Abstract

This paper aims to explore how the spaces and politics of verticality appear through national security discourses, looking into two public debates in Korea, of which one is on Google and the other is on THAAD. To achieve this, first, the paper understands the theoretical implications of ‘the politics of urban verticality’ and ‘volume’ space, discussed mainly by Stephen Graham and Stuart Elden. Then it examines two empirical cases. Concerned with Google, it analyzes the politics of vertical view, especially ‘the politics of urban legibility and camouflage’ underlined by Graham, which appears in online satellite photos provided by KakaoMap, Google Maps and Google Earth services. And, concerned with THAAD system, it makes sense of the geopolitics of volume space through the vertical space of THAAD system, and pays attention to the interconstructive relationship of horizontal and vertical spaces. The paper suggests that we need to perceive not only horizontal space but also vertical space, which has been neglected in recent geopolitical writings, in order to understand how geopolitical spaces are represented and practiced.