본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

The Relocation of Heterotopias in Korean Science Fiction of the 2020s - Focusing on the Works of Kim Cho-yeop, Duna, and Lee Gyul-hee

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(2), pp.47~79
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.2.002
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : May 10, 2026
  • Accepted : June 19, 2026
  • Published : June 30, 2026

Choi Ae-soon 1

1계명대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I aim to discuss how utopia and heterotopia are not concepts that stand in opposition to one another as fantasy and reality, but rather how heterotopia can exist even within utopia, and how the two are in a mirror-like relationship, much like twins. I seek to demonstrate that a utopia transposed into reality is not a beautiful and peaceful place, but rather one that overlaps with heterotopias of crisis and deviance. Furthermore, I aim to show how an individual emerges from their inner heterotopia to confront society. Every individual possesses an inner heterotopia for personal growth, but every society possesses a heterotopia of crisis and deviance that serves to maintain its order and well-being. Moreover, these spaces are inevitably linked to utopia. I intend to discuss the two spaces—utopia and heterotopia—which are presented in the science fiction works of Kim Cho-yeop and Duna as if they were the two sides of a mirror. First, using works such as Kim Cho-yeop’s Why Don’t the Pilgrims Return? and Duna’s Crossing Beyond the Mirror as examples, I would like to discuss those who leave utopia to confront the real world. While those sent to utopia are the disabled, the poor, and the sick, it is primarily children who occupy the spaces of the attic and the basement. I will illustrate how children escape from the heterotopias of the attic and basement to encounter a “different” world through Lee Gyul-hee’s The Attic Alien and Duna’s Where’s Your Dad? and The King of Heaven. In this paper, heterotopias—which create fissures in utopia and challenge other places in reality—are viewed as “spaces of subversion” against the existing order. Change in the world does not originate from the “center” but rather from the “periphery”—that is, from heterotopias. It is for this very reason that this paper focuses on those who venture “outside” Utopia and those who step “outside” from basements and attics. Moving beyond the off-Earth utopias of science fiction from around the 2020s, we must address the issues facing marginalized groups—such as women, the elderly, people with disabilities, children, and adolescents—through the heterotopic spaces that constitute “other” places right here and now. This raises both the necessity and the imperative to geopolitically reposition them from the periphery to the center.

Statistics

  • 2 Viewed
  • 2 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2024 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Basic Search Advanced Search