Thoughts on Session 9: Korean Diaspora

Suzy Kim

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Jul 16, 2013, 5:33:35 AM7/16/13

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Dear fellow New York DEEPers,

Sorry this is a bit late; my Seoul schedule is just a little too crazy...
I still have to get to the pieces by Tobias and JeeYeun, but here are some thoughts on the first 3 articles before it's too late.

The Ji-Yeon Yuh piece and In-Jin Yoon piece complemented each other well, I thought, although the latter is somewhat outdated (2002) and a lot has transpired in the last 10 years in the status of overseas Koreans in South Korean politics. Not only is dual citizenship allowed with some limitations now, but more importantly, overseas Koreans are now able to vote in South Korean elections and they conducted the first series of overseas elections for the National Assembly and the Presidency last year through the Election Committee. I'm not sure how big of an impact they had, but "as of July 2001, 5.7 million Koreans" (Yoon, 2002) are estimated to live abroad, which could potentially make them an influential voting bloc.

The convergence between the Yoon and Yuh piece is in the concept of "refugee migration". As Yoon describes, North Korea views the status of overseas Koreans as the result of "survival migration" and/or "forced migration," which seems to have something in common with Yuh's concept of "refugee migration" in that migration of Koreans to territories beyond the Korean peninsula is seen as somewhat coerced by conditions beyond their control. While it would be difficult to deny that there are such elements within Korean migration, my impression is that the concept has become overly generalized to the point that any migration, then, could be seen as refugee migration or survival migration, and simplifies what may have been a much more complex set of motivations for migration that includes a much more diverse segment of the Korean population from those that were indeed fleeing war, poverty, dictatorship, etc to those that truly were looking for better opportunities, particularly in the second wave of immigration in the 1970s. In other words, the concept of "refugee migration" and "survival migration" paints overseas Koreans are victims in need of help and perhaps even rescue. And while this sense has enabled the North Korean policy to be more sympathetic toward overseas Koreans with a specific government branch tasked to work with and reach out to overseas Koreans as part of the nation and a partner in the reunification movement, this kind of perspective also inhibits a more open concept of the Korean diaspora as the one that Yuh describes "that privilege neither the homeland as the center nor assimilation as the goal." (Yuh, 288)

Along those lines, I would like to raise a couple of questions that perhaps we can address during our trip:
* If "Korea, whether North or South, is getting decentered in the diaspora (Yuh, 288), what does this mean for us as Korean Americans that are interested and involved with issues related to Korea? For example, might not the latter trend explain the potential shift from the traditional reunification movement toward a more transnational peace movement as a way to deal with the range of issues in Korea?
* If the "Nationality Act on October 9, 1963...granted unilaterally overseas Koreans privileges and duties as nationals of North Korea" (Yoon, 2002) then do we actually have certain privileges and duties during our trip and what are they?
* Sonia Ryang's article about the Chongryun female students and the way that they become targets of attack due to their uniforms modeled on traditional Korean dress shows how nationalist politics can often clash with gender politics. We'll be seeing examples of this throughout our trip, especially how North Korean women continue to wear the traditional Korean dress while the men do not. While these women aren't attacked like the students in Japan, how can we interpret this double standard within the North Korean context? Is this a form of gender discrimination?