This paper explores the stories of Wǒlbukcha families. It examines the ways in which South Korean division politics successfully produced Wǒlbukcha families as docile and active state subjects. By introducing Wǒlbukcha families’ strategies to deal with the continuous sense of surveillance and insecurity—their struggles to forget their families who went to North, conceal their identity as separated families, and become staunch anti-communists to prove that they are good citizens of South Korea—I illustrate how a culture of fear was produced with the mediation of the patriarchal family as an important cultural institution. At the same time, I pay particular attention to the fantasy elements in the process. I argue that fantasies of the state—both in terms of the state’s fantasies about the enemy and people’s fantasies of the state—were the basis and effects of the interrelationship between the state and Wǒlbukcha families that produce Wǒlbukcha families as strong state subjects.
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