Bionationalism, stem cells, BSE, and Web 2.0 in South Korea: Toward the reconfiguration of biopolitics

Abstract

We argue that at the core of contemporary biopolitics in South Korea there is a politics of identity built around the gradual transformation of ethnic nationalism based primarily on ethnicity, blood, and membership to a new kind of nationalism in which ethnicity is biologically and scientifically reconfigured. The emerging Korean bionationalism goes beyond traditional ethnic nationalism by combining a focus on ethnicity and race with a belief in the deeply transformative potentials of modern science, and in particular medical and life sciences for Korean bodies and the economic future of the nation. At the same time, there also seems to be a tendency in Korean bionationalism not only to optimize the population through novel, technoscientific strategies, but also to defend the nation against biological menace from the outside, such as bioterrorism, and epidemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This bionationalism with its focus on the South Korean population combines a strong belief in using biomedical technoscience in the optimization of the population with a politically aggressive gesture of defending the Korean nation against attack from the outside. We argue that this constellation indicates the emergence of a new biopolitical constellation, which is also characterized by the broad utilization of Web 2.0 tools for the purpose of political mobilization.