Edited by Jesook Song and Laam Hae O N T H E M A R G I N S O F U R B A N S O U T H K O R E A CORE LOCATION AS METHOD AND PRAXIS ON THE MARGINS OF URBAN SOUTH KOREA Core Location as Method and Praxis On the Margins of Urban South Korea Core Location as Method and Praxis EDITED BY JESOOK SONG AND LAAM HAE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2019 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-0335-2 Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper. _____________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: On the margins of urban South Korea : core location as method and praxis / edited by Jesook Song and Laam Hae. Names: Song, Jesook, 1969– editor. | Hae, Laam, editor. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana 20190153768 | ISBN 9781487503352 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Community development, Urban – Korea (South) | LCSH: Sociology, Urban – Korea (South) | LCSH: Decolonization – Korea (South) | LCSH: Knowledge, Sociology of. Classification: LCC HT169.K6 O5 2019 | DDC 307.1/416095195—dc23 ___________________________________________________________________________________ The mural featured on the front cover of this volume is one of many painted in Ihwa-dong in Seoul, South Korea. The neighbourhood is also called Ihwa-dong Mural Village (Ihwa-dong byeokhwa maeul). The particular mural featured on the front cover memorializes textile workers (mostly underpaid female workers) who used to work in sweatshops located in Ihwa-dong from the 1970s to the early 1990s during the industrialization period in South Korea. From the mid-2000s, murals have been painted in Ihwa-dong as part of the central and local governments’ urban beautification project for dilapidated neighbourhoods. The increasing popularity of the murals in Ihwa-dong and the subsequent touristification of the neighbourhood has caused a wave of controversies and tensions among local residents. The editors of this volume decided to put the mural of female textile work on the front cover to point to the irony of historical memory and visual memorialization and urban redevelopment, which echoes the themes developed in many of the chapters in this volume. Photograph by Laam Hae. CC-BY-NC-ND This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative License. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact University of Toronto Press. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support from the University of Toronto Libraries in making the open access version of this title available. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents Acknowledgments vii Editors’ Note ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction: Core Location, Asia as Method, and a Relational Understanding of Places 3 laam hae and jesook song 1 The Idea of Chinatown: Rethinking Cities from the Periphery 21 sujin eom 2 Seeing the Development of Jeju Global Education City from the Margins 43 youjeong oh 3 Against the Construction State: Korean Pro-greenbelt Activism as Method 65 laam hae 4 Marriage Migration as Spatio-Temporal Fix in Pohang’s Post- Industrial Urban Development through Saemaul 89 hyeseon jeong 5 “Locations of Reflexivity”: South Korean Community Activism and Its Affective Promise for “Solidarity” 114 mun young cho 6 The Education Welfare Project at Pine Tree Hill: A Core Location to Assess Distributional and Transitional Forms of Justice 138 jesook song vi Contents 7 Situating the Space of Labour: Activism, Work, and Urban Regeneration 163 seo young park Afterword 187 jesook song and laam hae Contributors 193 Acknowledgments This volume would not have been possible without support from many people and institutions. The contributors to the volume deserve particu- lar recognition and our gratitude: Hyeseon Jeong, Mun Young Cho, Seo Young Park, Sujin Eom and Youjeong Oh (alphabetical order for first names here and throughout this volume). We would like to thank the discussants and reviewers who provided invaluable comments on vari- ous iterations of the manuscript at conference and workshops – Albert Park, Bae-Gyuoon Park, Eleana Kim, Hyun Bang Shin, Jim Glassman, and Katharine Rankin – and two anonymous reviewers who read the full manuscript for the University of Toronto Press: all of these com- ments strengthened the manuscript. We are also grateful to participants in the workshops at Seoul National University, York University, and the University of Toronto, and to graduate students who took courses we offered in related subjects of Asia as method and postcolonialism. Although we do not list their individual names here, they were valu- able interlocutors who helped us develop our thinking that is reflected in this volume. We are also grateful to support from Kyle Gibson, who helped edit our manuscript and many times provided valuable input based on his spe- cialty, and Grayson Lee for multiple rounds of reviewing bibliographies. Further, we appreciate the contribution of the romanization experts we consulted on the new style we decided to follow both in North America and South Korea. We owe big thanks for the many efficient and capable administrators who managed numerous hectic situations and logistics related to hosting events in Toronto: Alicia Filipowich, the coordinator of York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR) at York University; Annette Chan, the financial officer of the Department of Anthropology, Uni- versity of Toronto; Grayson Lee, the student assistant at the Centre for the Study of Korea (CSK) at the University of Toronto; Minyoung Kye, viii Acknowledgments at the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE); and Rachel Ostep and Eileen Lam, then key administrators for the Asian Institute (AI) at the University of Toronto. Our appreciation also goes to direc- tors of sponsoring institutions and programs, including Edward Ban- ning, then the chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Toronto; Jennifer Chun and Yoonkyung Lee, consecutive heads of CSK; Hyun Ok Park, the director of KORE; Philip Kelly and Abidin Kusno, consecutive directors of YCAR; and Rachel Silvey, the director of AI. These institutions, along with the Office of the VPRI and the Fac- ulty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University, pro- vided crucial support, such as work spaces and hours of labour by key administrators, and financial support for inviting people to workshops and/or subvention of book production. We would like to acknowledge that our volume was also supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Repub- lic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Acad- emy of Korean Studies (AKS-2018-OLU-2250001), a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant (SSHRC 435-2016-0137), and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Institutional Grant (Anthropology, University of Toronto, 2016). We would also like to acknowledge all the support and hours of works by the University of Toronto Press, including Doug Hildebrand and Jodi Lewchuk, our acquisition editors; Barbara Tessman, our copy editor; and Robin Studniberg, production manager. It was pleasure to work with each. To our families, friends, and care providers, we also want to express our deep gratitude. Without their support, patience, and care, we would not have found the time and energy to produce this volume. Editors’ Note Unless indicated differently, Korea implied as a nation-state govern- ment or society refers to South Korea in this manuscript. We would like to note that we have followed the National Institute of Korean Language’s guide for the romanization system for the English trans- literation of Korean, which was established on July in 2000 by the Ministry of Culture Sports and Tourism. Also, we follow the authors’ preference in their mother tongue tradition for the spelling and order of names of Baik Young-seo and, later, Sun Ge (Baik and Sun are last names). For authors whose works are known to anglophone readers, such as Kuan-Hsing Chen, we follow the order and transliteration used in English publications. Abbreviations ACHR Asian Coalition for Housing Rights ACPO Asian Committees for People’s Organization BHA Branksome Hall Asia CO community organizing CRGP Committee for the Revision of the Greenbelt Policy EWP Education Welfare Project FRSN Four Regions Slum Network IMF International Monetary Fund JDC Jeju Free International City Development Center JFIC Jeju Free International City JGEC Jeju Global Education City JSSGP Jeju Special Self-Governing Province KACO Korean Action for Overseas Community Organization KONET Korean Community Organization Network KRIHS Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements LOCOA Leaders and Organizers of Community Organization in Asia MOCT Ministry of Construction and Transportation MOE Ministry of Environment MOLIT Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport MOLTMA Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs NGO non-governmental organization NLCS North London Collegiate School ODA official development assistance OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development PASG People’s Action for Saving Greenbelts