개성공단 근무 경험과 남북교류협력정책 인식의 재구성

초록

This study examines how former workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex formed and reconstructed their perceptions and evaluations of inter-Korean exchange and cooperation policy through repeated contact, collaboration, conflict, and rupture. Based on in-depth interviews with long-term resident workers and thematic analysis, the study finds that participants’ perceptions tended to change through a process of prior perception structure, experiential contact, cognitive dissonance, interpretive reconstruction, and reflective realism. At the initial stage, state-centered normative views of unification loosely coexisted with economic and occupational motivations. Repeated face-to-face contact and collaboration, however, led participants to reinterpret North Koreans not as fundamentally different others, but as ordinary people, workers, and colleagues. These experiences exposed the gap between state discourse, media narratives, and field realities, thereby unsettling existing perceptions. The closure of the complex became a critical turning point that made participants recognize both the possibilities of cooperation and the institutional vulnerability of inter-Korean exchange. As a result, their perceptions converged not on optimistic unificationism or cynical pessimism, but on an experience-based reflective realism that acknowledges both possibilities and limitations. This study shows that perceptions of inter-Korean exchange and cooperation policy are not fixed by abstract discourse, but are formed and transformed through accumulated field experience and social relationships.

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