Abstract

This paper focuses on North Korean women’s escape narratives published in the United States in the 2010s and points to the “Americanization” of these texts. The “Americanization” means that the universal discourse that is being agendized as a human rights issue for North Koreans is produced and consumed in ways that privilege American human rights discourse. The “Americanization” of North Korean women’s texts can be summarized in three ways. First, the “girlishization” of North Korean women. The image of the “innocent girl” is contrasted with North Korea’s totalitarianism to make the horrors more real, but it also portrays the free world of the United States as an idealized and tolerant place for the girls to go. Second, there is the “ghostwriter” who reflects the desires of the implied reader. The ghostwriter’s role is to produce a text that is “readable” to a Western readers. In this case, “readable” means not only linguistic translation, but also cultural and ideological adaptation that is familiar to Western readers. Third, it reproduces the neo-Cold War world map. The defector moves from ‘North Korea → China( → Mongolia) → South Korea → U.S.’ according to the route of the witness, and the representation of each country (re)produces the Cold War system. If North Korea is a totalitarian state with “excessive power,” China is depicted as a “state of nature” with no functioning police power. On the other side of the spectrum, the United States is represented as the free world, with South Korea as a transit point to reach it. Identifying the devices of “Americanization” in female North Korean defectors’ texts reaffirms that Servalton’s speech is always at risk of being captured by dominant discourses and deconstructs discursive structures that place responsibility for the authenticity of defection texts solely on the defector.