CONTESTED EMBRACE: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea | By Jaeeun Kim
Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. xv, 340 pp. (Figures, B&W photos.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8047-9762-7.
Contested Embrace documents and analyzes the dynamic and geographic interconnections between and among Koreans in East Asia, focusing on diasporic Korean communities in Japan and China, in relation to North and South Korea. The book covers the historical periods from the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula to the Cold War period, up to contemporary times. Given that the historical periods and the events that took place are well-documented already, author Jaeeun Kim spares the readers another re-telling of these facts, and instead provides succinct and detailed analysis of the political, economic, and social dimensions transcending each period.
The book is composed of four chapters, an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix. In the introduction, Kim outlines her methodology and framework for understanding the complex reality of the nature of Koreans located in parts of East Asia. She also introduces her three major respondents. The first chapter explores colonial Korea and the Japanese colonial policies that led to Korean displacement to Japan and northeast China. The second chapter looks into North and South Korean competition for Zainichi Korean affiliation from Japan, while the third chapter examines Koreans in communist China and in North Korea. The fourth chapter contrasts the policies North and South Korea extended to transborder Koreans and details the difficulties consequently encountered by the latter in seeking affiliation with the South. The concluding chapter then assesses the various trends and ideologies that have developed in line with changes in contemporary global developments. The appendix provides a glimpse into the archival primary sources used.
Kim used multi-site ethnography—Japan, South Korea, and China—and focused on the personal experiences of respondents Chin'tae, Kil-yong, and Yong-il, and in doing so, avoided the narrow locus of state-focused and nation-centred prejudices and assumptions. The three interlocutors in many ways represent the diverse yet parallel narratives and experiences that diasporic Koreans have undergone since the end of the World War II. All three also underwent similar struggles in seeking to re-connect or re-establish their national identity, albeit with what is now known as South Korea. Using these three respondents, Kim manages to show the dynamic yet performative relationship between diasporic Koreans and the Korean homeland throughout different time periods.
During the colonial era, Japanese colonial policies attempted to make sense of Korean subjects by using family registries, while struggling with inclusionary and exclusionary tendencies. The historical experience of Koreans who were drastically thrust into either Manchuria or Japan in the early twentieth century would become the starting point of a very problematic transborder membership crisis in regards to how state policies sought to neatly categorize them. After World War II, the Japanese, obsessed with ethno-cultural homogeneity, subsequently created a minority population that was more Japanese than Korean, as both were, and still are understood as mutually exclusive. In contrast, Cold War-era communist China unintendly nurtured the distinctive Korean culture as part of a supposedly all-inclusive communist world. While North Korea pursued a Cold War-era subsidized repatriation policy, South Korea was more reluctanct to repatriate overseas Koreans. Fast forward to more contemporary times: Korean Chinese and Koreans in Japan struggled, and continually struggle to re-establish their ties with their homeland, a now-divided country. Part of the crux of this struggle is the ideological competition and diplomatic strategies employed by North and South Korea towards Korean minorities living in Japan and China. The Japanese xenophobic sense of homogeneity was in fact nurtured by South Korea's policy of keeping Korean minorities in their host countries. Nevertheless, late twentieth century political developments leading to the economic collapse of North Korea and favourable economic transformation of South Korea made the latter the preferred destination for many overseas Koreans.
Using the lens of the three respondents' distinct yet parallel experiences, Kim is able to demonstrate the futility of state bureaucracies in requiring documentary evidences for travel or immigration, and in this case, return migration. If anything, economic urgencies coupled with a conscious emotional sense of cultural or national belonging have driven many diasporic Koreans to re-connect and re-establish themselves in South Korea as Koreans. Although theoretically, many diasporic Koreans could prove their family kinship ties to South Korea, many also lacked proper evidence, and as such, have in fact resorted to re-inventing themselves by producing falsified documentations. This phenomenon leads to Kim's argument that in the case of diasporic Koreans, transborder membership politics subvert state policies and boundaries set by ideology-based governments. She emphasizes the idea that people belonging to transborder communities learn and master the "grammar of the state" and negotiate through state-imposed hurdles. In this context, Kim is correct in highlighting the performative aspect of transborder people's struggles to reclaim their national identity in the absence of, or beyond, the document-based system. Indeed, the framework of transborder membership properly describes not only the historical transformation of vast networks of diasporic Korean communities in East Asia, but also the cultural, if not familial affiliation with the Korean homeland.
Contested Embrace is a fresh transdisciplinary approach to what author Jaeeun Kim has aptly termed as transborder membership politics amongst ethnic Koreans residing in Japan and in China. Kim has meticulously utilized both historiographic and ethnographic approaches to dissect and analyze the discourse of belonging on the part of ethnic Koreans caught up in the violent and divisive historical developments in twentieth-century East Asia. Contested Embrace is a seminal work that integrates the historical, political, social, and economic experiences of diasporic Koreans in Japan and China vis-à-vis North and South Korea. It remains to be seen if an expanded study of Korean emigrés living in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia may yet be conducted by the same author. As it is, the book's overall framework will prove to be instrumental in throwing new light into the study of diasporic communities such as diasporic Jews vis-à-vis Israel, overseas Chinese vis-à-vis mainland China, and global Filipinos vis-à-vis the Philippines.
Arnel E. Joven
University of Asia and the Pacific, Pasig City
Last Revised: March 18, 2021