2014. "North Korean Migrants in south Korea: From Heroes to Burdens and First Unifiers," in Multiethnic Korea? Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South Korea, edited by John Lie, 142-164. Berkeley: University of California. Institute of East Asian Studies. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2013
The South Korean government continues to practice variants of what Stephan Castles (1995) calls 'differential exclusion', in which citizenship in the nation state for North Koreans does not confer membership in civil society. For new arrivals from North Korea, many of whom have developed a distinct distrust of anything governmental, interaction with representatives of the South Korean state bares a chilling resemblance to that which they left behind in the North. This article argues that for newly-arrived North Koreans the failure at state level does not mean they are entirely cast adrift, as religious and secular institutions within civil society are shouldering more of the burden of adaptation for the newcomers. This article endeavours to further our understanding of the significance of these groups as spaces where, for persons in exile, the meaning of home is recreated through acts of intimate exchange and relationships are formed that have the potential to become a form of pseudo-kinship.
The South Korean government continues to practice variants of what Stephan Castles (1995) calls ‘differential exclusion’, in which citizenship in the nation state for North Koreans does not confer membership in civil society. For new arrivals from North Korea, many of whom have developed a distinct distrust of anything governmental, interaction with representatives of the South Korean state bares a chilling resemblance to that which they left behind in the North. This article argues that for newly-arrived North Koreans the failure at state level does not mean they are entirely cast adrift, as religious and secular institutions within civil society are shouldering more of the burden of adaptation for the newcomers. This article endeavours to further our understanding of the significance of these groups as spaces where, for persons in exile, the meaning of home is recreated through acts of intimate exchange and relationships are formed that have the potential to become a form of pseudo-kinship.
Paper presentation at the Korean Association for Multicultural Education (KAME) , 2018
In South Korea, the number of North Korean migrants has rapidly been growing since the mid-1990s. Schools and teachers have had to live and work with the unfamiliar migrants. In the specific context of a divided Korean history, the South Korean government has been seeking to develop an educational system equipped to handle the challenges of potential reunification and globalization. In practice, however, most policies are based on assimilation and focus on aggressive nationalism. Also, there are issues of cultural violence such as collective beliefs and attitudes that serve to legitimize enmity. As a result, young North Korean migrants have faced challenges of adapting and settling into the Korean society. The focus of this study is to reimagine citizenship education for building sustainable peace in the future unified Korean peninsula through accomplishing social integration and looking at citizenship education as a tool for nurturing young North Korean migrants to become the valued citizens, namely, bridge figures. The data provides insight not only into the difficulties of three different social and political spheres both in public debates and in everyday encounters, but also into the possibilities available as bridge figures in the future united Korean Peninsula and the diaspora.
International Migration
In this paper, I demonstrate the identity transformation of North Korean women in interaction with state and non-state actors and domestic and regional structures, which I formulate for the purposes of this paper. From a state-centric social constructivist perspective in politics and international relations, I examine how the identities and interests of North Korean women are constituted and reconstituted in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China and five South-East Asian countries along their migration routes before they reach the Republic of Korea – the so-called “Seoul Train in the Underground Railway”. Back in their country of origin, North Korean women are socially constructed as Confucian communist mothers. In China, the most frequently depicted images of North Korean women are trafficked wives. By paying for smugglers to cross borders to neighbouring South-East Asian countries, North Korean women finally become the agents of their own destiny, refugees in waiting to be transferred to South Korea.
Political Geography, 2019
This study looks at how North Korean transnational refugees' discourses and practices constitute a new version of the nation outside the materially bordered geography of their homeland. The research suggests the notion of 'extra-territorial nation-building' that refers to the social and cultural practices that build a nation as a collective identity and imagined society outside the national territory. Previous studies have not done enough to distinguish the nation from the state, and neither have they acknowledged the importance of individual agents involved in bottom-up nation-building. I focus particularly on the political and social engagement of North Korean refugees who first found refuge in South Korea and then emigrated to the United Kingdom. Based on ethnographic fieldwork including participant observation and in-depth interviews, the findings of the study are twofold. First, it establishes how the global network of North Korean refugees contributed to extraterritorial nation-building through the flow of ideas, discourses, and activities. These efforts also aided in envisioning a future version of the North Korean nation proper as network members collaborated to initiate measures that would establish an exile government and political activities. Second, nation-building efforts in relations were vital in distinguishing the North Korean identity from South Korean and Korean-Chinese migrants. As North Koreans resisted integration and adopting South Korean customs, they founded a North Korean language school for their second and third generations, a North Korean association, and cultural organisations so that their community in essence became their nation. This research contributes to the understanding of post-territorial and relational approaches as they apply to the concept of the nation.
An Abuse of Culture: North Korean Settlers, Multiculturalism, and Liberal Democracy
This paper presents how the concept of multiculturalism, when applied to North Korean settlers in South Korea, falls short of a viable solution to the identity negotiation process these settlers continually undergo while living in South Korea. In the liberal national formulation of multiculturalism, North Korean values and lifestyles cannot be cherished, and these refugees cannot express or take pride in their culture. Instead, it is when they express their pain, sorrow, anger, and frustration about their experiences in North Korea and during their refugee life that they can be hailed as brave, autonomous, reliable, and responsible citizens. I argue that this is an abuse of culture that depoliticizes these refugees. North Koreans living in South Korea are often mobilized to witness the persistent cruelty of human rights abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime, which has been considered a significant contribution to the strengthening of liberal democracies. But these refugees are rarely invited to provide critical commentary about the liberal democratic regime in which their subject formation as competent citizens is always questionable. To catch a glimpse of the insight into North Koreans as avant la lettre for unification of the nation, we Others to them should be better prepared to respond to the political implications that are made and carried through multiculturalism ventriloquizing the ideal liberal citizenship that they can never attain without a constant denial of the self.
Identity, Difference and Dilemmas of Inter-Korean Relations:
Asian Perspective, 2004
* I would like to thank David Hundt for outstanding research assistance and two anonymous referees as well as the editors of Asian Perspective for their insightful comments. Thanks as well to Moon Chung-in, for hosting my stay at Yonsei University, and to Claus Offe for doing the same during my year at Humboldt University. Support for this research was generously provided by the United States Institute of Peace and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.
RECASTING THE ‘INTER-KOREA’ IN NATIONAL RECONCILIATION
This essay aims to provide a critical view of South Korean intellectuals and unification policy makers who stress the undisputed role of nationalism, across the diverse ideo- logical spectrums, in constructing ‘inter-Korea’ reconciliation in South Korean society. They contend that meanings of counter-hegemonic practice against anti-North Korean ideology are already determined within the politics of national identification. However, this mode of thinking remains a predicament of the South Korean public’s critical engagement with the way in which a moral claim to national identification is conflated with inter-Korea economic collaboration along the lines of neo-liberalism. But I also want to illuminate the connection that neo-liberalism and new conservatism in South Korea make in the attempt to help anti-North Koreanism survive democratic challenges. My critical evaluation of the connection suggests a discursive condition of what I call ‘inter-Korea sociability’, in which the South Korean public can appropriate social and historical claims about the inter-Korea relationship that range from the atrocious and violent events in the war to the so-called North Korean human rights crisis. I argue that two Koreas’ reconciliation can come through resisting the romanticization of Koreans’ own normative commitment to idealized national authenticity and liberal human rights.