Project Director

Auchter, Jessica

Department Examiner

Strickler, Jeremy; Hu, Fang Yu

Department

Dept. of Political Science, Public Administration and Nonprofit Management

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

This paper focuses on aspects of social identities that have been constructed over time in North and South Korea and their implications on the division of the Korean peninsula. This project seeks to answer the question of how social groups and individual dynamics differ between North Korea and South Korea with special attention to the experience of division? And, how these differences structure the dynamics of formal division and the larger politics of reunification? These questions have been ignored because of the emphasis on the realist and institutionalist scholars’ analysis of the division. It focus on analyzing the division through the constructivist lens of international relations. This research will identify a couple of social constructions that contribute to the division between the DPRK and the ROK and cause challenges for reunification at both the micro-, reunification of defectors, and the macro-, reunification of the entire peninsula, reunification. This research specifically looks at the Juche ideology constructed through history, discourse, and policy that differentiates the “us” from the “them” necessary for division in the DPRK (Nau 2007, 32). This study then analyzes the difference in language and how that constructs the division through distinct markers of dialects, lack of common words, and how it reinforces ideas. Through this research, it is clear that division is not a simple issue of state policy, state action, regime type, or economic system, but an issue of the social construction of identities such as the divergent identities of the ROK and the DPRK. Social construction and division are not limited to this case only but have large scale implications for other areas of the world that have divisions. This research shows that there is more to be observed in these areas such as ideology and how it came to be.

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

5-2020

Subject

Group identity--Korea (North); Group identity--Korea (South)

Location

Korea (North); Korea (South)

Keyword

Korea; Social; Construction; Division; North; Social; South

Discipline

International Relations

Document Type

Theses

Extent

ii, 52 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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