디스토피아적 상상력과 재생산의 정치학: 마거릿 애트우드의 『시녀 이야기』와 한국 사회 = Dystopian Imagination and the Politics of Reproduction: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and South Korean Society

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper aims to critically examine the instrumentalization of women as it appears in South Korea’s low fertility discourse, using The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as an analytical framework. The Handmaid’s Tale portrays a dystopian society in which the state exerts control over women’s bodies and reduces them to instruments of reproduction in response to a crisis of declining birth rates. This study proceeds from the premise that such a narrative is not merely fictional but can be understood as an extreme manifestation of the politics of reproduction in contemporary society. To this end, the study first establishes the concepts of reproductive politics and biopolitics as its theoretical framework, and analyzes how the regime of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale controls and defines women’s bodies. It then examines South Korea’s low fertility discourse and related policies, exploring how the state and society generate structural pressures that compel women toward reproduction. In particular, this paper highlights that, although direct coercion is absent, South Korean society encourages and normalizes childbirth through economic, cultural, and policy-driven mechanisms. In conclusion, by comparing The Handmaid’s Tale with South Korean society, this study reveals a shared structure in which women’s bodies are objectified for national purposes, interpreting this phenomenon as a form of ‘soft control.’ Furthermore, it critiques the discourse that reduces women’s reproduction to a national obligation rather than an individual choice, and calls for the development of a more human-centered and ethically grounded social imagination.