Crossing Borders in a Global World: Applying Anthropology to Migration, Displacement, and Social Change. London: Lexington Books, 2022. ix, 241 pp. (Tables.) US$100.00, cloth; US$45.00, ebook. ISBN 9781793651495.
North Korean Defectors in Diaspora: Identities, Mobilities, and Resettlements broadens the North Korean diaspora scholarship by providing enriching case studies of diverse North Korean defectors not only in South Korea, but also in Japan, the US, and the UK. With such qualitative data, this edited volume suggests that North Korean defectors are not that different from other diasporas or migrants who want to reconnect with their families and friends in their homeland, while struggling to adjust to their lives in their host countries. At the same time, their experience of defection creates unique challenges for North Korean defectors in their new environment. The only common experience that North Koreans in the study share is their defection. The term “defector,” thus, reflects their exclusive status outside of North Korea with clarity. The volume proposes important discussions of three main themes: mobilities, resettlement, and identity construction. In doing so, this book includes not only North Korean defectors’ perspectives, but also their relations with others in terms of extending such arguments.
The first part of the collection includes essays that examine how North Korean defectors in different regions have created transnational networks based on their repeated mobilities. Lee and Kim (chapter 1) analyze North Korean defectors who once lived in Japan as Zainichi Koreans, and returned to Japan or South Korea after years of living in North Korea. Kim (chapter 2) examines those North Koreans who settled in South Korea after their defection, but who soon thereafter migrated to European countries—some decided to stay in a third country, while others returned to South Korea. These chapters explain how second or third migrations (in other words, multiple mobilities) are not impossible tasks for North Korean defectors after they experienced successful defection from North Korea. Rather, they are not afraid to migrate repeatedly to find a desirable place for themselves and their children. Even after defection, their journey toward a new life rarely ends. In this process of transnational migration, they continue to situate their positions in accordance with others in a new location.
The second section demonstrates how North Korean defectors have dealt with new circumstances based on their defection experience, and how they have created cultural connections with local communities. Their plan of escaping from North Korea sometimes had to be a secret, even within the family, until the last minute. The habit of maintaining such secrecy often remains intact after defection: North Korean defector parents encourage their children to censor their words and hide their South Korean identity (in case they have moved from North Korea to South Korea, and to a third country) for successful settlement (Kim, chapter 5). Shin’s study (chapter 4) reveals that the geopolitical relations of the home countries play key roles in how North Korean defectors interact with South Koreans, as well as with Korean-Chinese migrants in London. Geopolitical hierarchies and discord among ethnic groups contribute to creating transnational enclaves for North Korean defectors, where “transnational migrants are territorialized and then reterritorialized” (123).
The last part of the collection addresses the new relationships that North Korean defectors have built after their settlement in a new environment. Shin’s study (chapter 3) demonstrates that North Korean female defectors begin to feel empowered as a reaction to both economic and political precarity experienced in the process of migration. They take any available job as a flexible survival strategy, become the primary breadwinners of the household, and play active roles in the next generation’s educational and cultural activities. Moreover, North Korean defectors have contributed to de-bordering North Korea (Shin, chapter 6); they send remittances and information to their remaining family members in North Korea. They also stage political activities to undermine the existing regime of their home country. These activities may seem trivial, but they are nevertheless important, given that domestic North Koreans can sustain connections outside of the country. Accordingly, Shin (chapter 8) explains that the geopolitical activities of North Korean defectors help them initiate “extra-territorial nation-building” (201). By connecting with other North Korean defectors around the world via global networks and developing transnational North Koreaness on the basis of their daily lives, these North Korean defectors try to achieve “their desire to re-imagine their origin societies in practice” (203).
By analyzing North Korean defectors’ transnational mobility and settlement in new environments, this edited volume sheds light on their cultural identity construction process. North Korean defectors experience an ambiguous status in terms of their legal, cultural, and social challenges to situate themselves in any fixed position. As Chun (chapter 7) explains, “The stigma of being a North Korean defector seems to be a constant in the life of that individual” (192). Leaving aside their daily struggles to construct their cultural identities as North Koreans (or just Koreans), North Korean defectors have constantly negotiated and constructed their identities by dealing with the gaps between media representation and self-presentation, even years after their defection.
North Korean Defectors in Diaspora’s special strengths lie in its perspectives toward understanding this evolving community of North Korean defectors and their transnational enclaves by portraying these defectors as active agents who create cultural connections with others, wield influence on their home country (both financially and socially), and reclaim their cultural identities in the process, rather than being passive refugees who had to flee from their own country. It also reflects North Korean defectors’ struggles as a result of their displaced, disconnected status in a new society. As a result, this edited volume suggests that North Koreans’ past experiences and identities in their home country connect and extend to their present and future identities and to their relations with others. Accordingly, the book presents North Korean defectors as potential key players in a unified Korea.