초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Using ethnographic fieldwork data gathered at a South Korean NGO that produces radio broadcasts to North Koreans as part of "unification preparation" (t'ongil chunbi), I argue that radio broadcasting to North Korea and preparing for a Unified Korea both involve the professional labor of imagination and creativity that have become critical in navigating the challenges and uncertainties of inter-Korean relations. On the one hand, radio broadcasting to North Korea involves creatively imagining "the North Korean listener," a challenging process of imagining those who reside across a border that radio producers cannot physically cross. On the other hand, preparing for unification is also an imaginative project of anticipating a new Korean nation that can merge two peoples, infrastructures, and cultures, one day in the uncertain future. More than seven decades since national division on the Korean peninsula, imagination has risen to become one of the most critical capacities in managing (present and future) political and social relations between two nations and peoples that are divided across an uncrossable border.
