This paper explores Japanese mobile imperialism as supported by the colonial
mobility system and examines an emancipatory imagination, which enables the
opening of a fissure in the system, by approaching Kim Namch’ŏn’s short story, “To
Chŏllyŏng (Ch. Tieling 鐵嶺),” from the new mobilities paradigm. It argues that, via
modern mobility technologies, “sociality,” i.e., the communal ethic, can be created
at the core of “the social”; ergo, Korean society, dominated by colonial mobility’s
rationality, constructs the colonized people as dehumanized beings while simultaneously incubating an alternative way of living, namely, “the undirected beingtogether.” The spontaneous social cohesion that results is significant, functioning
as “an affirmative puissance,” which may undermine Japanese colonial rule.