Division System

Construction of the concept

The division system is a concept formalized by the literary critic Paik Nak-chung from the late 1980s. Its central claim is that division must be grasped not as a temporary standoff between two states but as a single structure encompassing both South and North. The framework of the concept is the analysis that the ruling powers on each side secure their own legitimacy by treating the other as the ground of antagonism, and in doing so reproduce the division itself.

The view rejects two conventional accounts. One explains division solely as an imposition by outside powers; the other treats South and North as independent systems and their mutual relation as secondary. The division system places the structural function of mutual antagonism at the centre of analysis.

Relation to the world-system

The concept was advanced in combination with world-systems analysis. The division system operates as a sub-unit of the capitalist world-system, so that overcoming division is not completed by improvement in inter-Korean relations alone but is connected to change in the world-system. From this ordering of levels the practical task of transforming the division system was derived.

The apparatuses maintaining the system are identified as anti-communist ideology, the National Security Law, and the presence of United States forces. In the North a corresponding form operates through the permanence of hostile threat and the mobilization system grounded on it. That the apparatuses on each side take the other as their ground is the core of the characterization.

Debate

The concept was one of the principal axes in argument over the character of Korean society. In the social formation debate of the 1980s it offered a framing distinct from theories of neo-colonial state monopoly capitalism and of national liberation, and from the 1990s it was drawn on as a theoretical ground for inter-Korean policy.

Criticisms have been raised. One holds that treating the character of the two systems symmetrically obscures the specificity of the North Korean regime and the question of human rights there. Another is that the designation system exaggerates the solidity of structure and narrows the room for actors' choices. A third holds that a framing premised on unification is at odds with the reality of division's long persistence. These arguments converge on the question of what level of structure division is to be understood as.