Migration and the Korean Diaspora: A Comparative Description of Five Cases (original) (raw)
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Korean Development and Migration
Our introductory paper to this special issue of JEMS on Korean development and migration provides a sketch of internal migration in Korea, and international migration from and to that country. It positions these movements within the great transitions experienced by Korea over recent decades: the transition from an agricultural to an industrial and then a tertiary economy; the transition from a rural to an urban society; and the transition to low fertility and mortality. A transition in migration can also be observed from rural to urban and from emigration to immigration. The papers in this issue each illustrate a different facet of Korea’s migration*the importance of internal remittances in the process of urbanisation, the range of destinations in Korea’s diaspora, the different enclave economies and societies around the Pacific rim, ethnic ties and the incorporation of Koreans into the economies of destination areas, the importance of transnational families and whether Korea will ever become a ‘settler’ society are all examined as part of Korea’s local and global migrations. They all demonstrate, in different ways, how Korea’s development into a member of the global economy has interacted with migration to change its volume, direction and composition.
South Korea completed an economic miracle in the last third of the twentieth century and has evolved from a kin state into a host state of international migration. Repatriation of compatriots in the Republic of Korea, as a type of international migration, has its specific characteristics because there is another country—North Korea—which was also involved in cross-border population movements. Based on the growing number of migrants, including chosonjok from China, koryoin from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, primarily Russia and Uzbekistan, and thalbukja, refugees from North Korea, and the reverse migration of overseas Koreans from the United States and other Western countries, the main agenda is repatriation legal support and effective programming for integration into mainstream South Korean society. Repatriates may affect the stability and development of South Korea in the twenty-first century. An investigation of the basic stages of repatriation, of its constituent elements, the problems encountered in the adaptation of immigrants in the modern Republic of Korea, assumes knowledge and consideration of the migrant's experience, reception, and understanding of national repatriation programs. This article is an attempt toward comparative diachronic and synchronic analysis of Korean repatriation as a type of international migration.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2012
This paper presents an evolutionary explanation of diaspora for the Korean-Japanese using a method of ‘global ethnographic revisits’. By expanding the scope of the Korean-Japanese to those who repatriated to South Korea and North Korea in addition to those who remained in Japan, the paper finds that their migration trajectory has gradually evolved from passive nationalistic migration to active transnational diaspora, a conclusion that was not easily replicable using the conventional method of observing Korean residents only in Japan. The three-stage evolution process includes passive diaspora during the colonial period, post-diaspora during the cold-war era, and transnational diaspora after the cold war. The three ethnographic cases presented in this paper indicate that motivation and environmental structures affect the whole evolutionary process, whereas distancing from their imaginary homeland is key in evolving into transnational diaspora for the Korean-Japanese.