US-Raised Koreans and the Complexities of ‘Return’

Nostalgic for the Unfamiliar: US-Raised Koreans and the Complexities of ‘Return’ A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Stephen Cho Suh IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Lisa Sun-Hee Park June 2016 Copyright Stephen Cho Suh 2016 Acknowledgements I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and sincerely thank all those who contributed in various capacities to the completion of this dissertation thesis. In addition, I would like to give special consideration to… …my non-academic friends and family, particularly my father and sister. You all stuck with me through thick and thin, even when you did not necessarily understand nor agree with my rationale for toiling away for years in the Midwest. Your texts, emails, and phone calls helped to keep me grounded. …the staff, faculty, and graduate students in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, particularly the cohort of 2009. You were my home and family for the past seven years. …the editorial staff at The Society Pages, especially Douglas Hartmann, Chris Uggen, and Letta Wren Page. My writing and overall understanding of the field benefited tremendously from my experience as a graduate student board member. …the members of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies graduate group, the Race Reading Group, and the Asian American Studies program at the University of Minnesota. Not only did you all make me feel as though I really belonged in academia, many of you also read through and provided invaluable comments for a countless number of my drafts. …my advisor, Lisa Sun-Hee Park. It was through your research that I became interested in sociology and Asian American Studies. It was also through your tutelage that I found my intellectual voice. …my dissertation committee members, Cawo Abdi, Enid Logan, David Pellow, and Yuichiro Onishi. You all made such important contributions to this project and my scholarly growth. …the interviewees in this study. Without your generosity there would be no thesis. …the Fulbright Program and Korean-American Educational Commission, the Korea Foundation, the Korean Studies Dissertation Workshop and Social Science Research Council, the Research Center for Korean Community at Queens College and Nadri Foundation, the Beverly and Richard Fink Foundation, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Your support allowed me to craft this research project to the best of my abilities. Above all, I would like to thank my wife, Joyce Pyo Lee, for agreeing to go on this longwinded journey together. It was your love, support, and guidance that made this endeavor all the more worthwhile. We did it! i Dedication 엄마에게 To my mother ii Abstract Described by scholars as the relocation of diasporic descendants to an ancestral homeland from which they have resided away for most if not all of their formative lives, ethnic return migration has increasingly served as the foundation for the scholarly expansion of research on diaspora, transnationalism, nationhood, and ethnicity. I situate this dissertation within this growing body of literature by focusing on the life histories and migratory narratives of US-raised Korean ethnic return migrants (or ‘returnees’). The ethnic return migration of US-raised Koreans serves as a compelling case study for a few reasons. For one, US-raised Koreans represent a substantial portion of the returnee population in South Korea, trailing only Korean Chinese (or joseonjeok) in sheer numbers. What differentiates the ethnic return migration of US-raised Koreans from other diasporic Koreans, however, is that they relocate largely as highly educated, middle-class professionals, thus arriving in South Korea with relatively elevated levels of human capital and socioeconomic privilege. Furthermore, their decisions to relocate to an unfamiliar ancestral homeland stand at odds with social scientific research documenting the economic and cultural assimilation of later-generation Asian Americans. Drawing on data collected from ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth qualitative interviews with Korean American ‘returnees’ living in South Korea, this dissertation addresses the following questions: 1) what factors contribute to the ethnic return migration of diasporic descendants, especially among US-raised Koreans? And 2) given the weak ties that ethnic return migrants typically have with their ancestral homelands, how do these ‘returnees’ fare in their new environments? In examining these larger questions, each chapter of this dissertation endeavors to explain how the practice of ethnic return migration is intricately connected to and influenced by social factors such as race/ethnicity, gender, identity, globalization, and Empire. Taken as a whole, this project provides a nuanced and intersectional take on the practice of ethnic return migration— illustrating how a seemingly personal practice is deeply informed by and informant of larger social forces that span across multiple geographic and temporal contexts. iii Table of Contents List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Notes on Transliteration and Terminology .................................................................. viii (Introduction) Nostalgic for the Unfamiliar: US-raised Koreans and the complexities of ‘return’ ................................................................................................................................ 1 Contextual Overview and Research Goals ..................................................................... 4 Contextualizing the ethnic return migration of US-raised Koreans ................................ 7 Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................... 16 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 22 (Chapter one) Assimilation and its Discontents: The identity politics of ‘return’ .......... 32 The Korean diaspora in the United States ..................................................................... 34 Nostalgic for the Unfamiliar ......................................................................................... 41 Growing up as foreigners ......................................................................................... 43 Developing an affirmative ethnic identity ................................................................. 49 From ethnic consciousness to cultural exploration .................................................. 55 Finding the right moment to ‘return’ ........................................................................ 62 Conclusion: Arrested assimilation ................................................................................ 70 (Chapter two) Gendering ‘return’: The masculinities and femininities of US-raised Korean ‘returnees’ in intersectional and transnational perspective .................................. 73 Investigating the Intersection of Gender and Migration ............................................... 77 Negotiating Gender in Korean/Asian America ............................................................. 82 Gender and South Korea ............................................................................................... 86 Gendered realities and expectations prior to ‘return’ ................................................... 90 Becoming a “Desirable Commodity” in South Korea .................................................. 93 Subordinating South Korean Masculinities and Femininities .................................... 101 Reconfiguring Korean (American) masculinities and femininities ............................ 107 The limitations of American gender ideals ................................................................. 115 The gender benefits of whiteness in South Korea ...................................................... 123 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 125 iv (Chapter three) Becoming American in Korea: The Complicated allure of “American- ness” ................................................................................................................................ 128 Social identity and networks in South Korea .............................................................. 129 The emergence of an American social identity in South Korea .............................. 130 The Social Networks of US-raised Korean ‘Returnees’ ......................................... 137 American spaces ......................................................................................................... 141 Itaewon, Seoul ......................................................................................................... 143 The Pitfalls of Itaewon ............................................................................................ 153 Returnees, American-ness, and work.......................................................................... 160 Academic-Linguistic work ...................................................................................... 162 Politico-Military work ...........................................................................................

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