Permanent War: Oppositional memory work and North Korean human rights

Abstract

As part of the ongoing exploration of cosmopolitan memory and human rights first pioneered by Ulrich Beck, this study analyzes the cosmopolitan potential of the advocacy efforts of the North Korean Freedom Coalition. Highlighting the close relationship between acts of remembrance and human rights, this prominent US-based network of non-profit groups maintains a complex assemblage of virtual as well as despatialized real world memory apparatuses that draw upon, repackage, and disseminate the trauma of North Korean defectors. However, this memory work is not oppositional enough. The coalition's members are creating a databank of trauma caused by the North Korean state but are willfully suppressing the trauma that their own nations have caused in the region. In particular, their treatment of the Korean War indicates the persistence of national and even hegemonic frameworks of remembrance. This case suggests that cosmopolitanism, far from being inevitable, is vulnerable to new forms of co-option.