The narrowness of speculative fiction on Korea

North Korean nukes, spies, and despot thrillers have as much depth as a sneaky nose pick in a busy cafe.

For a country as geopolitically charged and historically complex as Korea, one might expect a rich tapestry of speculative fiction — alternate histories, emotional futurisms, surreal dystopias — flowing from English-language writers. And yet, what we get instead is a narrow, anxious tunnel: nuclear flashpoints, espionage thrillers, evil generals with strange ideologies, and the ever-lurking threat of a rogue regime pulling the trigger.

The imaginative range is constrained, the emotional spectrum even more so. There is little in the way of subtlety, yearning, or contradiction. Unlike the richness of Korean-language fiction, English-language speculative work rarely captures what it feels like to live in the unresolved limbo of division.

When Korea appears in English-language speculative fiction, it is often not a setting but a problem. A crisis to be solved. A trigger point in a larger world order. Whether in dystopian futures involving North Korean invasions, or Tom Clancy-style thrillers where spies save the peninsula from itself, Korea is reduced to a stage on which American or Western actors perform geopolitics. The narratives are simple: good vs. evil, nuclear or not, with little time for internal complexity.

North Korean nukes, spies, and despot thrillers have as much depth as a sneaky nose pick in a busy cafe.

This stems from how Korea has been framed historically in English-speaking media and policy discourse.