Mixed Race Studies

Ghosts of Camptown

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic LIterature of the United States
Volume 39, Issue 3 (Fall 2014)
pages 49-67
DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlu025

Grace Kyungwon Hong, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

This essay engages the deployment of form in Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996), focusing in particular on its strategy of embedding fantastical stories within its narrative structure and on the ways in which the mystical or magical tone of these stories pervades the narrative, establishing a frame seemingly incongruous with the memoir’s setting within a military camptown in South Korea. If a classically realist tone and linear narrative arc are the formal expressions of nationalist culture, the autobiographical novel’s departure from these formal strategies, I argue, is necessary to convey the complex juridical status of the camptown. Through a curious excess of state sovereignty, because they are simultaneously under both US and South Korean sovereignty, the camptown and its residents are subject to abandonment by both nation-states, producing a heightened vulnerability to death. Accordingly, such complex relationships to sovereignty demand a narrative form organized around a complex and divided subject unlike the possessive individual at the center of traditional autobiographies, a divided subject formed around an ethics in which no one is blameless and everyone is complicit.

Read or purchase the article here.

Skin color remains big barrier

The Korea Times
2014-01-27

Park Si-soo

Min Kyung-joon (alias) is a “good boy” in many aspects.

The freshman at a middle school in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, has been acknowledged by his teachers for his outstanding academic achievement and affable personality. Min is also very actively engaged in sports, which explains why he is one of the top players of an intramural soccer club.

Notwithstanding his good standing, he still has a hard time associating with his classmates, mainly because of his “exotic” appearance. The 15-year-old’s father is Pakistani and his mother a Korean native.

“That’s a huge disadvantage in making new friends among young children,” said Kim Young-im, a counselor who has interviewed numerous biracial children, including Min, in Ansan, home to one of the country’s largest population of low income immigrants.

“Children tend to get along with those who share similarity in looks and other visible characteristics. But he is different (from others) in many ways.”

For that reason, Kim added, it’s a common trend in the industrial town to see “exotic-looking” teenagers hanging out together, isolating themselves from their peers of Korean parentage.

“This is a problem that is very difficult to address,” the counselor said. “The government and school authorities have tried hard to solve this with various kinds of measures. But I think many of these programs turned out to be in vain.”

The number of biracial students like Min in Korea is estimated at 55,780 as of last year, representing 0.86 percent of the 6.53 million students enrolled in primary and secondary schools nationwide. The figure is expected to steadily increase to reach five percent by 2020, according to the education ministry…

Read the entire article here.

Gov’t to overhaul services for multicultural families

Yonhap News Agency
Seoul, South Korea
2014-01-15

Shim Sun-ah

SEOUL, Jan. 15 (Yonhap) — The government plans to streamline its support system for multicultural families to help them integrate into society, officials said Wednesday.

The move comes as some existing services, including Korean-language education, have been redundant or failed to reach those in need who are in distant rural areas.

Under the plan, immigrants can learn the Korean language at local government-designated locations in their respective neighborhoods and earn incentives that would later be helpful when they apply for citizenship, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

Currently, only those who successfully finish a Korean-language course offered by the justice ministry are eligible for incentives such as exemption from a written test or an interview when they apply for naturalization.

The nation’s two call immigration centers — one for marriage immigrants and the other for foreign residents in general — will be integrated, so they can more effectively serve the foreign population, the ministry said…

…The envisioned new organization will offer various support for children raised by single parents, grandparents or North Korean defectors, as well as in multiracial families, the government said…

Read the entire article here.

Transforming Korea into a multicultural society: reception of multiculturalism discourse and its discursive disposition in Korea

Asian Ethnicity
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2012
pages 97-109
DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2012.625703

Ji-Hyun Ahn
University of Texas, Austin

Since 2005, multicultural-based words such as multicultural society, multicultural family, and multicultural education have grown explosively in Korean society. Due to this social trend, adoption of the term multiculturalism has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. Thus, this study aims to examine how multiculturalism discourse in Korea has been received and draws its discursive disposition. It argues how the media, especially the press, incorporate other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’, and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. To analyse, a total of 275 journal articles were selected and scrutinised. This study contextualises Korean multiculturalism and suggests a meta-picture of the discursive economy of multiculturalism in Korea.

Introduction

Since 2005, ‘multicultural’-based terms such as ‘multicultural society’, ‘multicultural family’ and ‘multicultural education’ have grown explosively in Korean society. The advertising copy of ‘Dynamic Korea’ and many other multi-racial models in TV commercials seem to indicate that Korea is becoming a multicultural society. Furthermore, many journals deal with multiculturalism issues through features and series.

A key symbolic event illustrating this trend was when Hines Ward, an American football hero with a Korean mother, visited Korea in 2006. The passionate response to this ‘Korean’ hero from the U.S. ignited a discussion on issues of race and multicultural society in Korea. Following these events, adoption of the term ‘multiculturalism’ has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. In this sense, discussions of multiculturalism in Korea are either too superficial or absent altogether. What I want to point out in this context is that racial projects are now proceeding in Korea using multiculturalism discourse, and this serves as a launching point that propels this study.

One significant feature of globalization is an increase of mobility. The flow of people’s mobility is getting more and more diverse and dynamic. For example, Korea, originally supposed to be a very homogeneous country, is now experiencing a great, new influx of immigrants. In a demographical sense, South Korea has a total population of about 40 million people, with a foreign population approaching one million as of 2007. This influx of foreigners started in the early 90s with migrant workers, but the numbers increased in 2000 with a growing number of international, married couples in Korea.

Due to this drastic change, the Korean government has created many policies to assimilate those immigrants and foreigners into Korean society. Media especially plays a key role in handling this issue; for example, newspapers feature the issues of migrant workers and international marriage families, and frame the issues in terms of multiculturalism discourse. What is more, this discursive formation of multicultural society rearranges the order of other competing discourses such as globalization, neo-liberalism, and racism in Korea. Thus, this study has two aims: (1) it examines how multiculturalism discourse has been received and how the term multiculturalism has been used and (2) it studies how multiculturalism discourse in Korea draws its discursive disposition and how the media, especially the press, incorporates other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’ and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. I believe this would provide insights about how globalisation promotes social change incorporating multiculturalism discourse in Korea.

Analysing newspaper articles from 1992 to 2007, I demonstrate the typology of discursive dispositions on multiculturalism discourse in Korea. There are three dimensions: (1) multiculturalism discourse is representing multi-race, (2) it passes through minority politics and minority movements, and (3) it detours the idea of (cultural) diversity. I will discuss how this discursive disposition of multiculturalism is now proceeding in Korean society.

Read the entire article here.

Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective: “Race-ing Toward the Real South Korea: The Cases of Black-Korean Nationals”

Seminar Series: Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective
University of California, Merced
California Room
5200 North Lake Rd.
Merced, California 95343
2013-11-07, 10:30 PDT (Local Time)

Nadia Y. Kim, Associate Professor of Sociology
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California

Students of South Korean multiculturalism have laudably given voice to the many non-Koreans who live in a proudly single-blood nation and have extensively criticized the state for its self-interested multicultural project.  Without critiquing these claims, Kim argues that the multicultural scholarship has omitted one of the important groups who diversify South Korea and find themselves on the bottom of most racialized orders: the part-Black children of USA-ROK military couplings. This dearth of works on Korean-Black children in particular is unexpected in light of Superbowl XL MVP Hines Ward’s 2006 visit being widely seen as the opening salvo on a multicultural South Korea.  Yet, because scholars are guided by the lens of the state on who the “multicultural citizens” are and because we typically opt for the conceptual language of ethnicity and ethnic nationalism over that of race and (ethno)racism, Black-descent populations tend to be overlooked.  By doing so, Kim argues, we as scholars inadvertently reify the country’s belief that Blacks are the most biologically and culturally different from them and perpetuate the relative “closeness” and state “privileging” of diasporic Koreans, Asians from the Pacific region, and lighter-skinned people who themselves, to be sure, endure inequality.  We also enable the state and like-minded adherents to promote policies of cultural assimilation of minorities that, in reality, deny pluralistic equality on the related basis of biological (racial) criteria.  Kim will conclude with the consequences of inadvertently reifying state hegemonic projects.

Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University, Kim researches ‘race’/ethnicity/nation, gender/relationality, citizenship, immigration/transnationalism, community politics, Asian American Studies, and Korean Studies. She authored the award-winning book Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to L.A. and is penning another on marginalized immigrant women of color, citizenship, and Environmental Justice.

The seminar series “Race and Justice in Transnational Perspective” is organized by Tanya Golash-Boza, Nigel Hatton, and David Torres-Rouff. The event is co-sponsored by the UC Center for New Racial Studies, Sociology, and SSHA.

For more information, click here.

Rearticulating Black Mixed-Race in the Era of Globalization: Hines Ward and the struggle for Koreanness in contemporary South Korean media

Cultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 3, 2014
pages 391-417
DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2013.840665

Ji-Hyun Ahn
University of Texas, Austin

Since the mid-2000s, the term multiculturalism has entered the Korean lexicon as migration has become more and more prevalent due to globalization. The cornerstone of this multicultural explosion was a 2006 visit by American football star Hines Ward, born to an African-American father and a Korean mother. As a black mixed-race sports celebrity, he suddenly became an emblematic media figure in the Korean televisual landscape, signifying a broader racial reconfiguration in Korean society. This media event – what I shall call ‘the Hines Ward moment’ – created and opened the discursive space for racial politics and multicultural issues in Korean society. Hence, this article aims to look at what this discursive explosion of multiculturalism and mixed-race means in the context of globalization. Reading the Hines Ward moment as a symbolic media text, the paper examines how the media discourse on Hines Ward articulates the issues of national identity and racial politics in contemporary Korean society. For analysis, newspaper articles, television programmes and television commercials that deal with the Hines Ward case are examined. By analyzing the modes of articulation of the Hines Ward moment, this study deconstructs the image of a ‘global, multicultural Korea’ shaped by the Korean media and examines the struggle for Koreanness in the televisual area of contemporary Korean media.

Introduction: imagining a multicultural, global Korea?

There has been a common belief that South Korea (hereafter, Korea) has always been a racially homogeneous country because of the strong myth of ‘one people one nation’ (hankyoreh hanminjok) (Shin 2006, G.-S. Han 2007). However, this common myth no longer seems as effective as it was in the past…

Read or purchase the article here.

Visualizing Race: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Struggle for Koreanness in Contemporary South Korean Television

University of Texas at Austin
August 2013
240 pages

Ji-Hyun Ahn

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

“Visualizing Race: Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Struggle for Koreanness in Contemporary South Korean Television” investigates visual representations of multicultural subjects in both celebrity culture and the reality television genre to examine the struggle for Koreanness in contemporary Korean television. My aim is to explain the transformation from a modern monoracial Korea to a multicultural, global Korea as a national project of what I call “neoliberal multiculturalism” and to problematize the implicit tie between the two words, “neoliberal” and “multiculturalism.” Using the category of mixed-race as an analytical window onto this cultural shift, I attempt to link the recent explosion of multiculturalism discourse in Korea to the much larger cultural, institutional, and ideological implications of racial globalization. To illustrate this shift, the dissertation analyzes both black and white mixed-race celebrities as well as ordinary multicultural subjects appearing on Korean reality programs. I examine historical archives, popular press sources, policy documents, and television programs in order to analyze them as an inter-textual network that is actively negotiating national identity.

Utilizing the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism as an overarching framework, the dissertation explicates how concepts such as nationality, race, gender, class, and the television genre are intricately articulated; it also critically deconstructs the hegemonic notion of a multicultural, global Korea presented by the Korean media. I argue that Korean television deploys racial representations as a way to suture national anxiety over an increasing number of racial others and projects a multicultural fantasy towards Koreans. This interdisciplinary project contributes to several fields of study by explicating the changed cultural meaning of mixed-race in the age of globalization, defining the organic relation between the medium of television and racial representation, broadening our understanding of Asian multiculturalism and the racial politics in the region, and examining the particulars of ethnic nationalism appearing in the Korean media and popular culture.

Read the entire dissertation here.

‘Koreans are not racist’

The Korea Times
2013-08-02

Jonathan Breen

Koreans can be close-minded to issues of race and culture, but they know it and they want to learn, says the head of a foundation that helps multiethnic children here.

Yang Chan-wook, chairman of the Movement for the Advancement of the Cultural Diversity of Koreans (MACK) — told The Korea Times that Korea is not a racist or prejudiced country, but a country going through change.

“Racism is usually based on hate — Korea is nothing like that,” he said…

…“We focus on the diversity of Koreans — anyone with a mixed heritage. And we help Koreans accept them,” he said.

Like many MACK members, Yang is mixed-race — part Korean from his mother and part African-American from his father. He prefers to go by his Korean name rather than his Western name, Gregory Diggs…

…The segregation of school children in Korea is what first led the recently appointed MACK president Frank Brannen to work with multiethnic Koreans.

“I thought all multicultural children attended Korean schools, but then I learnt that wasn’t the case, so that is when I got involved,” said the 32-year-old, adding, “In some aspects for student’s futures, I don’t think going to multicultural schools is the way forward.”…

Read the entire article here.

An African American’s Perspective on the Korean Wave

The Chosunilbo
Seoul, Korea
2013-07-09

Emanuel Pastreich, Associate Professor
Humanitas College, Kyunghee University

I received an unexpected email in February 2013, from a young woman who was studying public health at Harvard University. Mariesa Lee Ricks explained that her mother was Korean and that she had a great interest in Korean culture. Mariesa said that she hoped to find out how K-Pop and Korean social media can play a role in bringing positive messages to youth around the world.

Mariesa added that she hopes to visit Korea to carry out research. I wrote back to her telling her that I would be in Boston soon for a business trip and we agreed to meet up while I was there.

I did not recognize her at first. I was taken aback for a split second when she introduced herself because she turned out to be African American, and I had imagined a half-Korean, half-Caucasian woman who looked like my daughter Rachel. I was impressed that Mariesa did not display the slightest sense of discomfort or uncertainty in the few seconds that it took me to get over my embarrassment. She was clearly an extremely mature and composed woman with a strong sense of herself…

…That vision is linked to the critical role Mariesa’s Korean and African heritage has played in her cultural and intellectual development. Her Korean heritage was essential when she grew up in Atlanta. Her grandmother and mother maintained close ties with Korean culture and the Korean community, which was made easier by the burgeoning Korean population in the part of the city where they lived.

“My father’s family had a limited understanding of Korean culture, but fortunately my mother and grandmother were eager to introduce their culture, whether through funny stories from their childhood in Korea or through cooking kimchi jjigae (spicy Korean stew), for everyone, or teaching some Korean phrases,” she said. “So I developed an appetite to try new things and to explore new combinations of culture. That is the appeal of the Korean Wave for me.”

“Thanks in large part to my Korean heritage, I have developed an intense desire to honor my parents and family — a trait that has spurred me to be extremely aware of how my decisions and actions impact others,” she said. “At the same time, American values of individuality have allowed me to feel comfortable takings risks and exploring my own interests.”…

Read the entire article here.

Winners of 1st Korea Multicultural Youth Awards

The Korea Times
2012-12-12

Jun Ji-hye

Habitus, a student volunteer group at Yongmoon High School in Seoul, has worked for vulnerable members of society such as the disabled, senior citizens and multiracial children.

Among their good works, running the study room for elementary school students from multiracial families ought to be highly commended.

Seven students who are in the second grade of the school are in the group. They set themselves up as mentors for such young children and have guided their study from Monday to Friday for a year.

They also became company for them to talk together with, thus giving them the needed emotional support.

“It takes 20 minutes for them to get to the study room from the school. After doing the volunteer work for an hour, they have to go back to school to do their own study till 11 p.m. But they always do such works with a glad heart,” said Choi Nak-won, a guidance teacher of the group.

Choi said, “Seven students have been enthusiastic about understanding multiracial families and always warm-heartedly treating young students from such families. I believe this will help them grow up as leading figures in the future society.”…

Read the entire article here.