This talk explores what governance meant to people living in places ruled under armed non-state actors during the Korean War (1950-1953). Drawing on a rich set of oral histories with local communities bordering the great mountains of South Korea’s Jeju Island and South Jeolla Province—areas especially infamous for civilian massacres due to suspect ties with communist organizations and irregular guerilla forces—it traces a variety of hyper-small schemes for regulating intimate and communal life, sharing resources, doing paperwork,...
