Suk-Young Kim's DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship along the Korean Border makes an original contribution to the study of the Korean border, and also has significance for scholarship on affect, citizenship, museums, tourism, media, and theatre and performance history in general. Kim draws on human geography scholar Elaine Lynne-Ee Ho's term “emotional citizenship” (10) to explore the subjectivity, purpose, and effect of various emotional representations related to citizenship, but Kim accentuates the theatrical components in this concept, arguing for the necessity of paying attention to the role of human bodies in “social performance[s]” (11)—a term indebted to Tracy C. Davis's notion of “social dramaturgy” (12). Importantly, Kim distinguishes her use of the word “citizenship” from the reciprocal meaning of right and duty conventionally used in the West as well as from the space- and community-bound Korean word simin (a resident of the city) and the North Korean and South Korean constitution-based words, inmin (people) and gungmin (people), respectively. Kim's conception of “citizenship” is closest to the Korean words minjok (a cohesive group of people based on linguistic and cultural commonalities over histories) or perhaps gyeorye (kindred people) and is “firmly grounded on the intuitive sense of belonging to a family unit, be it biological or figuratively imagined” (10) in the context of “a wide range of communities” (9).

The chronological structure of the book, with each chapter focusing on different genres/media, works wonderfully. Aided by macro- and microlevel histories and thorough case studies, readers come to comprehend the trajectory of the inter-Korean relationship, from the peak of the cold war in the 1950s to the temporary thaw of the confrontation from 1998 to 2008 and to the renewed cold war in the twenty-first century. In Chapter 1, Kim shows that the South Korean play Thus Flows the Han River by Yu Chi-jin and the North Korean play Ten Years by Sin Go-song, both published in 1958, confirm their respective cold-war state ideologies by “reflect[ing] the fear and uncertainties deeply ingrained in the wounded emotional landscape of each nation” (18) through the motif of the danger of crossing the 38th parallel. On the other hand, Chapter 2 demonstrates that the South Korean feature film The DMZ (1965) and the North Korean feature film The Fates of Geumhui and Eunhui (1975), both involving siblings and the DMZ, reflect the subtle changes in the inter-Korean relationship in their imagination of citizenship as a familial relation, rather than by the North–South division.

Chapter 3 analyzes two actual historical cases of those who crossed the Korean border twice, against the backdrop of the global dismantling of the Cold War: Lim Su-kyung, a South Korean college student who visited North Korea in 1989 without the South Korean government's permission and returned to South Korea, and North Korean “spies” (90) who were imprisoned in South Korea for about thirty years and repatriated in 2000 for humanitarian reasons. Examining the North Korean documentary Praise to Lim Su-kyung, the Flower of Unification (1989), North Korean paintings about Lim, and the South Korean independent documentary Repatriation (2003), Kim reveals multiple layers of the documentaries' narratives and how the kinship rhetoric in both cases defies the official ideologies of the two Koreas. Chapter 4 introduces the recommenced cold war in the Korean peninsula and shows how state museums use emotive devices and specific “technologies of seeing” (103)—such as the 3-D displays and other technological simulations in the South Korean museum and the cyclorama and oil paintings in the North Korean museum—to control visitors' experiences of Korean history. Whereas the 2010 DMZ Special Exhibition at the Korean War Memorial boasted South Korea's righteous superiority, the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang invites all visitors (and both North and South Koreans) to be one North Korean people under their victorious leader, with a conspicuous absence of any reference to the DMZ.

Unlike the preceding chapters that compare South Korean and North Korean case studies, Chapter 5, the book's conclusion, is Kim's autoethnography of her visit to the DMZ areas and her examination of the debates surrounding the future of the DMZ, especially regarding its environmental preservation. Kim accentuates the multifaceted paradox of the DMZ, demonstrating how Imjingak Peace Park (a memorial park near the South Korean DMZ) is a place simultaneously for mourning, nostalgia, entertainment, consumerism, and pacific and environmental relaxation. She also discusses how her participation in the North Korean Geumgang Mountain tour gave her access only to a beautified version of Korea's past tragedy, achieved through consumerist transactions and the experience of a tranquil DMZ. At the beginning of the section “Crossing the No Man's Land,” Kim briefly makes a surprising shift from the previous, more obviously academic tone to a novelistic, descriptive, and reflective style. This shift not only adds charm, but it also demonstrates her confidence and dexterity in writing in different modes. Even in other parts of the book, she writes in such an engaging way that readers can follow the trains of her developing thoughts; I personally felt as if I were observing the materials with her and was inspired to visit some of the DMZ sites myself someday.

Running through all chapters is the motif of emotional citizenship—the idea that Koreans are connected regardless of the ideological differences of the two Koreas. Kim's book ends with her own sense of kinship. The honesty and candor that she reveals with her limited access to certain data and the way she maximizes the data she has are exemplary. Drawing eclectically on theories of citizenship, tourism, performance studies, literature, and the body and pain, Kim's book freshly charts the study of Korean border. And it will also serve as a great model for anyone working with different performance platforms from multiple angles.