Cha Cha on the Bridge, written by Yoon Pil and illustrated by Jaeso, is a 60-episode webtoon that was first published in weekly installments in 2018 and later published as a two-volume graphic novel. It was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Science Fiction Awards in Korea. The soft-toned black and white pencil sketch illustrations provide a sharp contrast to the futuristic setting where human labor have been replaced by AI robots and massive data centers accessible to only a tiny handful of the elite can store and manipulate information to achieve desired outcomes.

In this webtoon, the two main protagonists are AI robots. “Cha Cha” is a humanoid robot that was introduced in the year 2030 to prevent humans from killing themselves on Mapo Bridge, a site notorious for its alarming suicide rate. “Ai,” who owns and operates a nursing home for the elderly, eventually learns about Cha Cha from the numerous residents who reminisce about “the Bridge” where they had almost ended their lives. Cha and Ai heroically save lives in a postmodern, posthuman society where robots have been programmed to be kind and perform tedious tasks, while humans have become cold and calculating machines that act upon their selfish impulses, heartlessly abusing and discriminate against children, women, and migrant workers.

“Cha Cha on the Bridge” explores what it means to be human, and how behaving like a warm, friendly human is so rare in contemporary society that the simple act of sharing a meal together, or making time to chat about personal matters with a colleague, seems to be a heroic feat. It also uncovers the arbitrariness of human values, such as when a War Robot’s killing of a human can make you a murderer or war hero, depending on circumstances. A few exceptional robots begin to think on their own, act and think as if they have free will, and desire to become human.

This comic can also be analyzed through the framework of Groensteen’s “postmodern turn.” The work is characterized by narrative disruption. Flashbacks from past and present are made confusing because the robots do not age and retain the identical appearance even after decades have passed, whereas the human characters show signs of wear.

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The increasing advancement of humanoid robots and humanized technology has extended the boundaries of gender performance, femininity, and its exploitation beyond that of human women. A case in point: the launch of numerous sexbots over the years, some equipped with AI, mostly gendered female, all aimed to serve people as the “perfect partner.” Consequently, it has become necessary to expand the boundaries of gender politics to include nonhuman bodies in literature, in literary criticism, and in reality.

Recent works of science fiction such as Her (2013), Ex Machina (2014), and Machines Like Me (2019) may be seen as such responses in literature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze their distinctive characterizations of female and male AI, and critique the feminist-posthumanist discourse generated thereof. I propose that their common strategy of utilizing fembots as feminist representatives of the emergent posthuman race to elicit greater acceptance of nonhuman persons—while effective in its goal—is not without its problems.

Although critical accounts have provided much insight into AI femininity itself in terms of its social construction, visual expression, and patriarchal exploitation, almost no observation has been made on its narrative privilege over AI masculinity, nor to the purposes and outcomes of such a privilege. At the intersection of feminism and posthumanism, there seems to be a lack of awareness of how the rhetoric of one is employed in the service of the other, or of the potential consequences of such a device. On one hand, each individual narrative is admirable in its rejection of the misogyny involved in the development of AI, artificial femininity, and mechanical servitude. On the other hand, the accumulation, entrenchment, and eventual simplification of these narratives into a trend may perpetuate sexist narrative practices within fiction and sexist business practices outside of it. In fiction, posthuman women are progressively flattened into “perfect victims” to the point of powerlessness, while posthuman men continue to be treated with the same apathy, fear, and violence that have been associated with them since 1960s Hollywood. In real life, this narrative trend may also potentially—however unintentionally—perpetuate the existing idea that gynoids are preferable to androids when it comes to robotic service, thereby encouraging the technological exploitation of the feminine form, and reinforcing patriarchal and stereotypical associations between femininity and ubiquitous servitude.

In concluding the paper with questions regarding alternative narratives, I hope to generate broader discussions over the ethical implications of engineering posthuman gender and posthuman entities in general. Regardless of the realistic possibility of creating artificial sentience or higher intelligence, how ethically compatible is it really, the two goals of creating an entity with human intelligence, and then unconditionally subjugating its intelligence to our services? Must not our very desire for a slave—woman or man, posthuman or human—be critically examined, rather than pursued in the hopes of a technological utopia?

This paper will provide a comparative analysis of American and Korean science fiction texts regarding language barriers between humans and non-humans. I will analyze Roger Zelazny’s “For a Breath I Tarry” and Kim Hye-Yoon’s “Interview with a Black Box.” With social and industrial coupling with generative AI increasingly becoming widespread in the present day, I view it as timely to revisit Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” and examine the usage and interpretation of language between humans and non-humans. I propose that analyzing the language of the non-humans in these science fiction texts would call attention to different types of language barriers between humans and non-humans and contribute to improving the human and non-human relationship. Zelazny’s text is set in a future apocalypse caused by a nuclear war. His text depicts a robot named Frost who studies anthropology and his efforts to understand humanity as he modifies his body over time, as well as finding loopholes in restrictions set by his superior, Solcom. Kim’s text depicts a future space colony where cyborgs are marginalized communities, and the story depicts a human main character Lana reminiscing about her relationship with her cyborg mother as she interviews other cyborgs as part of her survey regarding resident satisfaction with the colony’s gravity. Throughout the interviews, Lana learns how to adjust her questions, and learns how cyborgs’ recognition senses are uniquely different from human perception. I argue that these texts mirror each other, since in Zelazny’s story a robot learns about humans, and in Kim’s story the human tries to understand cyborgs. These texts reveal grey areas of the “machine language,” and the misunderstanding that comes from the limitations of programmed languages. For this paper, I view the “machines” in the texts as more than the conventional automatons, and they hold potentials to blur the boundaries between the human and non-human. I argue that these texts would contribute to understanding the language barriers and improve communication between humans and non-humans beyond technological relationships.

The relentless pursuit of technological advancement has brought humanity into new scientific surroundings, where robots, AI, and even cloning — once confined in science fiction —have now become reality. These innovations have undoubtedly improved many aspects of human life, enhancing convenience and efficiency. However, alongside the benefits of this advancement, it also gives rise to new forms of alienation and conflict in modern society. In an era where technology evolves faster than society’s ability to adapt, narrative can serve as “one of many discourses through which to grapple with the intersections of science, technology, human values, and our coming future”.

Never Let Me Go (2010), directed by Mark Romanek and based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, is one such narrative envisioning a dystopian world where clones are created solely to provide vital organs for “natural” humans. By centering on cloning, the film explores ethical issues such as the essence of humanity, social alienation, and exclusion through the relationship between humans and clones. This paper analyzes the film Never Let Me Go (2010) through the lens of posthumanism, particularly Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the “posthuman subject,” focusing on themes of alienation and exclusion. By critiquing anthropocentric perspective, this paper highlights the necessity of posthumanist thinking in redefining subjectivity. The alienation of clones depicted in Never Let Me Go reflects the deeply established anthropocentric mindset in modern society, rooted in Cartesian dualism. Through spatial, linguistic, and social exclusion, the film highlights how clones are denied subjectivity, reinforcing their status as mere biological resources. However, through Kathy’s first-person narration, the film invites viewers to empathize with the clones, prompting a reevaluation of rigid human/nonhuman distinctions. This study also draws a parallel between the film’s themes and the real-world marginalization of migrant workers in South Korea, emphasizing the necessity of posthumanist thinking in dismantling exclusionary hierarchies and fostering a more inclusive definition of subjectivity.

Recent theoretical frameworks such as Actor-Network Theory (ANT), New Materialism, and ecological theories from Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway challenge traditional anthropocentric perspectives by emphasizing the significance and agency of non-human entities within interconnected ecological assemblages. This raises critical questions about the positioning of humans within these networks of mutual influence. In the first chapter, through the keyword mushroom in Kim Cho-yeop’s novel "The Dispatchers," Anna Tsing’s ethnographic study "Mushrooms at the End of the World," and Nie Longqing’s non-fiction work "Mushroom Addiction", we imagine the possibility of various positions of existence where humans and non-humans are separated or coexist in order to adapt to modern society. In the second chapter, this study addresses the need to rethink the notion of the subject as it emerges from the contingent relationships between humans and non-human actors. We explore the speculative fiction of Kim Bo-Young, specifically the stories "An Evolutionary Myth," "On the Origin of Species," and "On the Origin of Species – and What Might Have Happened Thereafter".