vogel ANTHROPOLOGY | ASIAN STUDIES | RELIGION Peruvian migrant workers began arriving in South Korea in large numbers in the mid- | 1990s, eventually becoming one of the largest groups of non-Asians in the country. Migrant Conversions shows how despite facing unstable income and legal exclusion, MIGRANT CONVERSIONS migrants have come to see Korea as an ideal destination, sometimes even as part of their divine destiny. Faced with a forced end to their residence in Korea, Peruvi- ans have developed strategies to transform themselves from economic migrants into heads of successful transnational families, influential church leaders, and cosmopol- itan travelers. Set against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis,Migrant Conversions explores the intersections of three types of conversions—monetary, religious, and cosmopolitan—to argue that migrants use conversions to negotiate the meaning of their lives in a constantly changing transnational context. As Peruvi- ans carve out social spaces, they create complex and uneven connections between Peru and Korea that challenge a global hierarchy of nations and migrants. Explor- ing how migrants, churches, and nations change through processes of conversion reveals how globalization continues to impact people’s lives and ideas about their futures and pasts long after they have stopped moving or after a particular global moment has come to an end. TRANSFORMING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PERU AND SOUTH KOREA “A model of what transnational ethnographic research can accomplish.” ELEANA J. KIM, author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging “With crisp prose and candid presence throughout the text, Vogel gives us the first book-length study of the experiences of non-Asian migrants in South Korea.” CAREN FREEMAN, author of Making and Faking Kinship: Marriage and Labor Migration between China and South Korea ERICA VOGEL is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Saddleback College. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS www.ucpress.edu | www.luminosoa.org A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Cover illustration: Butterfly Scales. Image supplied by mikroman6 via Getty Images. Author photo: Accent Portraits by Diana. Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Migrant Conversions GLOBAL KOREA Series Editor: John Lie, University of California, Berkeley Editorial Board: Eun-Su Cho, Seoul National University Hyaeweol Choi, University of Iowa Theodore Hughes, Columbia University Eun-jeung Lee, Free University of Berlin Laura Nelson, University of California, Berkeley Andre Schmid, University of Toronto Jun Yoo, Yonsei University 1. Jinsoo An, Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema 2. Sungyun Lim, Rules of the House: Family Law and Domestic Disputes in Colonial Korea 3. Erica Vogel, Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connections between Peru and South Korea Migrant Conversions Transforming Connections between Peru and South Korea Erica Vogel UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2020 by Erica Vogel Suggested citation: Vogel, E. Migrant Conversions: Transforming Connec- tions between Peru and South Korea. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.86 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vogel, Erica, 1978- author. Title: Migrant conversions : transforming connections between Peru and South Korea / by Erica Vogel. Other titles: Global Korea ; 3. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] | Series: Global Korea ; 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019040148 (print) | LCCN 2019040149 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520341173 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520974579 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Foreign workers, Peruvian—Korea (South)—Social conditions. Classification: LCC HD8730.5 .V64 2020 (print) | LCC HD8730.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.868/8505195—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040148 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040149 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated to my loves, Omar, Zoe, and Ian, and to the memory of my father, Vince Vogel Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Constructing “The End” 1 1. Peru, South Korea, Peru . 32 2. Monetary Conversion 60 3. Religious Conversion 82 4. Cosmopolitan Conversion 109 Epilogue 127 Notes 135 Bibliography 149 Index 155 Illustrations FIGURES 1. Methods and conversion rates 21 2. Taxi in a pueblo joven 57 3. Won to dollars during Franco’s migrations 61 4. Made in Japan 69 5. Waiting for remittances 69 6. Converted shipping containers 115 MAP 1. Peruvian migration destinations 50 TABLE 1. Important conversion rates from Korean won to US dollars between 1996 and 2017 81 ix Acknowledgments I am grateful for the many people who have helped me complete this project by sharing their time, knowledge, resources, and friendship with me. I wish I could thank everyone by name, but the following is just a partial list. First, I am deeply indebted to the many Peruvians in Korea and their families in Peru who welcomed me into their lives and homes and bravely shared their stories. I cannot name them here in order to protect their anonymity, but I am truly grateful for the time and energy they gave to help me complete this research. I would also like to thank the many Catholic and Protestant clergy in Korea who supported my research from the beginning, let me chat with them on long subway rides from Seoul, and helped me stay connected to the community even while I was far away. Thank you for allowing me to conduct research in your churches and for fearlessly supporting your parishioners. Thank you also to the consuls of the Peruvian embassy who gave me hours of their time and provided me with an insider’s perspective on the history of the Peruvian community in Korea. This ethnography would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my mentors at UC Irvine. Foremost, Mei Zhan championed this project from the beginning, and her comments and critiques helped me develop my ideas from a hunch into a book. Susan Coutin’s astute comments on multiple drafts inspired me to look for unexpected connections. Leo Chavez’s passion for anthropology and expertise on transnational migration sparked my interest in doing fieldwork and translating it onto the page. Rachel O’Toole motivated me to find miracles in impossible situations and appreciate the power of my informants’ beliefs. I also developed key parts of this project in inspiring classes with Victoria Bernal, Karen Leonard, Bill Maurer, Tom Boellstorff, and Michael Burton. xi xii Acknowledgments I am grateful for the chance I had to work with Nancy Abelmann as a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham- paign. I always seem to remember her advice or stumble onto something she wrote whenever I need it most. At UIUC, Jungwon Kim, Elizabeth LaCouture, Adrienne Lo, and Jason Petrulis welcomed me into a wonderful community that inspired me as I started moving this project into book form. I continue to ben- efit from discussions I had with Laila Amine, Jessi Bardill, Shane Barter, Alex E. Chávez, John Cho, Laura Sachiko Fugikawa, Ju Hui Judy Han, Yoonjung Kang, Dohye Kim, Sujung Kim, Chamara Jewel Kwakye, Alex Jong-Seok Lee, Kyou-ho Lee, Robert Oppenheim, Andrew Orta, Karen Roybal, Josie Sohn, Jesook Song, and Anantha Sudhakar. Carla Jones first helped me learn how to ask anthropo- logical questions. Hyun Mee Kim and Teofilo Altamirano gave me astute advice in the field. I am grateful to Sharon Dilworth and the late Hilary Masters at Carnegie Mellon University for encouraging me to write and see the world. Some of my most enjoyable moments during the research and writing process came alongside friends doing the same thing. I continue to value the friendships of and learn from fellow researchers, including Nanao Akanuma, Andrea Ballestero, Kimberly Chung, Caitlin Fouratt, Nalika Gajaweera, Philip Grant, Sharon Heijin Lee, Alexandra Lippman, Connie McGuire, Caroline Melly, Sheena Nahm, Cortney Hughes Rinker, Neha Vora, and Lien Vu. Friends and family helped make my world more fun and full of love, including my grandma, Colleen Celani, and Lorraine Cel- ani, Collette and Neil Celani-Morrell, Minda Berbeco, Emily Merz, Britt Nehyba, Rivelino Pacheco, Rosa Pacheco, Lila Rodriguez, Bonni Sanford, Caitlin Sanford, Stephanie Tsang, Courtney Vogel, and my grandparents who have passed away, but whom I still love very much, Bernetta Vogel, Thomas Vogel, and Frank Celani. I would like to thank Bill Nelson, Deborah Hawkins, Laurie Helmrath, and Scott Selin for help with designing my methods diagram in chapter 1. Thank you also to FXTop.com for letting me use their historical conversion graph in that diagram. Thank you to all of my students at Saddleback, UIUC, Soka, and UCI for being wonderful interlocutors in my process of learning how to communicate this story. My Peru-based research was funded by grants from the Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and a Dissertation Research Grant and Mini Grant from the Pacific Rim Research Foundation. My Korea-based research was funded by a Fellowship for Field Research from the Korea Foundation and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. A Libraries Access Grant from the Center for Latin American Studies at Stanford allowed me to finish the research for this book.