Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018. xiv, 248 pp. (Tables.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-6775-1.
South Korea, which has traditionally perceived itself as an ethnically homogenous nation, has accomplished rapid industrialization over the last half-century, but is now facing momentous changes because of neoliberal globalization. And with the dismantling of the Cold War and its barriers of exchange and communication, the return of diasporic Koreans to South Korea has increased rapidly. Two major trends, neoliberal economic globalization and the collapse of the Cold War, served as triggers in the return of overseas Koreans to their homeland. South Korean society in this new era of transnational migration faces increasing social conflict, inequalities, discrimination, and exclusion. The best examples of this are multicultural issues, such as the human rights of migrants. Returning ethnic Korean migrants are especially astonished to encounter discrimination and distrust in their ethnic homeland.
Homing endeavors to explain the dynamic process of returning Korean migration by combining micro and macro approaches in a comparative perspective. The work focuses on histories, emotions, cognitive processes, and social structures, all of which have contributed to different experiences and perceptions among returning Korean migrants. Thus, Homing contributes to the critical reflection on the migration policies and multiculturalism of South Korea.
Homing explores the dynamics of transnational migration through in-depth interviews that touch upon such topics as nostalgia for the homeland, national homogeneity, the sense of belonging, and recovery of kinship throughout transnational migration. This work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of discrimination in citizenship, hierarchical nationalism, and hypocritical multiculturalism in South Korea. Homing tries to compare the so-called “homeland finding project” of returning migrants from China, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), and the United States. These countries have been very intricately involved with Korean history, whether positively or negatively, since its late nineteenth-century modernization. Homing tries to answer such important questions as: Why do members of Korean diasporas opt to return to their ancestral homeland? How do Korean diasporic peoples imagine Korea? How do ethnic returnees’ expectations for and images of the homeland change after resettlement? How do returnees’ sense of belonging and emotional nostalgia change with respect to family and mother tongue?
Homing first examines the historical context of the Korean diasporas. According to 2015 statistics, there are some 750,000 diasporic Koreans (or 43 percent of the ethnic Koreans living overseas), distributed across 175 countries. Koreans in China have preserved Korean culture and traditions in the Korean-Chinese autonomous provinces of northeastern China. With inter-generational storytelling, they have kept strong nostalgia for the homeland and maintained that homeland’s cultural traditions, values, and language. Since South Korea-China rapprochement in 1992, the longing among these diasporic Koreans in China for an economically developed Korea, and hunger to escape their own depressed environment, has driven them to return to their homeland.
The Korean diaspora in the CIS refers to ethnic Koreans in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. They suffered tremendous hardships as a result of Stalin’s 1937 deportation policy, which forcibly relocated some 36,442 Korean families living in the Russian Far East to the wastelands of Soviet Central Asia. They began migrating back not only for economic opportunities but to realize a dream cherished through the generations to return to their homeland. Their idealized image of and grand expectations for that homeland quickly changed into disappointment when they encountered discrimination and indifference rather than recognition and respect. In contrast, second- or third-generation Korean Americans display a different Korean identity. They try to differentiate themselves from other ethnic Koreans, including Koreans in Korea and more recent Korean migrants to the US. Interestingly, like other overseas Koreans, Korean Americans are willing and even eager to return to Korea in order to marry, work, and answer the call of nostalgia. In this, Korean Americans have met with a more positive reception and support in their homeland than their fellow diasporic Koreans from China and the CIS.
Homing highlights two factors driving the return of Korean migrants to their homeland: reconnecting with their origins and finding economic opportunities. While nostalgia plays a major role in such return migration, the potential economic benefits are a stronger pull. However, it is in fact extremely difficult to present a unified framework for returning migration because various contextual factors, such as country of origin, generational variations, and family, complicate the picture at various levels.
Homing emphasizes that the process of return migration is by no means a one-time event. Rather, returning migrants experience various difficulties in the process of reformulating their Korean identity. They are also continuously constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing their sense of belonging. They face numerous difficulties in acquiring full Korean identity in terms of citizenship, family relationships, and fluency in the mother tongue. Returning migrants from China, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan experience far more discrimination than Korean Americans bearing US citizenship, and South Korean naturalization policy categorizes return migrants into those from developed and underdeveloped countries. Returning migrants also struggle with discrimination due to their lack of Korean fluency. Though returning migrants have made every effort to preserve their mother tongue, native South Koreans are rarely accepting of their awkward accents and outdated vocabularies.
Although the Korean government makes every effort to promote multiculturalism, the social tolerance and human rights of Korean migrant returnees as cornerstones of multiculturalism have been little developed. Indeed, many interviewees in Homing argue that the discourse of “multiculturalism” in South Korea has been distorted and abused for discriminatory and exclusionary ends, rather than mobilized as a symbol of tolerance and human rights. It is time for the South Korean government to reflect seriously on its multiculturalism policy. As so-called “hierarchical nationalism” still functions in South Korea, that society needs to overcome this by focusing on the recognition of other cultures as well as on a human rights policy that sees beyond race, ethnicity, religion, and geographical location or region.
Suk-Ki Kong
Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea