 47). Through her effort to adapt herself to South Korean style of living and self-representation, she is claiming membership in the South Korean nation-state and society. Yet Young Hwa's effort might be in vain if South Korean society does not acknowledge her claim and continues to treat her as other, despite her best efforts to pass. In addition to clothing, modern gender relations are themselves used as a powerful ethnic marker. Here, too, North Korean settlers respond to this labeling as agents, not only as victims of discrimination. [591-592]
After Young Ae described North Korean women as "pathetic," she brought up their plight in China as victims of human trafficking and sex trafficking. Several of my female interviewees shared with me their experiences of being forced into marriage and being sold, and all of them acknowledged trafficking in women targeted North Korean women in China. What I problematize is not the fact that people are talking about North Korean women as victims of traf ficking but the particular way that this victim image becomes a symbol of the failure of North Korea as a nation-state and used to produce otherness in North Korean settlers. This is an example of rescue ideology, situating South Korean modernity unproblematically as the source of good and the other as both depraved and deprived. [594]
All the unmarried North Korean women I interviewed said that they would like to find South Korean men as their marriage partners. Some of them had practical reasons for their preference: Marrying South Korean men would help them settle in South Korean society faster and offer them a more solid economic base for living. Others thought South Korean men were better for women because they help out with housework and are less patriarchal than North Korean men. [600]
Yet this image that they try to promote as good wives conflicts with another persistent stereotype of North Korean women as victims of sex trafficking. For this reason, many North Korean women I met felt the need to differentiate themselves from victims by underscoring that they worked in other occupations in China and that they were so lucky that they did not fall into "the trap." [600-601]
Ignoring and denying the victim image altogether is not enough to avoid the stigma because such image has been widely publicized. Thus, North Korean women like Hyang Sun try to distance themselves with it as she does by contrasting her fortune with the misfortune of other North Korean women and emphasizing that she is not one of them. [601]
Gender relations as a measure of modernity are employed as a strong ethnic marker for North Korean settlers, depicting North Korean men as patriarchal and women as victim-subjects and as opposed to egalitarian and modern gender relations that supposedly characterize South Korea. [602]