Worm-Time: Memories of Division in South Korean Aesthetics

Worm-Time challenges conventional narratives of the Cold War and its end, presenting an alternative cultural history based on evolving South Korean aesthetics about enduring national division. From novels of dissent during the authoritarian era to films and webtoons in the new millennium, We Jung Yi’s transmedia analyses unearth people’s experiences of “wormification”—traumatic survival, deferred justice, and warped capitalist growth in the wake of the Korean War.

Whether embodied as refugees, leftists, or broken families, Yi’s wormified protagonists transcend their positions as displaced victims of polarized politics and unequal development. Through metamorphoses into border riders who fly over or crawl through the world’s dividing lines, they reclaim postcolonial memories buried in the pursuit of modernization under US hegemony and cultivate a desire for social transformation. Connecting colonial legacies, Cold War ideologies, and neoliberal economics, Worm-Time dares us to rethink the post-WWII consensus on freedom, peace, and prosperity.

We Jung Yi is Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Korean Studies, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and positions.

Source: publisher’s website

Contents

Layered Time in Divided Korea
1. Worlding through Transcendence
2. Crawling through Worm-Time
3. From Repressed to Revolutionary
4. Spectacle for Intimacy
5. Surplus against Growth
6. Witnessing in Montage
Para-sites for Border -Riding