Postcolonial Nationalism in Korea
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READING RACE: POSTCOLONIAL NATIONALISM IN KOREA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN POLITICAL SCIENCE MAY 2012 By Mary Deborah Lee Dissertation Committee: Sankaran Krishna, Chairperson Kathy Ferguson Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller Hagen Koo Jungmin Seo Acknowledgements First and foremost, I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Sankaran Krishna, Kathy Ferguson, Hagen Koo, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller and Jungmin Seo for their time, guidance and patience. Their perspectives on the dissertation writing process, suggestions, and criticisms have been invaluable to me. I am also grateful for the academic and emotional support of my friends and writing group. I give particular thanks to Melly Wilson, Melisa Casumbal-Salazar, Brianne Gallagher, Umi Perkins and Bianca Isakai, without whose time and thoughtful critique this dissertation surely would be lesser. I am grateful to the scholars, NGOs and migrant workers whose perspectives are invaluable to this dissertation. I am also indebted to the Department of Political Science, Center for Korean Studies, the School of Asian and Pacific Studies and the Korea Foundation for their generous financial support throughout my time as a graduate student at the Hawai'i at Mānoa. Last and certainly not least, I thank my family for their encouragement and determination to see me succeed, and in particular my husband, who believed in me and gave me confidence when all seemed too difficult. I love you all. 2 Table of Contents List of Tables........................................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... 6 Abstract................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction: Race and Postcoloniality in South Korea........................................................... 8 Methods ............................................................................................................................ 15 Ethno-national Consolidation in Activism and Scholarship ............................................... 24 Korea’s Globalization ........................................................................................................ 33 Chapter Breakdown .......................................................................................................... 35 Chapter One: Translating Modernity..................................................................................... 38 National Formations.......................................................................................................... 39 Racial Meaning in East Asian Histories ............................................................................ 45 Minzoku and Minjok: Racial Formations and Imperial Potentialities ................................. 51 National Essence and Lineage ......................................................................................... 59 Mobilizing Minjok............................................................................................................... 62 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 72 Chapter Two: Racial Hybridity in the Korean Postcolonial National Imaginary..................... 74 Hines Ward Symptom and National Overcoming ............................................................. 75 Background on Honhyeol.................................................................................................. 82 Patriarchal Power and Women’s Bodies........................................................................... 86 Legislating Family ............................................................................................................. 98 Repositioning Patriarchy: Multicultural Families as Neo-national Families..................... 107 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 119 Chapter Three: Multiculturalism and the Developmental Imperative .................................. 120 Framing the “Korean Dream”: Multiculturalism as Postcolonial Development................ 121 Multiculturalism as Neoliberal Policy............................................................................... 137 Labor, Ethnicized Pasts and Presents ............................................................................ 155 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 159 Chapter Four: Aesthetics of Hallyu and Shifting Postcolonial Subjectivities....................... 161 Hallyu and Cultural Diplomacy........................................................................................ 165 Hallyu and the Geopolitical Imaginary of the Regional ................................................... 169 Hallyu and Korean Postcoloniality .................................................................................. 174 Shifting Postcolonial Subjectivities.................................................................................. 177 Enjoying the National Self: Hallyu as Embodiment and Spectacle ................................. 181 3 Gender and Postcolonial Masculinities ........................................................................... 187 ‘Odorless’ Korean Bodies ............................................................................................... 199 Whiteness and Intertextuality.......................................................................................... 206 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 211 Dissertation Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 212 Future Trajectories.......................................................................................................... 221 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 223 4 List%of%Tables% 2.1. Amerasians' Experiences During School Days…………………………………………....84 5 List%of%Figures% Figure 1. 1990s Middle school English dictionary entries…………………………………..95-96 Figure 2. Korea Herald illustration of multicultural family…………..…………………………112 Figure 3. Homepage of the Pan-National Alliance against Foreign Workers……………….145 Figure 4. Yonhap News photograph…………………………………………………………….170 Figure 5. Foreign tourists pose in Korean traditional clothes…………………………………186 Figure 6. Foreign students pose in Korean royal costumes…………………………………..186 Figure 7. Image of Minyeodului Suda…………………………………………………………...189 Figure 8. Foreign women pose in Hawaiian garb……………………………………………...192 Figure 9. Cosmetic surgery…………………………………………………………...………….200 Figure 10. Image of Daniel Henney…………………………………………………….……….202 Figure 11. Image of the boy band FTIISLAND…………………………………………………203 Figure 12. Image of Fx all-girl group member………………………………………………….205 Figure 13. Image of street performance………………………………………………………...210 6 Abstract% This dissertation focuses on the significance of race to South Korean postcolonial nationalism. Despite critical scholarly attention paid to nationalist narratives in contemporary South Korea, the centrality of race remains peripheral. This poverty of investigation is paradoxical given the centrality of myths of racial origin, purity and uniqueness to nationalist historiography, political movements and discourses of the everyday. More intriguing still are the ways in which the modern myth of Korean racial homogeneity oppresses foreign ‘others’, particularly following the advent of Korea’s state-sponsored globalization movement. This project addresses the near absence of critical work concerned with the development of modern racial consciousness in Korea. My dissertation investigates different sites of transnational and trans-cultural encounter between Koreans and non-Koreans that generate racial anxiety in the form of civil unrest, policy conundrums and new social phenomena. The emergence of multicultural politics to manage the political controversies concerning the presence of migrant workers and brides; the changing socio-legal status of biracial peoples; and the racial aesthetics of Korea’s popular culture industry as embodied in the Hallyu (“Korea Wave”) phenomenon, feature as sites of examination. The case studies of this project operate upon the premise that how South Korea currently confronts the processes and demands of neoliberal globalization reflects a great deal about the centrality of race to post-colonial, national identity, as well as how it is currently under duress and transformation. This dissertation contributes to Korean studies scholarship on postcolonial race relations, which is relatively small and emergent. It also contributes to research on Asian modernities, regionalisms and “New Asia” discourses, which examine practices of decolonization and imperialism in the Asia-Pacific region. 7 Introduction:%Race%and%Postcoloniality%in%South%Korea% In Korea, decades of rapid industrialization and globalization have not uprooted ethnic nationalism; instead