Contact and Prospect : Imaginative Geography in the Travel Writings of Richard E. Kim in the Late 1980s

This study examines the meaning of the imaginative geography created by contact with communist countries and the prospects for a post-Cold War world. It analyzes newspaper articles, TV documentaries, and the written travelogue about Richard E. Kim’s (Korean name Kim Ŭn’guk 金恩國) travels to China and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. During this time, neither China nor the Soviet Union had established diplomatic ties with South Korea, and they were not regions in which Koreans could travel freely. As such, the Korean public’s perception of communist countries was somewhat limited. However, as a U.S. citizen, Kim could travel to these countries, and his travels subsequently received significant attention from the South Korean public. Kim gave accounts of his travels in newspapers and books and on TV, but the interpretations of these trips differed according to the medium. Newspapers and documentaries represented the communist countries and the lives of ethnic Koreans according to Cold War Orientalism and emphasized nationalist identity, while Kim’s travelogue departed from both Cold War Orientalism and nationalist identity. Kim’s approach emphasized differences that could not be unified and presented a desirable subjectivity for the upcoming post-Cold War era. In sum, while the documentaries highlighted nationalism, Kim’s travel writing suggested a cosmopolitan subjectivity, two perspectives that differed radically in their prospects for the future.