Between the Two Koreas: Ambiguous Citizenship among North Korean Defectors

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic research in Seoul, South Korea among a group of North Korean defectors, this thesis examines how the defectors move towards, enact, and perform the citizenship of their choice. I follow how defectors negotiate political and social belonging in South Korea through marriage, public allegiance to the state, and public sharing of one’s defection narrative. Yet while such practices render affirm the defectors’ belonging and grants them access to social and economic resources, they also result in rupture in one’s social world. The lived experiences of the defectors show that the journey to citizenship never ends; citizenship, contingent and ambiguous, needs to be constantly negotiated and endlessly performed.