‘You betrayed us’: Ethnic celebrity gossip in diasporic women’s online communities

Author(s):  
Jin Lee ◽  
Claire Shinhea Lee

This article examines a relationship between ethnic celebrities and diasporic communities by focusing on one case of Korean diasporic women gossiping about Korean actress Seo Min-jung. After a 10-year hiatus following her sudden migration to the United States and marriage to a Korean American dentist in 2007, Seo made a successful comeback to show business by starring in Korean reality shows and opening her Instagram account. Seo’s struggles as a Korean immigrant woman/housewife/mother, portrayed in TV shows and on Instagram, positively resonated with diasporic Korean women’s online communities (DKWOC). This positive discourse around Seo, however, transformed into celebrity bashing when her Instagram scandal happened in 2019. We trace the change of gossip around Seo in DKWOC concerning Korean diasporic women’s identity and status. We argue that DKWOC members’ gossiping of Seo functions as a way of coping with their situation, as they come to recognise the class difference between themselves and Seo and feel disempowered by their dissatisfying circumstances as immigrants.

2021 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2110179
Author(s):  
Sei-Young Lee ◽  
Ga-Young Choi

With the theory of feminist intersectionality, this study examined intimate partner violence (IPV) among Korean immigrant women focusing on gender norms, immigration, and socioeconomic status in the contexts of Korean culture. A total of 83 Korean immigrant women who were receiving a social service from non-profit agencies in ethnically diverse urban areas were recruited with a purposive sampling method. Hierarchical regressions were conducted to examine changes in variance explained by models. Having non-traditional gender norms, a college degree or higher education, immigrant life stresses, and living longer in the United States were positively associated with IPV while having higher income and being more fluent in English were negatively associated with IPV. Findings were discussed to understand Korean immigrant women’s internal conflict affected by their higher education and more egalitarian gender norms under the patriarchal cultural norms while experiencing immigrant life stresses and living in the United States. Implication for practice was also discussed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonghyun Lee ◽  
Anna Martin-Jearld ◽  
Kate Robinson ◽  
Susan Price

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
Sonya D. Winner

In 1985 two intelligence agencies of the South Korean Government announced that they had successfully disrupted a North Korean spy ring operating in the United States. Their press release, which was widely publicized in the Korean press, named Chang-Sin Lee as a North Korean agent associated with a spy ring at Western Illinois University, where Lee had been a student. The story was picked up and reported in the United States by six Korean-American newspapers and a public television station. When Lee sued for libel, the defendants relied upon the official report privilege, which gives absolute protection to the accurate republication of official government reports. The district court, holding that the privilege applied and that Lee had not overcome it by showing malice, dismissed the case. Plaintiff appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which in a two to one decision reversed (per Ervin, J.) and held: that the official report privilege does not apply to the republication of official reports of foreign governments. Judge Kaufman, sitting by designation, dissented from the majority’s reversal of the district court’s grant of summary judgment.


Author(s):  
Christina H. Moon

Fast fashion is often a story about the most powerful global retail giants such as Zara and H&M. The rise and dominance of fast fashion within the United States, however, areintimately tied to the work of Korean immigrant communities within downtown Los Angeles. In the last decade alone, Koreans have refashioned the city of Los Angeles into the central hub of fast fashion in the Americas, designing and distributing clothing from Asia to the largest fast-fashion retailers throughout the Americas. This chapter explores the work of these fast-fashion families who blur the lines between design and copy, author and imitator, exploiter and exploited. How do their modes of work profoundly transform the material object of clothing? How do they complicate the assumed directions and global flows of design and production in the global fashion industry? And finally, what role does risk and failure play—in a landscape of creativity, aspiration, and imagining—to make fast fashion even a possibility?


2018 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 46-56
Author(s):  
Edward T. Chang ◽  
Hannah Brown

Ahn Chang Ho (also known by his pen name, Dosan) moved to Riverside, California, in March 1904 and soon established the first Koreatown on the U.S. mainland, known as Dosan's Republic or Pachappa Camp. Dosan helped found a local employment agency and negotiated relations with citrus farmers to find work for Koreans who lived in the community. With steady work available, Riverside became a popular destination for Korean immigrants and was thus an ideal location for the Gongnip Hyeophoe, or Cooperative Association, which Dosan created to foster a sense of community. The Gongnip Hyeophoe later expanded to Korean settlements throughout California and eventually developed into the Korean National Association, which proved especially significant in organizing immigrants to fight for Korea's independence in the wake of Japanese colonization in 1910. Pachappa Camp helped anchor its residents’ identity and supported Koreans’ struggles to support themselves and to fight for Korean sovereignty. The experiences of the Koreans in Pachappa Camp reflected not only exceptional moments in Korean American history, as the first Koreatown in the United States and one of the seats of the independence movement, but also the ubiquitous experiences that typified immigrant lives in the United States. The City of Riverside erected a statue of Ahn Chang Ho in 2001, and designated the original site of the camp as a “Point of Cultural Interest” in 2017, to honor Dosan and to teach about his legacy and connection to Riverside. Because the historic Koreatown no longer exists, the designation and statue stand as the only remembrances of this pioneering community.


Author(s):  
Maura Toro-Morn

This chapter examines the labor disruptions faced by low-wage undocumented Latina immigrant women under the current neoliberal regime by telling the story of Elvira Arellano, a Mexican immigrant who followed the migrant trail of low-wage work in the United States. On August 15, 2007, Arellano traveled to Los Angeles to attend an immigration rally; four days later, she was apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Tijuana, Mexico. Arellano's case highlights the criminalization of undocumented immigrants in the the aftermath of 9/11 that has led to a dramatic increase in the number of Latinos sentenced to prison terms in U.S. federal courts. This chapter explores how neoliberal globalization processes in both Mexico and the United States have shaped Arellano's life choices, her agency, and politicization as an undocumented immigrant woman.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 106-111
Author(s):  
Jasmin Tahmaseb McConatha

Older men and women have been found to be more vulnerable to negative outcomes should they contract Covid19, particularly if they also have comorbid conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Cultural, racial, ethnic, and social class differences exist in vulnerability to Covid19 and in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. In the United States, for example, diabetes rates for minority and immigrant populations are higher than for non-Hispanic whites. During the a social health crisis, it is helpful to explore the ways that illness management and associated vulnerability influences the ways that minority elders attempt to maintain and promote their well-being. This paper presents a case study example of an older immigrant woman, diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and her struggle to manage her illness during a pandemic. The risk of developing diabetes in the United States is 3 to 1 and risks increase with age (American Diabetes Association, 2020).  Almost 50 % of black women as well as Hispanic men and women will develop diabetes in their lifetime (CDC, 2019). Disparities such as these have their origin in intersecting risk factors such as health care and lifestyle factors such as tress, poverty, weight, diet, and exercise patterns. Being a member of an ethnic minority and being overweight are the two significant factors associated with the onset of type 2 diabetes. During the coronavirus epidemic, these same factors also increase the risk for infection and for greater complications, even death as a result of infection (Society for Women’s Health Research, 2020). This essay illustrates the increased vulnerability and challenges including loneliness facing older women with type 2 diabetes during pandemic isolation.    


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