Ideas, Discourse, and the Microfoundations of South Korea’s Diasporic Engagement: Explaining the Institutional Embrace of Ethnic Koreans Since the 1990s

This article endeavors to explain South Korea’s institutional turn to “diaspora engagement,” which began in earnest in the late 1990s. This shift can easily be attributed to instrumentalist calculations on the part of the South Korean state, i.e., as an effort to “tap into” or exploit the human and capital resources of ethnic Koreans living outside of the country. But instrumental calculations and interests, while significant and clearly proximate, were not the only nor necessarily the most important (causal) factors at play. Using a discursive institutional and microfoundational approach, we argue that underlying the institutional shift to diaspora engagement, was both an intentional and unintentional reframing of the Korean diaspora as “brethren” and “national assets,” a powerful discursive combination. This reframing did not come about automatically but was instead pushed forward by sentient or discursive agents, including Chŏng Chu-yŏng (the founder of Hyundai) and Yi Kwang-gyu, who was a Seoul National University professor and later the third president of the Overseas Koreans Foundation. Journalists, religious leaders and other activists within South Korea’s NGO community, as well as ethnic Koreans themselves, also played key roles as discursive agents in this reframing process. Central to our discursive institutional and microfoundational approach is the assertion that ideas and discourse were key causal factors in the institutional shift to South Korea’s engagement with the Korean diaspora.

The Shifting Moral Authority of the Conservative Evangelicals’ Anti-LGBT Movement in South Korea

This paper reports on content analysis of the Korean Christian newspaper Kidok Sinmun (1998-2020) with regard to how conservative evangelical elites (CEs) change their discursive resources to construct persuasive appeals against the global LGBT movement. Our findings demonstrate that the CEs focus on different sources of moral authority in response to changing political ideologies of the Korean government or regardless of such ideologies (scientific research, family value). During the progressive Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in administrations, discursive tactics linked LGBT rights with the existential threat to liberal democracy or constitutional value, while the key words such as national security or military discipline were more frequently employed under the conservative Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye governments. Moreover, experiences shared by the transnational network of Christian activists appear to influence the construction of local perceptions on homosexuality.

Items of Tributary Gifts (Pangmul 方物) Sent to the Ming Dynasty by Chosŏn and their Changing Trends

This paper examines changes and trends in tributary gifts (pangmul 方物) sent by Chosŏn regular envoys to the Ming Emperor during the 15th and 17th centuries. First, pangmul items sent by the Chosŏn to the Ming were partially inherited from the Koryŏ era. Second, it examines how King Sejong’s 1429 request that the Chosŏn court pay its tribute by means other than gold and silver led the court to offer specialty goods as tribute instead of precious metals. It then moves on to explore how economic scarcity resulting from the Imjin Wars of 1592 led Chosŏn pangmul to be composed mostly of folding fans and stationery items such as paper (kyŏngmyŏnji, paekmyŏnji, and oil paper), inkstones (hwayŏn), ink (chinmuk and yumaemuk) and writing brushes (hwangmopil)–the dynasty’s common, major export goods. After the war, the Chosŏn dynasty regained stability and returned to its pre-war pangmul practices. However, the pangmul were not completely fixed and showed tentative patterns, going back and forth between the practices of the 15th century and the new circumstances of the 17th century. In short, this paper explores how pangmul practices were not completely fixed, and how contingencies such as the war and the changing landscape of manufacturing in 16th-century Korea influenced the composition of Chosŏn pangmul.

Religion, Business, and Global Visions: An Exploration of South Korea’s Discourse on Halal

Driven by economic exigencies, the Korean government began to strategize entering the rapidly expanding Islamic economy during the early 2000s. Subsequently, decisions to invest into the global halal market ignited public opposition from Korean evangelicals who rejected the positive economic framing of halal—an Islamic concept most commonly used to inform Muslim dietary laws. Based on fieldwork in Korea and analysis of Korean media sources, this article tracks the development of this “halal discourse” through a frame analysis of the discourses created by the Korean government, economic actors, and anti-halal evangelicals, and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments. As these competing voices debated halal’s place in Korean society, the supporters of halal had to respond to evangelical pushback against halal, leading to notable shifts in the public discourse on halal, an issue that was rooted in deeper underlying debates concerning multiculturalism, globalization, and competing visions of Korea.

“We Are Not Foreigners”: Constructing Migrant Subjects through Korean Chinese Migrants’ Claims-Making in South Korea

In this paper, we approach citizenship as a claims-making process consisting of social construction practices that emerge from ongoing negotiations and contestations. We examine the migrant subject-making process of Korean Chinese migrants in South Korea. We draw on the voices of migrants to discuss how Korean Chinese construct their migrant subjectivity by mobilizing a collective understanding of ethnonational belonging and thereby deploy distinctive strategies to support their claims. Our analysis of the data gathered from ethnographic observations and interviews with Korean Chinese migrant workers, activists, South Korean bureaucrats, and policymakers show that Korean Chinese migrants have called upon blood ties and ethnic affinity, continued allegiance, economic contributions, and human rights to construct themselves as legitimate candidates for citizenship in South Korea. By shifting our analytical focus from the state to the migrant subjectivity that emerges through day-to-day negotiations, we aim to unpack the complicated dynamics of social constructions of citizenship.