Citation

Hwa LD. J. Korean Fiction Res. 2013; 52: 409-431.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

For the description process of ｢Lina｣, after defecting from North Korea via the borderline, Lina is handed over to a human trafficking group, repeating this process, and finally is freed, making the novel a description of regression. In ｢Lina｣, the setting features a chemical factory and red-light street Siring, creating a world of conflicting concepts, and repeating the history of coincidence and negation. The world involves the vertical and horizontal hierarchies of now and here. This world continues to create a reality of confusion through self-conflict. Also, the world of the borderline region experienced by Lina sees only money exercise power, creating an anarchical state,namely, a world of chaos. The nomadic borderline world is a world where there is deviation from the center every moment and continuous regression into disruption. Lina, amid this world, exposes her desire to the unlimited space,creating diverse defections from the land. With her ethic sense devastated by a frustrating reality, Lina commits murder, and travels to deserts and grasslands, thereby producing and experiencing desires. Confusion between reality and illusion leads to identity confusion involving the loss of language. A fabled situation of the overturn of dream and reality continues to make her defection from the center. Female immigrants such as Lina are positioned in a space with an abstract difference which belongs nowhere. They, defecting from a specific land, continue to wander. Their identity is also open to continuous change. Women defecting from N. K. via the borderline build up more experience in more modern reality and broader spaces. Nonetheless, these women are positioned in a mixed-race or third space which do not belong to any groups. Thus, Lina leads a life that repeats non-determination, uncertainty and defection. ｢Lina｣ shows a description of how, through defection via the borderline, her fundamental desire and longing for freedom are limited and distorted. Capitalist economy is not naturally created by the relationships between capital, currency and commodities, but is otherwise biased by diverse political and cultural factors, especially,by politics of space in ｢Lina｣, wherein unconscious desire of Lina,shown through illusions, erupts, creating a mixed-race.