Chapter 17 - Finale; Or, Alternative Originaries

Summary

North Korea and posthuman superheroes rarely share discursive space. One reason: North Korea - the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) - is often imagined as a pre-posthuman Cold War relic. Another reason: it may seem wrong, even blasphemous, to discuss posthumanism and superheroes vis-à-vis a regime that systematically violates human rights. While mindful of such realities, I believe posthumanism can refresh overly rehearsed scripts surrounding the DPRK. The vocabulary of posthumanism (e.g. Donna Haraway’s “cyborg”) and posthuman characters from science fiction (e.g. the instantly legible superhero Spider-Man as well as the less legible Korean American Spider Lim in Richard Powers’s novel Plowing the Dark) can provide new approaches to North Korea’s “otherness” and “post”-DPRK refugees. Moreover, superheroic icons and posthumanism can address a new American art of DPRK origin such as the artwork of Song Byeok and Sun Mu. Finally, posthumanism and superheroes must narrate Korea’s future beyond trauma, war, and division. It is time for us to uproot, fruitfully, kimilsungia and kimjongilia from their rotting namesakes. Let them grow wild in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). How might these organisms mutate? Dear Korean and Korean American artists and writers: let us now respond.