From Immigrants to Refugees: Relocating Strangers in Two Plays about North Korean Defectors

Abstract:Two stage plays written after 2010 about North Korean defectors in South Korea are dealt with in this article, Mokran Eonni (Sister Mokran) and Toillit Pipeul (Toilet People). This article employs an analytical framework that weaves the terms of the immigrant and of the refugee and the sociology of the stranger together. The scenes from Mokran Eonni and Toillit Pipeul analyzed in this article acutely illustrate the pain and suffering experienced by North Korean defectors, especially socially powerless groups such as women and adolescents. Their position as refugees is constructed through exploitative capitalism and the division hysteria in South Korea. This representation leads audiences to examine how the latter two phenomena expose South Korean people as potential refugees. In other words, both plays do not just tell particular stories about North Korean defectors, they also offer a universal reflection regarding the structural ills in South Korean society. Moreover, this reflection is not limited to South Korean society. It can be repositioned as the speculation that all venues of transnational and global capitalist phenomena in which otherness is excluded and repressed have a migratory uprooted identity.