Book Talk: Fractal Liminal – Reconciling Korea’s Division Across Scales of Time, Space, and Experience

Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide explores the multi-layered implications of divided Korea’s liminality, or its perceived „in-betweenness“ in space and time. Examining the cultural implications of the “Sunshine Policy” in South Korea at the outset of its decade of engagement (1998-2008) with North Korea, this book focuses on one of the hallmark breakthroughs of the Sunshine Era: achieving the first sustained series of meetings among family members who had lost all contact for over fifty years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. Offering a timely reconsideration of the pivotal period following the inter-Korean Summit of June 2000, this book examines the reunions of North-South separated family members as part of a complex process of national reconciliation at the cusp of the 21st century. With the scope of its analysis ranging across multiple scales – from watershed political rituals to everyday social dynamics, from regional geopolitics to intimate family narratives – this study provides a lens for approaching the cultural process of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of recognition and engagement amid the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.