Becoming Bridge Figures: Reimagining the valued citizens on the United Korean Peninsula through young North Korean migrants' narratives (original) (raw)
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Transnational flows and influx influence perspectives about the concepts of citizenship limited within nation-state borders. The author challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship education in order to explore possibilities for the advancement of both multicultural citizenship and global citizenship education. He situates South Korea’s case within this discourse and suggests multicultural citizenship and global citizenship education as alternative, defensible, and appropriate paradigms at the transnational and global age. In the final part of the paper, he discusses the implications of this paradigm for citizenship education in South Korea.
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This paper investigates how the political socialisation of North Korean defectors (NKDs) in North Korea affects their adjustment in South Korea. This project is based on a survey of 106 NKDs and interviews with some of the respondents and South Koreans who help NKDs. An account is given of the history and resettlement of NKDs in South Korea, including the difficulties they experience. Furthermore, the paper describes the political ideology of self-reliance (Juche) and heavily monitored lives to which NKDs have been exposed in North Korea. The research finds that resettlement can be significantly affected by self-reliance ideology and heavily monitored lives. When NKDs in South Korea realised the deceptive reality of self-reliance ideology, they adjusted better than those who maintained the Juche point of view. Being brainwashed by Kim Jong-il's regime caused NKDs to develop distrust and become individualistic. Due to having antipathy and hatred towards their enemies, they were inclined to be critical, aggressive, and negative towards South Koreans. Many also held a Manichean mindset and tended to avoid attending seminars and training meetings. The negative influences of their former lives in North Korea have generally had a great effect on their resettlement in South Korea.
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