Ahn, J.-H. (2018). Mixed-race Politics and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in South Korean Media. Palgrave Macmillan

This chapter looks at what happened to the Korean women and children who remained in South Korea. It sets the stage by describing how President Rhee’s 1953 directive to remove children with American fathers to the United States heightened the vulnerability of those who stayed. The South Korean government worked closely with Harry Holt and in 1954 established Korea’s first welfare agency, Child Placement Service, expressly to remove mixed-race children. The chapter describes how US racial identification practices used to determine which children were “part-black” were introduced to and became institutionalized in South Korea. It also describes how Korean women were erased in this process. They were coerced to give up their mixed-race children and were offered no support from either government. For the children, solutions ranging from segregated schools to welfare reports that pathologized them as “social handicaps” relegated this population to the margins. The chapter ends with a consideration of how mixed-race children and the mothers who fought to raise them navigated the ongoing legacies of US militarization in South Korea.

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Situating mixed race politics

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing ◽

10.4324/9780203118344-18 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 183-197

Keyword(s):

Mixed Race ◽

Race Politics

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How Mixed-Race Politics Entered the United States: Lydia Maria Child's Appeal

ESQ A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture ◽

10.1353/esq.0.0043 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 71-104

Author(s):

Robert Fanuzzi

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Mixed Race ◽

The United States ◽

Race Politics

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Transpacific Adoption

Pacific America ◽

10.21313/hawaii/9780824855765.003.0011 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Susie Woo

Keyword(s):

Korean War ◽

Mixed Race ◽

The United States ◽

Korean Children ◽

South Korean ◽

Korean Adoptees ◽

The Pacific ◽

The Korean War ◽

American Memory ◽

The U.S

As one of America’s forgotten wars, the Korean War remains in the shadows of American memory. This chapter recounts one of the profound social and cultural outcomes of the war--Korean transnational adoptions. It traces the work of U.S. missionaries that established initial points of contact between average Americans and Korean children-in-need during and after the war, sentimental and material connections that set the stage for transnational adoptions. In the 1950s, missionary appeals to rescue Korean children and mixed-race GI babies incited Americans to push for the legal adoption of children from Korea, pressure that ultimately led both the U.S. and South Korean governments to establish permanent adoption legislation. To date, over 100,000 Korean adoptees have entered the United States. This essay investigates the origins of Korean transnational adoptions and the racial legacies left in its wake on both sides of the Pacific.

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Desiring biracial whites: cultural consumption of white mixed-race celebrities in South Korean popular media

Media Culture & Society ◽

10.1177/0163443715593050 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 37 (6) ◽

pp. 937-947 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Ji-Hyun Ahn

Keyword(s):

Mixed Race ◽

Popular Media ◽

Cultural Consumption ◽

South Korean

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Seeing Similarity or Distance?

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000168 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 127-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Leigh Wilton ◽

Diana T. Sanchez ◽

Lisa Giamo

Keyword(s):

Social Distance ◽

Mixed Race ◽

Racial Groups ◽

Perceived Similarity ◽

The Social ◽

Intergroup Perception ◽

Intergroup Perceptions ◽

Racially Ambiguous ◽

Ambiguous Faces

Biracial individuals threaten the distinctiveness of racial groups because they have mixed-race ancestry, but recent findings suggest that exposure to biracial-labeled, racially ambiguous faces may positively influence intergroup perception by reducing essentialist thinking among Whites ( Young, Sanchez, & Wilton, 2013 ). However, biracial exposure may not lead to positive intergroup perceptions for Whites who are highly racially identified and thus motivated to preserve the social distance between racial groups. We exposed Whites to racially ambiguous Asian/White biracial faces and measured the perceived similarity between Asians and Whites. We found that exposure to racially ambiguous, biracial-labeled targets may improve perceptions of intergroup similarity, but only for Whites who are less racially identified. Results are discussed in terms of motivated intergroup perception.

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