The gendered contours of North Korean Migration: sexualized bodies and the violence of phenotypical normalization in South Korea Joowon Park* Department of Anthropology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, USA This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean experi- ences in South Korea at a time when nearly 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. South Korean television shows – e.g. reality programs – and marriage matchmaking organizations seek to portray North Korean women in a ‘positive’ way to the South Korean public, although, as this article will illustrate, these representations are of a very particular, sexualized kind. These representations are sometimes negative, and there is stigma attached to North Korean women, in which South Koreans assume, for example, that they are victims of human trafficking or that they have had relations with Chinese men during their migration. Furthermore, poor nutrition and other forms of structural violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. In South Korean society where short height is viewed as undesirable and where idealized, surgical notions of beauty dominate, the violence of gendered phenotypical normalization mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article argues that these gendered contours of North Korean migra- tion amount to a different sort of structural violence in South Korea. Keywords: North Korea; gender; violence; migration; trafficking; marriage; malnutrition; cosmetic surgery Introduction This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean migration and resettlement experiences in South Korea at a time when approximately 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. These men and women leave North Korea to escape both violence associated with hunger and human rights, but when they finally arrive in South Korea, as I argue, they face stigma and discrimination, sexualization, and racializa- tion that amount to a different sort of structural violence, illustrating a continuum of violence that spans between North and South Korea. As I will show in this article, poor nutrition and other forms of violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. Thus, the body becomes a locus of difference. Embodied experiences of hunger and malnutrition in North Korea – such as stunted growth – contribute to an experience of violent, gendered phenotypical normalization in South Korea. Notions of physical normativity mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange in a society where short height is viewed as undesirable for men and where *Email: joowon.email@gmail.com Asian Ethnicity, 2016 Vol. 17, No. 2, 214–227, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2016.1151229 © 2016 Taylor & Francis