Development as Devolution: Nam Chŏng-hyŏn and the "Land of Excrement" Incident

Working under a strict regime of censorship enforced by the National Security Law, what strategies did south Korean writers use in the 1960s to contest the Cold War developmental trajectory privileged by the authoritarian state? This article examines the ways in which Nam Chŏng-hyŏn (who was prosecuted and convicted of violating the National Security Law in 1967) attempts to reappropriate the body as site of resistance opposing statist development made in the name of the nation. It traces the history of representations of the body in Korean literature, paying particular attention to the intersection between the disassociation of labor from the body in 1950s and 1960s literary texts and the Park Chung Hee regime's investment of the national body in the commodity form.