South Korea

Published in Yonsei Journal of International Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Summer 2015): 140-141.

REVIEW: Blaine Harden, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Tyrant Who Created North Korea and the Young Lieutenant Who Stole His Way to Freedom (New York: Viking, 2015); 304 pages; $27.95.

In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, Blaine Harden, the famed author of Escape from Camp 14, recounts the first years of the North Korean state through the experiences of Kim Il Sung and No Kum Sok.  The stories of the former, the founder of the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (DPRK) and the latter, a North Korean fighter pilot-turned-defector, remind us of the diverse individuals who sought to navigate the DPRK’s first tumultuous years.  As Kim triumphed in power struggles at the top and sought to remake North Korea in his own image, No, whose father had worked for the Japanese before August 1945, survived at the bottom by praising communism until he could escape to South Korea...

An entrepreneur is a person who organizes, builds, owns, and runs a business; however, what else is involved in starting a new business venture? The United States cultivates a society of individualist outlooks, people that place their needs and the needs of their immediate family before others, which is a sharp contradiction to South Korea’s traditionally collectivist society, where individuals put the needs of the community, family, and their country before their personal needs.  With such differing outlooks, which culture is better at supporting entrepreneurs? This paper will explore possible differences between the cultures of the United States and South Korea in relation to social support for female entrepreneurs.

Ce mémoire a pour but d’évaluer le rôle de la société civile dans le processus de consolidation démocratique sud-coréen à travers l’exemple de la mobilisation sociale ayant suivi le naufrage du ferry Sewol en avril 2014. La préoccupation principale est de déterminer si la société civile est toujours mobilisée vingt-cinq ans après la transition à un régime démocratique. La mobilisation du Sewol montre que la société civile sud-coréenne s’est remobilisée et participe de la politisation d’enjeux afin de mettre à l’agenda des réformes démocratiques destinées à être entreprises par l’Etat. Néanmoins le gouvernement et plus généralement la société politique sud-coréenne est immobilisée, léthargique et ne prend pas la mesure des aspirations de la société civile. Ainsi le dialogue entre société civile et société politique, crucial dans ce contexte de consolidation démocratique, est miné. En raison du manque de confiance entre les deux parties, les membres de la société civile et plus généralement les citoyens ont tendance à contourner le jeu des partis politiques, ce qui pourrait être dangereux pour le futur de la consolidation démocratique sud-coréenne.

Mots-clés : Corée du Sud – Sewol – société civile – société politique – transition démocratique – consolidation démocratique – politisation – mouvements sociaux

This thesis is intended to assess the role of civil society in South Korean democratic consolidation process through the example of the social mobilization following the April 2014 Sewol ferry tragedy. The main concern is to determine whether civil society is still mobilized or not twenty five years after the transition to a democratic regime. The Sewol mobilization shows that South Korean civil society re-mobilized and is currently politicizing issues in order to push for democratic reforms to be implemented by the state. However the government and generally speaking South Korean political society is immobilized, lethargic and does not understand civil society’s aspirations. Therefore the dialogue between civil society and political society, crucial in this democratic consolidation context, is undermined. As a consequence of the lack of trust between both parties, civil society members and citizens more generally tend to bypass the political parties arena, which could be dangerous for the future of South Korean democratic consolidation.

Key-words: South Korea – Sewol – civil society – political society – democratic transition – democratic consolidation – politicization – social movements

Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans—who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed—are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet.

Contemporary Korean Shamanism explores this vernacular religion and practice, which includes sensory rituals using laden altars, ecstatic dance, and animal sacrifice, within South Korea's hypertechnologized society, where over 200,000 shamans are listed in professional organizations. Liora Sarfati reveals how representations of shamanism in national, commercialized, and screen-mediated settings have transformed opinions of these religious practitioners and their rituals.

Applying ethnography and folklore research, Contemporary Korean Shamanism maps this shift in perception about shamanism—from a sign of a backward, undeveloped Korea to a valuable, indigenous cultural asset.
https://iupress.org/9780253057174/contemporary-korean-shamanism/

On September 18, 1996, Lee Jin Gyu, a South Korean taxi cab driver, was taking a passenger on the Gangneung-Tonghae coastal highway.  A little before one in the morning, the driver noticed a group of men clustered on the side of the highway

Original article at NKNews: http://www.nknews.org/2012/09/this-day-in-the-history-of-the-dprk-2/

A sequel to the groundbreaking volume Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, the present volume examines in depth interactions between Western racial constructions of East Asians and local constructions of race and their outcomes in modern times. Focusing on China, Japan and the two Koreas, it also analyzes the close ties between race, racism and nationalism, as well as the links race has had with gender and lineage in the region. Written by some of the field's leading authorities, this insightful and engaging 23-chapter volume offers a sweeping overview and analysis of racial constructions and racism in modern and contemporary East Asia that is unsurpassed in previous scholarship.


TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Tables
Conventions
Preface

1. Introduction: The Synthesis of Foreign and Indigenous Constructions of Race in Modern East Asia and Its Actual Operation, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
I. Antecedents: A Detailed Examination of Early Western Racial Constructions of East Asians
II. Interactions: The Fusion of European and Asian Constructions of Race
III. Nationalism: Interactions between Race and Ethnic Nationalism in East Asia
IV. Gender and Lineage: The Impact of Domestic and Foreign Racial Constructions

PART I: ANTECEDENTS
2. East Asians in the Linnaean Taxonomy: Sources and Implications of a Racial Image, Rotem Kowner and Christina Skott
The Linnaean Revolution and View of Humankind
Sources of Linnaeus’ Racial Perspective on East Asians
The Essence of Asia: Swedish Views of China
Swedish Reports and Linnaeus’ Revision of His Human Taxonomy
Linnaeus’ Legacy and the Unfolding Racial View of East Asians
3. Constructing Racial Theories on East Asians as a Transnational “Western” Enterprise, 1750-1850, Walter Demel
The Founding Fathers of Racial Theories: Linnaeus, Buffon, Kant and Camper
The Second Generation: Multiple Directions
4. The ‘Races’ of East Asia in Nineteenth-Century European Encyclopaedias, Georg Lehner
Classifying the Peoples of Asia
The Encyclopedias' Main Sources for Remarks on the “Races” of East Asia
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans: Descriptions of East Asian peoples
Stereotypes of East Asians in General Knowledge
Visual Representations of Race in Works of General Knowledge
Concluding Remarks
5. The Racial Image of the Japanese in the Western Press Published in Japan, 1861-1881, Olavi K. Fält
Background
The Oldest People on Earth
The Shining Japanese Race
Weak and Inferior Race
Praising the Endeavors of a Poor Race
Conclusion

PART II: INTERACTIONS
6. The Propagation of Racial Thought in Nineteenth-Century China, Daniel Barth
The Background: Imperial China and the “Other”
Stage I (1846-1851): Marques and Wei Yuan
Stage II (1851-1855): Hobson and Muirhead
Stage III (1855-1872): The Self-Strengthening Movement
Stage IV (1872-1892): John Fryer and the Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine
Conclusion: Chinese Intellectuals, Social Darwinism and Race
7. Learning from the South: Japan's Racial Construction of Southern Chinese, 1895-1941, Huei-Ying Kuo
The South Seas as Japan’s Backyard, 1895-1914
Japan's Expansion into the Southern Chinese Networks, 1914-1928
Chinese Anti-Japanese Nationalism and Japanese Discourses on South Seas Chinese, 1928-1936
Southern Chinese as Non-Han Races, 1936-1941
Conclusions
8. “The Great Question of the World Today”: Britain, the Dominions, East Asian Immigration and the Threat of Race War, 1905-11, Antony Best
Immigration and “the Awakening of Asia”
The Prophets of Race War
Critics of White Solidarity
Finessing the Racial Divide
Conclusions
9. “Uplifting the Weak and Degenerated Races of East Asia”: American and Indigenous Views of Sport and Body in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia, Stefan Hübner
Sportive Citizenship Training in the Philippines
Chinese Cooperation and Acceptance of American-Style Modernization
Japanese Resistance and its Defeat by American Style Modernization
Conclusion
10. Racism under Negotiation: The Japanese Race in the Nazi-German Perspective, Gerhard Krebs
Early Nazi Views on the Japanese Racial Position
Becoming More Aryan
The Problem with the Japanese in the Nazi Worldview
Continuing Mutual Mistrust
The End
11. Discourses of Race and Racism in Modern Korea, 1890s-1945 , Vladimir Tikhonov
Race and Its Uncertainties
The Emergence of Race Theories in Modern Korea: One of the Logics of the “Civilized World”
“Race” and “Ethnic Nation” in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
Conclusion: Race as a Path to Modernist Self-assertion?
12. The United States Arrives: Racialization and Racism in Post-1945 South Korea, Nadia Y. Kim
Contextual Background: America Marches In and Mass Mediates
The American Military, Whiteness, and Imperialist Racial Formation
American Mass Media, White Heroes, and Counter-Hegemony
Blackness and Imperialist Racial Formation
Racism and Invisibility in Korean “America”
Concluding Remarks
13. A Post-Communist Coexistence in Northeast Asia? Mutual Racial Attitudes among Russians and Indigenous Peoples of Siberia, David Lewis
Discrimination against Siberian Peoples as an Outcome of Racial Prejudice
The Origin and Legacy of Russian Attitudes to Asians
Racial Attitudes among Indigenous Siberian Peoples
The Communist Model of Racial Modus Vivendi
The Impact of Prolonged Racism on Indigenous Siberian Peoples
Marriage as an Anti-Racist Means in a Multi-Racial Society

PART III: NATIONALISM
14. Nationalism and Internationalism: Sino-American Racial Perceptions of the Korean War, Lü Xun
Descendants of the Mongolian Hordes: American Perceptions of the Chinese
The Ambitious Wolf: Chinese Perceptions of Americans
The Mirrored Self: A Nation-State in the Making
15. Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Racialized Chinese Nationalism, Yinghong Cheng
Gangtai Patriotic Songs: A “Colored” Political Genre of Pop Music
A Tacit Collaboration between the Party-State and Capitalist Cultural Producers in Hong Kong and Taiwan
The Interaction between Gangtai Patriotic Songs and Chinese Popular Nationalism
Analyses
Concluding Remarks
16. Japanese as Both a “Race” and a “Non-Race”: The Politics of Jinshu and Minzoku and the Depoliticization of Japaneseness, Yuko Kawai
The Historical Trajectories of Jinshu and Minzoku
Being a “Race” and a “Non-Race” in Present-day Japan: An Empirical Study
Conclusions and Implications
17. Ethnic Nationalism in Postwar Japan: Nihonjinron and Its Racial Facets, Rotem Kowner and Harumi Befu
Premises of Nihonjinron
Nihonjinron as a Manifestation of Japanese Nationalism
Nihonjinron and Its Concern with Origin, Blood and Racial Hierarchy
The Impact of Race-Related Tenets on Everyday Life
Functions of Ethnic Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
Concluding Remarks
18. Ethnic Nationalism and Internationalism in the North Korean Worldview, Tatiana Gabroussenko
The Soviet Discourse of the Outside World: Conditional Internationalism
The North Korean Worldview in the “Soviet Era”: Echoing the Soviet Paradigm
Mono-Ethnicity as a Special Korean Virtue: The Evolution of the North Korean World Vision under the Influence of Juche
North Korean Propaganda about Foreigners from Inclusive and Alienating Perspectives
Conclusion

PART IV: GENDER AND LINEAGE
19. In the Name of the Master: Race, Nationalism and Masculinity in Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, Kai-man Chang
From Anti-imperialist Nationalism to Cultural Nationalism
Masculinities That Matter
Conclusion
20. Sexualized Racism, Gender and Nationalism: The Case of Japan’s Sexual Enslavement of Korean “Comfort Women”, Bang-soon Yoon
Korean “Comfort Women”: Drawn in as Substitutes
The Nature of Victimization
Colonial Policies and the Mobilization of Korean Women
Treatment of Korean “Comfort Women”
Lives under Sexual Slavery
Nationalism, Gender and Sexual Violence
Conclusion
21. “The Guilt Feeling That You Exist”: War, Racism and Indisch-Japanese Identity Formation, Aya Ezawa
Power, Discourse, and “Mixed Blood”
The Indisch and the Dutch East Indies
The Indisch Community under Japanese Occupation
Indisch-Japanese Relationships
Indisch-Japanese Descendants
Conclusion
22. ‘The “Amerasian” Knot: Transpacific Crossings of “GI Babies” from Korea to the United States, W. Taejin Hwang
“An Act of Both Humanity and Patriotism”: The Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982
“Confucius’ Outcasts”: The Korean Amerasian “Plight”
Inter-country Adoption of Korean “GI Babies”
Living as a “Mixed-Blood Child” (Honhyeola) in Cold War Korea
“Half-American Also is American”: Towards Migration
Conclusion and Postscript

PART V: CONCLUSIONS
23. The Essence and Mechanisms of Race and Racism in Modern East Asia, Rotem Kowner and Walter Demel
The East Asian Contribution to the Study of Race and Racism
East Asia’s Role within the Rise of Racial Theory and the Resulting Hybridity
Sources and Manifestations of Racism
The Close Links between Racism and Nationalism
The Role of Gender and Lineage in Constructions of Race and Racism
East Asia and the Future of Race and Racism
Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Airbnb’s remarkable growth is applauded, but there is certainly room for expansion in the Korean market. In this study, the authors conducted a background analysis of Airbnb, studying the strengths and weaknesses of the firm and devising strategies for further success in Korea.
In regards to price, the authors decided the price strategy currently held is applicable in Korea as well. There is no need for change in that aspect. The authors did observe the need for a premium service centered on business travelers, those who travel most frequently. The premium service would have an annual fee, but it would provide benefits to customers in the form of additional services and exclusive deals.
Brand awareness is relatively low in South Korea. To inform the Korean audience, who are potential guests and hosts, there is the need to adopt widely used Korea online platforms, including Kakaotalk and Naver. Not only does this widen Airbnb’s footing in the market, but it also establishes new ground for which promotions can take place.
Airbnb stands at an advantage due to the ubiquity of Internet and mobile phone users in a highly technologized country. Numerous network platforms are ready to accept Airbnb’s entrance into its user base, and upon entrance, Airbnb will already be ahead of competitors in claiming South Korea’s market for room accommodations.

The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific: Conflict and Cooperation in the Asian Century, 3rd Edition
©2017 Routledge: London & New York. 341pp. + x. Link: https://www.routledge.com/The-New-Global-Politics-of-the-Asia-Pacific-Conflict-and-Cooperation-in/Connors-Davison-Dosch/p/book/9781138647022

Now in its new and fully updated third edition, The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific continues to provide a compelling analysis of a region undergoing dramatic changes. Based on new research and offering fresh interpretation, this edition evaluates the prospects for continuing US dominance in the ‘Asian Century’. Whilst presenting evidence for a multifaceted ‘Beijing Strategy’, which aims to counter the US by building an alternative regional order, it also explains Japan’s definitive departure from its limited military role. Key content includes:
- Intra-regional conflicts in the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula,
- The different responses within the Asia Pacific to globalisation and western ideas of democracy and political economy,
- The underappreciated success of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in building a regional identity
- The European Union’s soft power in the region.
A highly topical account, which offers an overview of the main actors, institutions and contemporary issues in the Asia Pacific, the book will be essential reading for students of Asian Studies, International Politics, and anyone interested in the region.

Michael K. Connors teaches at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University. He is the co-editor of Thai Politics in Translation: Monarchy, Democracy, Constitution (forthcoming).
Remy Davison holds the Jean Monnet Chair in Politics and Economics at Monash University. He is the author of The Political Economy of Single Market Europe (2011).
Jörn Dosch is Professor of International Politics and Development Cooperation at the University of Rostock, Germany, and Adjunct Professor at Monash University Malaysia. His recent publications include Malaysia Post-Mahathir: A Decade of Change (2015).

Asia Pacific Perspectives, Volume XIII Number 1, Spring/Summer 2015

https://web.usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Institutes_and_Centers/center-asia-pacific/perspectives/v13n1/APP%20XIII1%2002%20French%2008-17-15.pdf

This paper, based on archival research undertaken in the General Headquarters (GHQ)/ Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) archives and employing geospatial data, examines the origins of a number North East Asia's territorial disputes through looking at the seizures of Japanese fishing boats during the initial postwar years. Through the hitherto unexploited medium of geospatial analysis, the paper looks at the mass seizures of Japanese fishing vessels by the maritime arms of the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea (and US Military Government of Korea), the USSR, the Republic of China, and the UN naval forces in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The paper examines and maps the incidence of the capture of these vessels as well as contextualizes the captures within the importance of the fishing industry to Japan, and Japan's neighbors' differing positions on their maritime boundaries with Japan. The policies of GHQ/SCAP and the Japanese government towards the seizures are also examined, as is the role the fishermen themselves played. The paper concludes by employing a geospatial dataset to test assumptions about the nature of the seizures of fishing vessels during the period and their significance in relation to today's territorial disputes in the region.

What are the characteristics of President Moon Jae-in’s policy toward North Korea, and what lessons can be drawn for the future? More than 70 years have passed since the establishment of the two republics in 1948, during which continuous attempts have been made to achieve reconciliation, peace, and prosperity on the Korean peninsula. Even though the Korean War (1950–53) as well as the last authoritarian government in South Korea (until 1987) belong to the ever more distant past, neither, obviously, have the conflicts between the two Koreas ceased, nor has South Korea found a reasonable and effective way of addressing the conundrum. Against this backdrop of more than half a century of contentious inter-Korean relations, the paper examines the foreign policy (efforts) by the Moon administration (2017–2022) toward North Korea in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for the future regarding the region of East Asia as well as inter-regional policy implications.

The presidential election that took place in South Korea on May 9, 2017, produced a clear winner. The Democratic Party candidate, Moon Jae-in, received 41.1 percent of the vote, thus becoming the country’s 19th president. In this issue of the Asia Policy Brief, Hannes B. Mosler, assistant professor at the Institute of Korean Studies and the Graduate School of Asian Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, analyzes the election and the reform agenda of the new president.

He argues that Moon Jae-in has the potential to master the many challenges of South Korea. The success of his presidency, however, will depend on whether Moon can unite a divided society. He also needs the support of civil society and the opposition to implement his ambitious reform agenda. One of Moon’s biggest political challenges is that, for the time being, he has to rely on a minority government running the risk that the opposition will block key reforms in order to protect its own or others’ interests.

Tourism is generally considered to be a recreational vacation. Organized tourism nowadays is an important industry in the whole world because it creates jobs and increases income, thereby leading to economic development of the country. In this paper, while presenting factors that attract foreign tourists to South Korea, it’s attempted to analyze major factors that cause the differentiation of South Korea from other countries. Among factors affecting the attraction of foreign tourists to South Korea, we can mention the following: nature, culture, historical monuments, recreational places, advanced technology, and visual media and mass communication as the most important factor, the last mentioned factor can be regarded as the distinctive characteristic of South Korea compared to other countries. Koreans have been able to take advantage of the visual media and mass communication, art and artists, and applying innovation and creativity to attract more tourists and therefore contribute to the development of their country's economy. For example, by producing diverse TV dramas, culture, civilization, natural beauties, recreational and historical places of their country, Koreans show themselves to the world with a managed style and motivate tourists to travel to their country.

Inspired by a notion that machines can emulate human touch, the paper first examines the adoption of surgical robots in operating rooms at the global and local levels. The adoption of the technology has occurred almost concurrently in many countries without much time lag, and this near-simultaneous acceptance of the technology invites us to rethink technological supremacy in relation to patient care in the field of surgery. With focus on the da Vinci surgical system, this paper presents social and ethical implications of how (not) to regulate robotic surgery with potential and invisible risks with respect to patient care. Based on documentary analysis of news media in combination with literature review of medical journals, Korean news media, and Korean technology assessment reports on surgical robots, the paper explores how prevalently the idea of social progress is embedded in the promotion of advanced technology at the societal and governmental levels. I contend that the ideology ...

School Food Politics: The Complex Ecology of Hunger and Feeding in Schools Around the World (P. Lang, 2011) compares struggles over what at first glance appears to be benign programming to feed children. The essays in School Food Politics explore the intersections of food and politics on all six of the inhabited continents of the world. Including electoral fights over universally free school meals in Korea, nutritional reforms to school dinners in England and canteens in Australia, teachers’ and doctors’ work on school feeding in Argentina, and more, the volume provides key illustrations of the many contexts that have witnessed intense struggles defining which children will eat; why; what and how they are served; and who will pay for and prepare the food. Contributors include reformers writing from their own perspectives, from the farm-to-school program in Burlington, Vermont, to efforts to apply principles of critical pedagogy in cooking programs for urban teens, to animal rights curriculum. Later chapters shift their focus to possibilities and hope for a different future for school food, one that is friendlier to students, 'lunch ladies,' society, other creatures, and the planet.

School Food Politics won the 2012 Critics’ Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association for making an outstanding contribution to scholarship in the Social Foundations of Education. See reviews in Teachers College Record and Food, Culture, & Society in the Papers section.

This is a presentation that I will deliver at the 2015 Fall conference at the Urban Design Institute of Korea. In it I will present a case study of the signboard renovation project in Gunpo city through a particular analysis on the TV documentary broadcast at Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), which captures the step-by-step process of the renovation in collaboration with various stakeholders.

Location: Daegu Catholic University, Daegu

More Info: The 2015 Fall Conference organized by the Urban Design Institute of Korea

Organization: Urban Design Institute of Korea

Conference Date: November 7, 2015

This contribution situates the recent increase in cross-border marriages in Korea in the context of feminist debates on social reproduction. Drawing on surveys, policy documents, media responses, and interviews, the study explores how the phenomenon of cross-border marriage in Korea coincides with changing demographic trends and policies in the domains of the family, population, and welfare. Beginning as a solution to the “rural bachelor's marriage problem” – visible in the late 1980s – marriage between Korean men and women of foreign origin became increasingly common in the 2000s, in parallel with the emergence of national policy issues such as low fertility and a care deficit. The study suggests that current trends in cross-border marriage and policies on multicultural families reflect the need for changes in the organization of social reproduction that has resulted from the economic development that began in the 1960s and the political-economic restructuring since the 1990s.

In the Asia Pacific region, where the reception, appropriation, and criticism of Western thought is expressed in contrast to one's thought, the problem of identifying intellectual agents in the field of international studies and their ideas, understood as theoretical and conceptual contributions to understanding what is being thought in this specific geoeidetic space is established.

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the Refugee Act of Korea, enacted in 2012. The act, which went into effect in July 2013, is the first standalone refugee law in East Asia. This paper assesses the role of Korean civil society in creating the new law. According to the findings of this case study, civil activists played a major part in the creation of Refugee Act, but had less influence on its actual contents. Civil society groups first brought attention to the need for increased refugee  protections through separate regulations, and then formed a coalition of groups to write a draft bill. However, the law that passed in 2011 is significantly different from that draft bill. Much to the disappointment and frustration of refugee activists, it was altered to suit Ministry of Justice interests. Overall, civil society groups served as little more than catalysts, and their influence on the final, legislated version of the Refugee Act was limited.

In 2015, the Japanese imperial army’s system of military sexual servitude/military prostitution once again became central to relations between South Korea and Japan. After the signing of a 2015 agreement meant to resolve disputes between the two countries, the Statue of Peace, an effigy of a young Korean woman, was reproduced in both physical form and through digital media, expanding its visual presence in both the material and virtual worlds. This study examines events between 2015 and 2018 through the lens of visual politics and argues that, to fully understand the political impact of the Statue of Peace, we need to assess it not only as a physical effigy, but also as a form of digital reproduction. In doing so, it highlights that the mechanical reproduction of the Statue of Peace freed it from the limitations of being a physical representation, and allowed it to interact in more diverse contexts as a tool of resistance against the Japanese government’s proposal and the Korean government’s complicity with the 2015 agreement. This study adds to the analytical toolbox of visualising Korea with the aim of providing greater insight on an important issue facing South Korea and its relationship with Japan.

The aim of this research is to analyse the recent waves of return migration by Chinese-Koreans and ethnic Koreans from the former Soviet Union to South Korea against the backdrop of other contemporary reverse migrations from the erstwhile world of ‘really existing socialism’, namely the movement of Soviet Germans and Jews to Germany and Israel respectively. Identifying the special traits of the return migrations from the West and North to South Korea, this research will focus on the problematic sides of Chinese-Koreans’ and former Soviet Koreans’ encounter with South Korean realities, in hope of providing
materials and discussion needed to improve the situation with return migrants’ integration into South Korean society. The methodology of this research is historical and comparativist. It concludes that, unlike the former Soviet Germans in Germany or Jews in Israel, conceptualized as ‘returnees’, Chinese-Koreans and former Soviet Koreans in South Korea are defined as essentially ‘exploitable cheap labour’. They are seen as (transitory) ‘residents’ rather than (permanent) members of the host society. Lack of permanent legal status and thorough discrimination by the native South Korean majority are conducive to the emergence of reactive ethnicity among the return migrants who coalesce
around the connections to the country of departure and the sense of perceived victimization. The research suggests that, to improve the social integration of the return migrants, a basic reconsideration of the discriminatory legal and discursive frameworks around them is needed.