Multiethnic Korea?

Multiethnic Korea?
Author: John Lie
Publisher: Institute of East Asian Studies University of California - B
Total Pages:
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Cultural pluralism
ISBN: 9781557291103

"A collection of essays on ethnic and cultural diversity in the Korean peninsula, focusing on South Korea, including monoethnic, nationalist ideology and multiculturalism as ideology and practice, the history of migration and diaspora, transnational adoption, and interracial and interethnic relations"--

Elusive Belonging

Elusive Belonging
Author: Minjeong Kim
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824873556

Elusive Belonging examines the post-migration experiences of Filipina marriage immigrants in rural South Korea. Marriage migration—crossing national borders for marriage—has attracted significant public and scholarly attention, especially in new destination countries, which grapple with how to integrate marriage migrants and their children and what that integration means for citizenship boundaries and a once-homogenous national identity. In the early twenty-first century many Filipina marriage immigrants arrived in South Korea under the auspices of the Unification Church, which has long served as an institutional matchmaker. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Elusive Belonging examines Filipinas who married rural South Korean bachelors in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Turning away from the common stereotype of Filipinas as victims of domestic violence at the mercy of husbands and in-laws, Minjeong Kim provides a nuanced understanding of both the conflicts and emotional attachments of their relationships with marital families and communities. Her close-up accounts of the day-to-day operations of the state’s multicultural policies and public programs show intimate relationships between Filipinas, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, and how various emotions of love, care, anxiety, and gratitude affect immigrant women’s fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. By offering the perspectives of varied actors, the book reveals how women’s experiences of tension and marginalization are not generated within the family alone; they also reflect the socioeconomic conditions of rural Korea and the state’s unbalanced approach to “multiculturalism.” Against a backdrop of the South Korean government’s multicultural policies and projects aimed at integrating marriage immigrants, Elusive Belonging attends to the emotional aspects of citizenship rooted in a sense of belonging. It mediates between a critique of the assimilation inherent in Korea’s “multiculturalism” and the contention that the country’s core identity is shifting from ethnic homogeneity to multiethnic diversity. In the process it shows how marriage immigrants are incorporated into the fabric of Korean society even as they construct new identities as Filipinas in South Korea.

Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea

Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea
Author: Minjeong Kim
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-06-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1978803125

Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea provides an in-depth look at the lives of families in Korea that include immigrants. Ten original chapters in this volume, written by scholars in multiple social science disciplines and covering different methodological approaches, aim to reinvigorate contemporary discussions about these multicultural families. Specially, the volume expands the scope of “multicultural families” by examining the diverse configurations of families with immigrants who crossed the Korean border during and after the 1990s, such as the families of undocumented migrant workers, divorced marriage immigrants, and the families of Korean women with Muslim immigrant husbands. Second, instead of looking at immigrants as newcomers, the volume takes a discursive turn, viewing them as settlers or first-generation immigrants in Korea whose post-migration lives have evolved and whose membership in Korean society has matured, by examining immigrants’ identities, need for political representation, their fights through the court system, and the aspirations of second-generation immigrants.

Multiethnic Japan

Multiethnic Japan
Author: John Lie
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2009-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674040175

Multiethnic Japan challenges the received view of Japanese society as ethnically homogeneous. Employing a wide array of arguments and evidence--historical and comparative, interviews and observations, high literature and popular culture--John Lie recasts modern Japan as a thoroughly multiethnic society. Lie casts light on a wide range of minority groups in modern Japanese society, including the Ainu, Burakumin (descendants of premodern outcasts), Chinese, Koreans, and Okinawans. In so doing, he depicts the trajectory of modern Japanese identity. Surprisingly, Lie argues that the belief in a monoethnic Japan is a post-World War II phenomenon, and he explores the formation of the monoethnic ideology. He also makes a general argument about the nature of national identity, delving into the mechanisms of social classification, signification, and identification.

Korean Immigrants from Latin America

Korean Immigrants from Latin America
Author: Jin Suk Bae
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2021-11-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793652619

Korean Immigrants from Latin America explores the migration and resettlement experiences of Koreans from Latin America now residing in the New York metropolitan area. It uses interview data from 102 Korean secondary migrants from Latin America to explore the religious, familial, economic, and educational dimensions of their migration and resettlement processes in the U.S. As Korean and Latino immigrants share increasingly close interactions with each other in various urban settings, these Korean remigrants can serve as links between Korean and Spanish speakers as well as liaisons among diverse groups. This book shows a surprising degree of diversity within the seemingly homogenous Korean population in the U.S. and demonstrates the unacknowledged linguistic and cultural differences among them.

Ethnic Nationalism in Korea

Ethnic Nationalism in Korea
Author: Gi-Wook Shin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780804754088

This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization.

Legacies of Struggle

Legacies of Struggle
Author: Angie Y. Chung
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780804756587

Since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Koreatown has become increasingly fractured by intergenerational conflict, class polarization, and suburban flight. In the face of these struggles, community organizations can provide centralized resources and infrastructure to foster an ethnic consciousness and political solidarity among Korean Americans. This book analyzes the role of ethnic community-based organizations and the dynamics of contemporary Korean American politics. Drawing on two case studies, the author identifies diverse ways in which community-based organizations negotiate their political agendas and mainstream ties within the traditional ethnic power structures. One organization promotes middle-class ethnic goals through accommodation to immigrant leaders, while the other emphasizes social justice through alliances with outside interest groups. Both cases challenge the traditional assumption that assimilation undermines ethnicity as a meaningful framework for political identity and solidarity in immigrant groups. Legacies of Struggle reveals how community-based organizations create innovative spaces for political participation among new generations of Korean Americans.

The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea

The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea
Author: Timothy C. Lim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2020-12-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100028994X

This book aims to capture the complicated development of Korea from monoethnic to multicultural society, challenging the narrative of “ethnonational continuity” in Korea through a discursive institutional approach. At a time when immigration is changing the face of South Korea and an increasingly diverse society becomes empirical fact, this doesn’t necessarily mean that multiculturalism has been embraced as a normative, policy-based response to that fact. The approach here diverges from existing academic analyses, which tend to conclude that core institutions defining Korea’s immigration and nationality regimes—nd which, crucially, also reflect a basic and hitherto unyielding commitment to racial and ethnic homogeneity—ill remain largely unaffected by increasing diversity. Here, this title underscores the critical importance of “discursive agency” as a necessary corrective to still dominant power and interestbased arguments. In addition, “discursive agents” are found to play a central role in communicating, promoting, and helping to instill the ideas that create a basis for change on the road to remaking Korean society. The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, immigration and migration studies, race and ethnic studies, as well as comparative politics broadly.

The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea

The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea
Author: Timothy C. Lim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-12-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000289966

This book aims to capture the complicated development of Korea from monoethnic to multicultural society, challenging the narrative of “ethnonational continuity” in Korea through a discursive institutional approach. At a time when immigration is changing the face of South Korea and an increasingly diverse society becomes empirical fact, this doesn’t necessarily mean that multiculturalism has been embraced as a normative, policy-based response to that fact. The approach here diverges from existing academic analyses, which tend to conclude that core institutions defining Korea’s immigration and nationality regimes—nd which, crucially, also reflect a basic and hitherto unyielding commitment to racial and ethnic homogeneity—ill remain largely unaffected by increasing diversity. Here, this title underscores the critical importance of “discursive agency” as a necessary corrective to still dominant power and interestbased arguments. In addition, “discursive agents” are found to play a central role in communicating, promoting, and helping to instill the ideas that create a basis for change on the road to remaking Korean society. The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, immigration and migration studies, race and ethnic studies, as well as comparative politics broadly.

Caught in the Middle

Caught in the Middle
Author: Pyong Gap Min
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1996-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780520917699

In this unflinching exploration of one of the most politically charged topics of our time, Pyong Gap Min investigates the racial dynamics that exist between Korean merchants, the African American community, and white society in general. Focusing on hostility toward Korean merchants in New York and Los Angeles, Min explains how the "middleman" economic role Koreans often occupy—between low-income, minority customers on the one hand and large corporate suppliers on the other—leads to conflicts with other groups. Further, Min shows how ethnic conflicts strengthen ties within Korean communities as Koreans organize to protect themselves and their businesses. Min scrutinizes the targeting of Korean businesses during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1990 African American boycotts of Korean stores in Brooklyn. He explores Korean merchants' relationships with each other as well as with Latin American employees, Jewish suppliers and landlords, and government agencies. In each case, his nuanced analysis reveals how Korean communities respond to general scapegoating through collective action, political mobilization, and other strategies. Fluent in Korean, Min draws from previously unutilized sources, including Korean American newspapers and in-depth interviews with immigrants. His findings belie the media's sensationalistic coverage of African American-Korean conflicts. Instead, Caught in the Middle yields a sophisticated and clear-sighted understanding of the lives and challenges of immigrant merchants in America.