Between global dreams and national duties: the dilemma of conscription duty in the transnational lives of young Korean males. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Korea Journal, 2018
Korea and/or the United States. Their stories reveal how the "unending" Cold War and the vestiges of US imperialism and militarism continue to impact Korean young adults and their transnational life projects. In particular, this research compares two groups: one composed of upper middle-class and upper-class male students who graduated from boarding schools and attend prestigious colleges in the United States and who are required to return to complete their military service in South Korea; and the other composed of lower middle-class and lowerclass male students who moved to the United States and are seeking to serve in the US military to secure an expedited path to American citizenship after failing to enter prestigious colleges in South Korea. In so doing, we show how two seemingly divergent paths toward militarized citizenship are highly classed. Although the two groups examined come from different class backgrounds and make different choices, they are alike in their decision to undertake military service-and to use that service to secure valuable citizenship. By showing how both groups remain tied to a militarized regime of citizenship during their respective transnational trajectories as international students, this research demonstrates the ongoing effects of the Cold War, not just on the Korean Peninsula but also in the transnational space of citizenship.
“Patriarchy is So Third World”: Korean Immigrant Women and “Migrating” White Western Masculinity
Previous studies have found that immigrant women prefer and fight to maintain gains in gender status brought by migration. However, few studies address how hegemonic ideals of white Western masculinity (e.g., as gender progressive, heroic) may also be an influence. In addition, women from U.S. -dominated countries engage masculinity ideologies both before and after they immigrate in a cross-border process. Using a case study of Korean immigrant women, this article addresses both the influence, and the women 's transnational engagement, of hegemonic ideologies of white American masculinity. The author conducted 26 in-depth interviews with first generation Korean immigrant women in Los Angeles and 22 supplementary interviews with women in Seoul, South Korea. This study finds that the women used hegemonic notions of white American masculinity to resist Korean patriarchy, especially co-ethnic men's resistance to their gender empowerment in the United States. To be certain, the women's subordination by racial/national inequalities fostered their derision of white American men, such as soldiers, in South Korea. Yet, the women's racialized lens on gender relations tended to affirm their use of one form of hegemony-white American masculinity-to challenge anothe-Korean patriarchy. In light of these findings, future research on gender and immigrant women of color might consider analyzing racialized hierarchies of masculinity and their global-local and transnational contexts.
The Nationality Law and the Military Service Law in South Korea were changed in 2004 and 2005 respectively to enable tighter control over the conscription of male citizens. This movement stands in contrast to other industrialised countries, where conscription has been replaced by professional and marketised military services. This article explains the Korean exception as "shallow marketisation," one particular way the connection between citizenship and military service is being reconfigured in the era of neo-liberal globalisation. The Korean state and its "flexible citizens" engage in the exchange of citizenship and military service, but their choices are constrained by previous social relations, including the ideals of equal citizens and of national identity and belonging. In this context of shallow marketisation, the state is tightening the linkage between citizenship and military conscription and trying to restore the façade of "universality" to conscription. Flexible male citizens frame their choices not simply as instrumental calculations, but also as decisions based upon their national identity as Koreans. This article fills a lacuna in the scholarship on neo-liberal reconfigurations of citizenship by elucidating how changes in citizenship practices trigger changes in military conscription and vice versa.
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.
Migration and the Korean Diaspora: A Comparative Description of Five Cases
The international migration and settlement of Koreans began in 1860 and there are now about 6.8 million overseas Koreans in 170 countries. Each wave of Korean migration was driven by different historical factors in the homeland and the host countries, and hence the motivations and characteristics of Korean immigrants in each period were different. The diverse conditions in and government policies of the host countries also affected the mode of entry and incorporation of Koreans. A contrast is drawn between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Korean migrations. The former consists of those who migrated to Russia, China, America and Japan from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. They were from the lower classes, pushed out by poverty, war and oppression in the homeland. Few returned to the homeland but preserved their collective identities and ethnic cultures in their host societies. The new migrants to America, Europe and Latin America since the 1960s, however, come from middle-class backgrounds, are pulled by better opportunities in the host countries, travel freely between the homeland and host countries, and maintain transnational families and communities. Despite these differences, overseas Koreans share common experiences and patterns of immigration, settlement and adaptation.
PhD Dissertation, 2024
The dominant narrative of diasporic Korean American history has been founded upon on the narratives the Korean Independence Movement from the continental US and Hawai‘i. It centers the leaders and participants of the movement who began to mobilize diasporic Korean Americans towards a predetermined path of assimilation into US society and global cosmopolitanism – a political subjectivity that reinforces both US and Korea nationalisms. By extension, evocations of the Korean diaspora in academic discourses have also tended to reify territorial, ethnonational, and political boundaries to standardize a singular definition of the Korean diaspora centered on migration, ethnic identification, and connection to the homeland. By contrast, “A different Diaspora” argues that such renderings tell only a partial story by historical tracing various political struggles of diasporic Korean Americans throughout the 20th century (1903-1968) who challenged narratives of compliance and assimilation defined by diasporic Korean American proximity to whiteness. Through their actions, these exiled militarists, scholars, students, and GI deserters of the US armed forces made apparent the limitation of their proximity to whiteness by imagining a different Korean American diaspora removed from the norms of subservience to white American institutions and individuals in positions of power. By placing them at the center of my story, my dissertation argues for a wider conception of the Korean diaspora that accounts for overlooked narratives such as the cultivation of cross-racial solidarities; development of critical understanding of antiblackness, Indigenous dispossession; and participation in projects of demilitarization to resist US imperialism. These enactments of an alternative worldmaking in the Korean American diaspora, practiced however fleetingly, reveal that notions of belonging are not confined by boundaries set by nation-states or the status quo of the racial-social order in the US. This dissertation thus traces what I call insurgent histories of the Korean American diaspora, focusing on how various diasporic Korean Americans at different times and places sought alternative forms of liberation and belonging. It is a genealogy of how diasporic Korean Americans came to understand and imagined beyond their proximity to whiteness to envision a different Korean American diaspora.