Crossing Borders: Korean Nationalism and Contemporary Theatre.

In October 2007 South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the inter-Korean border for a summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Although adhering to the primordialist view of nationhood, this state-led border-crossing also indicates the effects of globalization. As the heavily militarized inter-Korean border is permeated by interaction between ethnic nationalism, the nation's anti-colonialist history, and the transnational forces, the image of border-crossing becomes a metaphor for a contested space of national unification. This article examines a selection of works by three contemporary South Korean playwrights who, from a post-nationalist perspective, have emerged to contest the contradictory aspects and trajectories of the past ten years of populist nationalism. Yoo Kim focuses on the ways these post-nationalist plays employ the motifs of border-crossing and borderland encounter to challenge the romantic and exclusionary narratives of the conventional nationalist theatre. Yoo Kim is an Associate Professor in English at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His recent article, 'Mapping Utopia in the Post-Ideological Era: Lee Yun-taek's The Dummy Bride ', was published in Theatre Research International in 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]