Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Korean-American artist Yong Soon Min visualizes the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), an emblem of the division of her home country, highlighting her unique perspective toward the subject, which stems from her hybrid and diasporic identity as a Korean American. A series of works she created after her visits to the DMZ, such as Kindred Distance (1996), Bridge of No Return (1997), Bangapsubnida (2004), On the Road (2009), Both Sides Now (2018), Liminal Space (2018), and We did not cross the border, the border crossed us, twice (2019), embody Min’s prolonged process of mapping the contested space of the DMZ. In this map-making journey, Min reveals her ambivalent and complex perspective as a Korean American toward the rhetoric of unification and the DMZ, which has drawn upon a Korean ethnic nationalism based on the homogeneity of ethnic identity, utilizing fragmented images and multiple languages.