Perspectives on Contemporary Korea 2024 | The Politics of Migration, Diaspora, and Race in Transnational Korea

November 8-9, 2024 | University of Michigan | Weiser Hall 1010

All times listed below are US Eastern Standard (Ann Arbor, Michigan) time. 

Friday, November 8

9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. // Welcome Remarks

Jaeeun Kim (University of Michigan, Conference Organizer)
Youngju Ryu (University of Michigan, Director of the Nam Center for Korean Studies)
Gil-Soo Han (Monash University, PI of the AKS Laboratory Program for Korean Studies Grant Team)

9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. // Session 1: Migrant/Diaspora Integration in South Korea

Moderator: Jean Hong (University of Michigan)
Aram Hur (Tufts University)
Narratives of Inclusion: National Stories and Migrant Integration
Darcie Draudt-Véjares (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
Demographic Developmentalism: Adaptive Family and Immigration Policies in South Korea
Erin Aeran Chung (Johns Hopkins University)
The Politics of Defining the Korean Diaspora

11:20 a.m.  - 12:50 p.m. // Session 2: Neoliberal Governance, Neoliberal Subjectivities?

Moderator: Nora Hui-Jung Kim (University of Mary Washington)
Seungsook Moon (Vassar College)
Prefigurative Activism with Foreign Migrants: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism in South Korea
Young-a Park (University of Hawaii)
North Korean Defector Entrepreneurs in South Korea: Challenging Dominant Narratives by Creating North Korean Food Culture
Kyungja Jung (University of Technology Sydney)
Cosmopolitan Habitus and Onward Migration: Understanding the Transnational Mobility of North Korean Refugees

2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. // Keynote Session

Moderator/Discussant: Erin Chung (Johns Hopkins University)
Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University)
The Emerging Second Generation in East Asia: Multiculturalism, Geopolitics, and Identity Work

3:50 p.m.  - 4:50 p.m. // Session 3: Transnational Cultural Production and Consumption

Moderator: Na Ri Shin (University of Michigan)
Jinwon Kim (Smith College)
Blackface in Korean Bodies: Black Characters and Legacies of Blackface in the Korean Entertainment Industry and Media
Brian Yecies (University of Wollongong)
Scrolling Across Hidden Nationalism in the Webtooniverse and Its Impact on Diasporic Cultural Flows and Migration
Jaekyung Roh (Monash University)
Isolation and Struggle to Belong: Emotional Management of Older Korean-Australian Migrants through Homeland Digital Media

Saturday, November 9

9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. // Session 4: The Long Shadows of Colonial, Anti-Colonial, and Post-Colonial Past 

Moderator: Seungsook Moon (Vassar College)
Angie Heo (University of Chicago)
Korean Christianity and Diasporic Nationalism in the Age of Assassination
Gil-Soo Han (Monash University)
Money and Nationalism in the Name of Christ: Catalysts for Hereditary Succession of Head Minister in South Korean Churches
Sharon Yoon (Notre Dame University)
Social Media Activism and the Fight Against Hate in Osaka’s Koreatown

11:20 a.m. - 12:50 p.m. // Session 5: Making and Unmaking “Deserving” Refugees

Moderator: Kyungja Jung (University of Technology Sidney)
Nora Hui-Jung Kim (University of Mary Washington)
Subempire’s Embrace: Critical Juxtaposition of the 1975 Vietnam Evacuees and 2021 Afghan Evacuees
Angela Yoonjeong McClean (Indiana University)
The Credibility Crucible: Becoming a Refugee before the South Korean Court of Law
Jaeeun Kim (University of Michigan)
Making Converts out of Asylum-Seekers: Korean Immigrant Evangelical Church and Asylum Claims-Making on Religious Grounds

2:00 p.m. -  4:00 p.m. // Session 6: Performing and Subverting Hierarchies in Transnational Space

Moderator: Doo Jae Park (University of Michigan)
Minjeong Kim (San Diego State University)
Social and Geographical Stratifications within Transborder Diasporic Community: Korean Immigrants on the U.S.– Mexico Border
Ga Young Chung (UC Davis)
Unexpired: Time, Imperial Futurity, and the Undocumented Korean Immigrant Justice Movement
Carolyn Choi (Princeton University)
Strategic Occidentalism: South Korean Educational Migrants and Their Strategies for “White Cultural Capital” vis-à-vis English Study Abroad
Chelle Jones (University of Michigan)
Exempt Outsiders: Transgender Skilled Migrants and Gender Accountability in South Korea

4:00 p.m.  - 4:15 p.m. // Closing Remarks 

Jaeeun Kim (University of Michigan, Conference Organizer)

Carolyn Choi is an Assistant Professor in American Studies at Princeton University. Her work bridges scholarship in sociology and Asian and Asian American studies and studies the intersections between empire, race, migration, language and culture. Her work has appeared in International Migration Review, Sexualities, Global Networks, and Positions: Asia Critique. When she is not writing for adults, Carolyn writes feminist children’s books and is co-author of IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All.

Erin Aeran Chung is the Charles D. Miller Professor of East Asian Politics in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Immigration and Citizenship in Japan (Cambridge, 2010) and Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies (Cambridge, 2020). She is currently serving as co-editor of the Politics and Society of East Asia Elements series at Cambridge University Press, and co-P.I. for the Initiative on Critical Responses to Anti-Asian Violence (CRAAV) at Hopkins. She specializes in East Asian political economy, migration and citizenship, and comparative racial politics.

Ga Young Chung is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis, where she is affiliated with the East Asian Studies, Human Rights Studies, and Cultural Studies Departments. In her research, she examines the growth of dislocation, precarity, and (im)mobility in the era of uneven globalization. Centering on political activism and the resistance of undocumented migrants, she explores how the meaning of citizenship is dismantled, rearticulated, and reassembled in the Asia-Pacific. Informed by transdisciplinary insights from Comparative Ethnic Studies, Critical Korean Studies, Youth Studies, and Transnational Migration Studies, her work is dedicated to expanding the fields of Asian and Asian American Studies.

Darcie Draudt-Véjares, PhD, is a Fellow for Korean Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a non-resident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. She held postdoctoral research positions at Princeton University (2022-2024) and the George Washington University Institute of Korean Studies (2021-2022). Draudt-Véjares has previously held research positions at the Korea Economic Institute, Yonsei University, Pacific Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Organization for Migration in South Korea. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University, an MA from Yonsei University, and an AB with Honors in Anthropology from Davidson College.

Gil-Soo Han is a Professor of Communications and Media Studies at Monash University in Australia. He has published extensively on media, religion, health, ethnicity, and nationalism in Korea. His recent publications include Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), Funeral Rites in Contemporary Korea (Springer, 2019), Nouveau-riche Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Korea: A Media Narrative Analysis (Routledge, 2016).

Angie Heo is Associate Professor in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, she taught at Barnard College and held fellowships at Emory University and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.  She is the author of The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt (University of California Press 2018). Her current research turns to the history and politics of Protestant Christianity in Korea.

Aram Hur is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Kim Koo Chair in Korean Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Her research focuses on nationalism and democracy in East Asia. She is the author of Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia (Cornell University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Robert A. Dahl Award for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy” from the American Political Science Association. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, M.P.P from the Harvard Kennedy School, and B.A. with honors from Stanford University.

Chelle Jones is a PhD Candidate in Sociology researching lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans (LBTQ) labor migrants to South Korea. Their dissertation takes up queer kinship theory to explain how LBTQ migrants navigate uneven human rights legal regimes around the world, while simultaneously accruing the social, economic, and medical resources to live fuller lives. In 2023, Jones published their central argument of the dissertation, “Jigsaw Migration: How Mixed Citizenship LGBTQ Families (Re) Assemble Their Fragmented Citizenship” in the International Migration Review. Jones has an MA in Korean Studies from Seoul National University Graduate School of International Studies.

Kyungja Jung is an Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Her recent book, North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism, co-authored with Professor Bronwen Dalton, was published by Routledge in 2024. Kyungja's academic interests are influenced by her involvement in women's activism in Australia and Korea. Using feminist intersectionality theory, her research examines the gendered nature of social processes through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary lenses. Her research covers women’s movements, women’s policy, North Korean female defectors, migrant sex workers, gender-based violence, and temporary migrants. She also authored Practicing Feminism in South Korea: sexual violence and the women’s movement (Routledge, 2014).

Jaeeun Kim is Korea Foundation Endowed Associate Professor of Sociology and Professor of Law (by Courtesy) at the University of Michigan. She is a political sociologist and law and society scholar, studying race/ethnicity/nationalism and migration/citizenship. Kim is the author of the award-winning book, Contested Embrace: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea (Stanford University Press 2016). Her article won the 2019 Theory Prize from the American Sociological Association. She was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016–2017) and a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2020–2021), where she holds a permanent fellow position from Fall 2024. 

Jinwon Kim is an assistant professor of sociology at Smith College. Her research investigates how the global political economy and popular/consumer culture interact with national/ethnic identities, interracial and interethnic relations, urban changes, and the creative economy in an era of global competition. Her work has appeared in City & Community, The International Journal of Cultural Policy, and other publications. She also co-edited Koreatowns: Exploring the Economics, Politics, and Identities of Korean Spatial Formations. Her first monograph, entitled Transclave: Branding Korea and Consuming Ethnicity in Koreatown, New York City, is expected to be published by NYU Press in 2025.

Minjeong Kim is professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at San Diego State University. Her research interests include gender, race and ethnicity, international migration, and the media. She is the author of Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and ‘Multiculturalism’ in Rural South Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2018). Her most recent work is an edited volume, Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea: Reflections and Future Directions (with Hyeyoung Woo, Rutgers University Press, 2022). Her current projects include an ethnographic study of Korean immigrant communities in the U.S.–Mexico border region.

Nora Kim is a professor of sociology at the University of Mary Washington. Her research focuses on critical refugee studies, international migration, and citizenship in Asia. Her recent works have been published at positions: asia critique, Journal of Refugee Studies, and Law and Society Review. She has been working on a book project that critically examines the way South Korea’s involvement in transnational wars has shaped its refugee landscape, from the Korean War, to the Vietnam War, and to the US War in Afghanistan

Pei-Chia Lan is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University and a 2024-25 Stanford-Taiwan Social Science Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. Her major publications include Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (Duke 2006, won a Distinguished Book Award from the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association and ICAS Book Prize: Best Study in Social Science from the International Convention of Asian Scholars) and Raising Global Families: Parenting, Immigration, and Class in Taiwan and the US (Stanford 2018).

Angela Yoonjeong McClean is the Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Politics and Society at Indiana University-Bloomington’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. Her research explores the historical context of South Korea’s participation in the international refugee regime, the current on-the-ground dynamics of administrative and legal decision-making on refugee admissions, and their impacts on refugee experiences in South Korea. Angela holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC San Diego and held postdoctoral positions at Yale University and the University of Michigan.

Seungsook Moon is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College. She is a political and cultural sociologist, scholar of gender studies, and Asianist specializing in South Korea. Her research interests include civic activism and citizenship; transnational militarism and military service; masculinities in neoliberal societies; and food, culture, & globalization. She is the author of Civic Activism in South Korea: the Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism (Columbia University Press, 2024) and Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea, and a co-editor of and contributor to Over There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War II to the Present (both published by Duke University Press).

Young-a Park is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research and teaching interests cover issues of post-authoritarian politics, film industry, social movements, state-civil society relations, neoliberalism, and migration in South Korea. Her first book—Unexpected Alliances: Independent Filmmakers, the State, and the Film Industry in Postauthoritarian South Korea—was published in 2015 by Stanford University Press. She is currently working on a new book on North Korean defectors’ strategies in obtaining cultural membership in the context of emergent neoliberal resettlement policies in South Korea. 

Jaekyung Roh is a PhD candidate in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University, and her specialisation is Communications and Media Studies. Jae has also been working as a teaching associate and a research assistant in Media Communications as well as Korean Studies at Monash. Roh’s research interests include older migrants, migrants’ social media use, multiculturalism, ethnic communities, and identity. Her PhD project discusses the use of homeland digital media by older Korean migrants in Australia, focusing on ways of negotiating their experiences of social disconnection and disadvantages by managing emotions.

Brian Yecies specializes in the creative industries. He is the book author of South Korea’s Webtooniverse and the Digital Comic Revolution, The Changing Face of Korean Cinema, 1960-2015, and Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948 – with Ae-Gyung Shim, and the co-editor of Willing collaborators: Foreign partners in Chinese media. Currently, Brian is leading the Australian Research Council Linkage Project – in partnership with Australian Copyright Council, Copyright Agency, National Association for the Visual Arts, and Australian Network for Art & Technology: “Empowering Australia’s Visual Arts via Creative Blockchain Opportunities”, which studies how digital artwork can be authenticated, traded and remixed in cybersecure ways.

Sharon J. Yoon is Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and is an ethnographer who specializes in Korean diasporic communities. Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Yoon was a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Joo-Jin Kim Center for Korean Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at Osaka University, and an assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha Womans University. Yoon was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2021.

Session 1: Migrant/Diaspora Integration in South Korea 

Aram Hur (Tufts University)

Narratives of Inclusion: National Stories and Migrant Integration

National stories define who a people are, but also how they should behave in the face of challenge. Can national storytelling aid migrant integration? Politicians often invoke national stories to foster support or resistance against newcomers, but the empirical link remains thin. We test the inclusivity effects of three universal themes in national stories—constitutive, economic, and political power—in South Korea’s migration context. South Korea’s urgent need to import marriage migrants to combat its rapidly declining fertility makes for a compelling real-world case. Using iterative survey experiments with an embedded focus group, we find that the political power theme emphasizing South Korea’s democratic national story is uniquely successful at increasing inclusive attitudes toward migrants. Contrary to nationalism’s dominant image as a tool for exclusion, our findings highlight nationalism’s narrative potential to promote inclusion during windows of sociodemographic change.

Darcie Draudt-Véjares (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

Demographic Developmentalism: Adaptive Family and Immigration Policies in South Korea

This paper examines South Korea's shift from strict birth control measures targeting Korean women (1960s-1980s) to proactive marriage migration programs recruiting foreign spouses (1990s-2020s). This transition challenges conventional understandings of social and immigration policymaking, particularly for a country known for its strong ethnonational heritage and restrictive citizenship laws. Drawing together literature on the developmental state and comparative immigration studies, the paper introduces the concept of demographic developmentalism, a governance strategy for managing population structures to support economic development. Faced with critically low birthrates and inadequate welfare provisions, South Korean policymakers sought to expand "family development across borders" to increase population growth without costly structural reforms. Drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and interviews with policy practitioners, the paper argues that this shift demonstrates the adaptability of developmental states in addressing demographic crises and an alternative avenue for ethnonational states to enact targeted immigration reforms. By introducing demography to the study of immigration governance, the study sheds light on the adaptiveness of developmental states and offers fresh insights into the intersection of social and immigration policies in aging societies.

Erin Aeran Chung (Johns Hopkins University)

The Politics of Defining the Korean Diaspora

Who is included and excluded in the diaspora? Who gets to define the diaspora? What is at stake in setting the parameters of the diaspora? This paper examines how diaspora policies—specifically policies that set the parameters of diasporic membership—structure and constrain relationships between diasporic populations and their homeland states through the lens of South Korea’s 1999 Overseas Korean Act. I explore how changes to South Korea’s diasporic engagement policies have led to the development of noncitizen hierarchies that distinguish between diasporic populations and differentially allocate eligibility for specific rights, employment opportunities, residency periods, and paths to citizenship based on their countries of origin and emigration histories. Further research that disaggregates diaspora membership politics will help us to better understand how and why emigrant states engage with their diasporic populations in differential ways and their consequences for redefining both the homeland and the diaspora.

Session 2: Neoliberal Governance, Neoliberal Subjectivities?

Seungsook Moon (Vassar College)

Prefigurative Activism with Foreign Migrants: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism in South Korea

Democracy and neoliberalism are major keywords that convey aspirations, challenges, and problems of our era, as well as globally practiced modes of ruling. South Korea is one of many societies in the world that witnessed neoliberal transformation not only in the economy, but also politics and culture. In particular, the rise and spread of neoliberal governance in local and national politics has been a main feature of democratization in South Korea since the 1990s. Diverse types of civic organizations there have dealt with neoliberal governance in pursuing their activism for democratic social change. This presentation focuses on a small local organization dedicated to issues concerning foreign migrants in order to illuminate how disengagement with neoliberal governance simultaneously enabled its prefigurative activism with foreign migrants and undermined it.

Young-a Park (University of Hawaii)

North Korean Defector Entrepreneurs in South Korea: Challenging Dominant Narratives by Creating North Korean Food Culture

Following the catastrophic famine of the mid-1990s in North Korea, there was a sharp increase in the influx of North Korean defectors to South Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As a result, there are approximately 34,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. Whereas the government and aid agencies previously dispensed resettlement funds equally to all defectors, they now depend on individual factors such as the defectors’ personal development, self-reliance through education, and motivation for job training and entrepreneurship. Emergent neoliberal aid policies and practices in South Korea promote restaurants or catering businesses as promising careers for North Korean defectors. This paper is based on in-depth interviews with North Korean interlocutors who were restaurateurs, food company owners, or patrons of these businesses in 2022, 2023. I argue that while North Korean entrepreneurs conform to state-driven neoliberal policies, they also use their North Korean food businesses and North Korean food culture to challenge negative stereotypes about North Korean defectors and further construct counter-narratives that place themselves in a more powerful position in the South Korean society

Kyungja Jung (University of Technology Sidney)

Cosmopolitan Habitus and Onward Migration: Understanding the Transnational Mobility of North Korean Refugees

The onward migration of North Korean refugees challenges the dominant focus on economic motivations in migration studies. This paper highlights the underexplored role of non-economic factors, particularly the habitus of migrants, in shaping transnational mobility. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, this paper examines the motivations and experiences of 27 North Korean refugees who have engaged in onward migration to Australia. The findings suggest that the transformation of their habitus—marked by the adoption of a cosmopolitan outlook and a flexible identity—is the primary impetus for their migration. Their aspirations, especially a strong desire to learn English, drive them toward Australia. Furthermore, the study contends that onward migration should not be construed as evidence of unsuccessful integration or inadequate settlement programs in the initial country of asylum. Instead, it argues that onward migration reflects refugees’ desire to autonomously navigate and enhance their integration through transnational mobility.

Keynote Session

Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University)

The Emerging Second Generation in East Asia: Multiculturalism, Geopolitics, and Identity Work

In recent decades, cross-border marriages have surged across East Asia, resulting in a growing population of children of mixed heritage now entering adulthood. This demographic shift complicates the ethnoscape of these societies and challenges the assimilation paradigm prevalent in North America. Second-generation youth in East Asia navigate intricate, non-linear pathways of incorporation and engage in ambivalent identity politics. This talk posits that macrostructural factors, such as geopolitical contexts and state policies, significantly influence the second generation’s identity formation and life chances. I introduce the concept of “geopolitical multiculturalism,” which suggests that multicultural policies serve the additional aims of enhancing a nation’s global standing, regional significance, and political security. Focusing on the case of Taiwan, my research examines how second-generation youth negotiate their identities at the intersection of multicultural dividends and geopolitical tensions. While Southeast Asian second-generation youths are increasingly encouraged to embrace a bicultural identity, children of PRC Chinese immigrants face geopolitical stigmas and conflicting identities. I identify three primary strategies employed by second-generation individuals in their identity work: majority identity, biculturalism, and rescaling. This discussion will explore the implications for immigrant incorporation and the multicultural future of this region.

Session 3: Transnational Cultural Production and Consumption

Jinwon Kim (Smith College)

Blackface in Korean Bodies: Black Characters and Legacies of Blackface in the Korean Entertainment Industry and Media

Korea’s entertainment industry has broken into the U.S. market in recent years. However, the Korean entertainment industry and media are still known for their long history of anti-Black racism, which has faced backlash from international fans over the past decade. Why and how have the Korean media and entertainment industry reinforced anti-Blackness despite relatively little contact with Black people? Why have Korean entertainers created controversies while aggressively expanding their market, and how do young Koreans respond to new global issues? Based on media content analysis, in-depth interviews with 50 Koreans, and archival research, this article traces the history of Blackface in Korean entertainment by focusing on two characters from 1980s shows—Sikeomeonseu and Michol from Dooly the Little Dinosaur. These characters, based on exaggerated, stereotypical physical features of Black people, became the foundation for the portrayal of Black individuals in Korean media. Furthermore, these racially biased depictions of Black people became normalized in Korean society, as they were reproduced by younger entertainers until recently. However, I argue that ‘global’ pressure from overseas fans has begun to challenge these entrenched images of Black people, albeit slowly, creating a platform for new discussions about race, racism, and anti-Blackness among younger Koreans.

Brian Yecies (University of Wollongong)

Scrolling Across Hidden Nationalism in the Webtooniverse and Its Impact on Diasporic Cultural Flows and Migration

This talk revisits the theoretical concept of soft power by examining the expansion of the Korean-born digital Webtooniverse beyond its national and diasporic borders. It analyzes the charismatic appeal of Naver’s Webtoon platform and its technological affordances, which have attracted a global readership, motley crew of creators, and major streaming platform content producers – who are drawn to its innovative, genre-bending narratives and transmedia potential. Over time, the population of works augmented by international creators has introduced a variety of cultural perspectives through diverse stories and characters – all within a kind of invisible Korean milieu. This cultural phenomenon, which is reliant on the exploitation of volunteers and underpaid labor, features understudied currents of overt and subtle nationalism. Notably, fan translators on Webtoon have engaged in semi-inconspicuous collaborations, extending the global reach of webtoons and the Korean Wave by producing multilingual versions of the original content. I argue the impacts of these unintentional nation-branding ambassadors and activities complicate the conventional solo-nation soft power algorithm by adding substantial value to the Webtooniverse and Korea’s (and Naver’s) growing international presence, while influencing diasporic cultural flows and migratory trends in important ways.

Jaekyung Roh (Monash University)

Isolation and Struggle to Belong: Emotional Management of Older Korean-Australian Migrants through Homeland Digital Media

This doctoral thesis investigates how older migrants, particularly older Koreans in Australia, navigate adjustment challenges and foster social and emotional connections through homeland digital media. The research is intended to enhance understanding of the difficulties faced by socially vulnerable migrant groups and their struggle to develop a sense of belonging in a multicultural host society. The study explores the strategies and resources they deploy to address daily challenges by focusing on the experiences of eighteen older Koreans, aged from their mid-60s to late 70s, who live in Melbourne. Through multiple in-depth interviews and the social media scroll-back method, the research incorporates how various actors, including family, fellow migrants, and neighbours, influence their experiences and coping mechanisms. A critical realism-informed perspective and concepts of affect and emotions are applied to interpret the participants’ experiences and contexts. The findings indicate that, while influenced by the socio-cultural factors of Korean society, participants manage emotions such as loneliness, nostalgia, frustration, and the desire to connect with the broader society through homeland digital media. The analysis suggests that Australian multiculturalism should reconsider its policies by creating opportunities for older migrants’ active participation and recognition in the local community.

Session 4: The Long Shadows of Colonial, Anti-Colonial, and Post-Colonial Past 

Angie Heo (University of Chicago)

Korean Christianity and Diasporic Nationalism in the Age of Assassination

In March 1908, two Korean migrants Chang In Hwan and Chun Myung Un shot Durham W. Stevens, an American diplomat and proponent of Japanese colonialism, along the San Francisco waterfront. Scholars and politicians regard this assassination to be a foundational event for the Korean independence movement and the political formation of an ethnic Korean consciousness abroad. This paper revisits this landmark event in Korean-American history and Korean nationalist politics on the eve of Japan’s annexation of the Peninsula with two key aims. First, it questions existing perspectives on analyzing the Protestant elements of Korean nationalism in exile, as well as their concurrent expressions in the mainland.  Second, it explores depictions of targeted killings by Koreans under Japanese rule within the broader historical surge of assassinations in Europe, America, and Asia leading up to the world wars. Further examining implications for the study of contemporary Korea, this paper seeks to situate historical representations of anticolonial violence within our current politics of religion, diasporic nationalism, and American influence in Asia.

Gil-Soo Han (Monash University)

Money and Nationalism in the Name of Christ: Catalysts for Hereditary Succession of Head Minister in South Korean Churches

The Korean War and Japanese imperialism have been the two most historically significant events, with enduring impacts on Korean institutions like politics, economy, culture, education, religion, and the whole Korean psyche. Korea’s geopolitical context and the legacy of imperialism (de)legitimized many public activities, culminating in favour of nation-building. In this context, the Korean Protestant churches, which enjoyed exponential growth in industrializing Korea in the 70s and 80s (i.e., prosperity theology), continued to seek monetary gains. These are illustrated by pastors’ reluctance to pay income tax, churches’ in-person services during the pandemic, the ongoing exploitation of the “commie” debate, and the anti-antidiscrimination policy. This paper illustrates Protestant churches’ indulgences in a hereditary succession of head pastors in the name of Christ and strengthening God’s kingdom in Korea.

Sharon Yoon (Notre Dame University)

Social Media Activism and the Fight Against Hate in Osaka’s Koreatown

A former squatter-settlement mired in a colonial legacy of poverty and discrimination, Osaka’s Tsuruhashi district is considered to be a spiritual haven for Koreans in Japan. On February 23, 2013, the district became the target of a far-right hate rally, and scenes of a junior high school girl, threatening to enact a “Tsuruhashi Massacre, just like the Nanking Massacre” went viral on YouTube. My project follows the rise of a grassroots counter-movement that emerged in response and asks: How did a group of disenfranchised minorities, who represent just one percent of the population, achieve legislative reform within only three years of mobilization for their cause? While the far-right had organized 1,152 hate rallies between April 2013 and September 2015, today, the extremist groups have officially disbanded. Korean activists organized anti-hate workshops, cultural festivals, and art exhibitions in the enclave to raise awareness for their cause, and in 2016, they successfully pressured politicians into implementing the country’s first anti-hate speech ordinance in Osaka. In particular, I argue that traditionally “disadvantaged” spaces like the postcolonial ghetto can act as a powerful site of politicization by providing activists with access to the organizational infrastructure and collective cohesion typically lacking in social movements.

Session 5: Making and Unmaking “Deserving” Refugees

Nora Hui-Jung Kim (University of Mary Washington)

Subempire’s Embrace: Critical Juxtaposition of the 1975 Vietnam Evacuees and 2021 Afghan Evacuees

In the summer of 2021, South Korea welcomed about 400 Afghans evacuees, which seemed to defy the racialized notions of inclusion and exclusion in South Korea. Building upon an insight from critical refugee studies, I critically juxtapose South Korea’s two transnational wars of choice, the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan, and the corresponding post-war evacuations operations, Operation Crusade and Operation Miracle. Both wars serve to transform and solidify South Korea’s status as a subempire. The warmer reception offered to the evacuees of Operations Crusade (1975) and Miracle (2021) points to the crucial necessity of the theater of evacuation of refugees in legitimating imperial military interventions. Both evacuation operations had led to encounters between South Koreans and ethnic Other, with South Korea assuming the role of the rescuer. By juxtaposing encounters with evacuees from Vietnam and Afghanistan, I demonstrate the further development of South Korea’s subimperial identity over a half-century as South Korea transitioned itself from a war-torn country to a subempire and ideal refuge in Asia. For the Vietnamese refugees, South Korea served as a surrogate refugee. By the time South Korea encountered the Afghan refugees, South Korea presents itself as an ideal refugee, where the evacuees chose and want to stay.

Angela Yoonjeong McClean (Indiana University)

The Credibility Crucible: Becoming a Refugee before the South Korean Court of Law

To be recognized as a “legal” refugee under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, refugee applicants must demonstrate a “well-founded fear” of persecution if returned to their country. Assessing whether their fear is well-founded, however, is notoriously challenging, particularly since applicants generally lack concrete evidence to corroborate fear. For adjudicators, deciding if the applicant qualifies as a refugee often hinges on the answer to a single question: Is the applicant telling the truth about their refugeehood? Who, then, is a “credible” refugee applicant in the eyes of adjudicators? This paper addresses this question in the context of South Korea, a rich democracy with an exceptionally low refugee recognition rate. Analyzing an original dataset of court documents on asylum claims, I identify characteristics of refugee applicants deemed credible and thus deserving of asylum. My findings reveal that those accepted share three traits: active engagement, public visibility, and a history of suffering. Given how rare and paradoxical it is for applicants to exhibit these traits, my findings indicate that the Korean judicial definition of a refugee is extremely narrow, making the well-founded fear standard nearly impossible to meet, and contribute to Korea’s low refugee recognition rate.

Jaeeun Kim (University of Michigan)

Making Converts out of Asylum-Seekers: Korean Immigrant Evangelical Church and Asylum Claims-Making on Religious Grounds

The religious asylum applicant must establish her religious identity for successful asylum claims. Religious organizations can help asylum-seekers pass this “credible membership test” by issuing certificates of membership and baptism, providing recommendation letters or personal testimonies in court, and teaching proper ways to perform the religious faith at issue. This verification regime can make religious organizations relate to the state as its private deputies, delegated part of its gatekeeping task. At the same time, asylum-seekers’ interest in crafting their religious personas can pull religious organizations closely to commercial brokers that often provide migrants with critical assistance in their “identity craft.” This paper presents an example of the latter: how several characteristics of evangelicalism in general, Korean American evangelicalism in particular, and the religious economy in immigrant enclaves in the U.S. encourage Korean immigrant evangelical congregations to focus on making the faithful as God’s intermediary, instead of screening them as the state’s surrogate gatekeeper. By constructing its transaction with coethnic asylum-seekers as an instance of gift giving and requiring a retrospective yet serious commitment to the Christian persona as a counter-gift, the church seeks to reconcile the conflicting needs to weed out impostors and to evangelize coethnic migrants of missiological/practical significance. 

Session 6: Performing and Subverting Hierarchies in Transnational Space

Minjeong Kim (San Diego State University)

Social and Geographical Stratifications within Transborder Diasporic Community: Korean Immigrants on the U.S.– Mexico Border

Based on the ethnographic research on the development of Korean immigrant communities in the U.S. – Mexico border region, the paper analyzes the factors that shape social stratification among Korean diasporic communities. As a diasporic community in the region emerged from the economic development led by Korean multinational corporations (MNCs), existing hierarchical relationships, (e.g., MNCs and subcontractors, or expatriate senior management vs. local hires from Latin America and the United States), reproduce social stratification among Korean immigrants. Their social distance to MNCs and Korean immigrants’ social and human capital affect the country of their residency which, combined with Korean immigrants’ perceived difference between the United States and Mexico and the perceived national and racial hierarchy, constructs geographical stratification among Korean immigrants. By analyzing the overlap of social and geographical stratifications within the Korean diasporic community in the transborder region, the paper contributes to our understanding of the complex relationships among co-ethnic immigrants. 

Ga Young Chung (UC Davis)

Unexpired: Time, Imperial Futurity, and the Undocumented Korean Immigrant Justice Movement

In a post-9/11 era, a capitalist regime of imperial futurity has become increasingly entangled with the racialization of disenfranchised people of color in the United States. To survive, young undocumented Korean immigrants work hard to prove they were worthy of citizenship, tantalized by the state-indoctrinated fantasy of a better future marked by employability, law-abiding morality, and a patriotic spirit. However, this imperial futurity, founded on the state’s white supremacist and settler colonial social order, proved unattainable. Drawing on years-long multi-sited ethnographic study, I demonstrate how these young undocumented Korean immigrants’ political reworking of betrayal into a productive critique of exclusive citizenship inspired creative and radical efforts to launch a movement dedicated to collective liberation. Focusing on their “Citizenship for All” campaign—which demands the state grant everyone unconditional and equal access to education, housing, and health care, regardless of background, class, race, ethnicity, religion, dis/ability, gender, and/or sexuality—I argue that they shifted the goals of the immigrant justice movement from achieving legal citizenship for individuals to building an abolitionist future, one that does not serve the desires of the powerful US state but rather liberates all the oppressed.

Carolyn Choi (Princeton University)

Strategic Occidentalism: South Korean Educational Migrants and Their Strategies for “White Cultural Capital” vis-à-vis English Study Abroad

As part of the South Korean state’s twenty-first century aspirations for global ascendance, young South Koreans have been going abroad in record numbers to English-speaking destinations in and beyond the West. The global expansion of English study abroad has become linked with South Korean state strategies for nation-building, with the South Korean government declaring: “when all Koreans speak in English, the GDP will automatically rise by one percent.” Scholarship continues to regard English study abroad as a “neutral process,” eclipsing its highly racialized nature, linked to what Jodi Kim calls the military and geopolitical projection of white settler colonial racial projects abroad. This paper interrogates contemporary iterations of global whiteness vis-a-vis the lens of English study abroad as it operates in South Korean upward mobility projects in the United States, Australia, and the Philippines. In introducing a concept I call “strategic occidentalism” this paper investigate how migrants’ aspirations for “white language,” “white credentials,” and “white jobs” in both metropole and postcolonial English educational destinations offer a window into the linkages between South Korean economic growth and its aspirations to reposition itself in the modern racial capitalist system, and ultimately how this informs the ways white supremacy perpetuates on a global scale.

Chelle Jones (University of Michigan)

Exempt Outsiders: Transgender Skilled Migrants and Gender Accountability in South Korea

‘Doing gender’ scholarship explores a variety of contexts. However, accountability to gender is understudied, leading scholars to call for work that analyzes the varying salience of gender accountability. I study transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC+) migrants originally from the West and Southeast Asia who now live in South Korea. How do TGNC+ migrants experience accountability to gender, race/ethnicity, class, and national origin boundaries in their host and origin societies? I find that TGNC+ migrants feel safer in Korea than in their origin societies – including those that may be conventionally considered to be more progressive than Korea – to ‘do gender’ in affirming ways. This is because medical care is rarely gatekept, and public spaces facilitate gender affirmation for TGNC+ migrants because they perceive they are held less accountable to gender than their Korean peers. I call them ‘exempt outsiders’ because they are rarely held accountable to gender as their ‘foreign’ status, inflected by race, class, and national origin, displaces gender as the primary frame through which boundaries are drawn. By integrating the literature on ‘doing gender’ with boundary studies, I highlight the shifting salience of gender, race, class, and national origin when TGNC+ individuals migrate and interact in different social contexts.