Organizer: Hijoo Son, University of California, Los Angeles

Chair & Discussant: Sonia Ryang, University of Iowa

Contemporary formulations of belonging have become befuddled in South Korea. On the one hand, the country prides itself on a strong sense of both ethnic homogeneity (tanil minjok) and ethnonationalism (minjokjuui). On the other, segyehwa (globalization) discourses, and (changing) government policies have complicated political, social, and cultural understanding of citizenship, identity, and affiliation since the early 1990s. As recently as July 2006, several conferences broached the problems of a multi-ethnicity (taminjok) and multiculturalism (tamunhwa) as core issues of 21st century Korean society. This panel will question the political function of nation-centered identity in light of artistic production and adoptees’ experiences. Jung-Sun Park frames the larger discussion of nationality and citizenship by examining the critical transformations of South Korean legal membership and its ramifications based upon the Overseas Koreans Act and changes in the family laws. Eleana Kim illuminates adoptees as specters of family and foreignness in South Korea, wherein the terms of kinship and nation still demarcate exclusionary boundaries for these transnational subjects. And finally, Hijoo Son explores the possibilities for diasporic affiliations, as captured through the cultural work of visual artists at one site of production: the case of 2002 Kwangju Biennale’s Project "There." Our discussion of adoptees and artists will bring sharp focus upon the mediation of laws and policies, while at the same time, expanding the very framework through which legal structures were configured in the first place.

Jung-Sun Park, California State University at Dominguez Hills

South Korea is well known for its strong ethnonationalism, which is rooted in Koreans’ belief in their ethnic "homogeneity." However, globalization and the increasing border-crossing of people have added more complexity to the society’s ethnic makeup. For example, the influx of labor migrants to Korea and the intermarriage between Koreans and non-Koreans have been increasing. Also, the South Korean government’s new nation-building strategies have generated significant changes in the country’s legal national membership. South Korean family laws now allow bilateral descent and abolished the patriarchal hoju (family head) system. Through the changes, Korean women are recategorized from second-class citizens to equal legal members. Also, the number of mixed-blood Koreans will increase because descendents of both Korean mothers and Korean fathers can claim their Korean citizenship. Moreover, through the Overseas Koreans Act, which grants quasi-dual citizenship to selected groups of overseas Koreans, overseas Koreans are legally incorporated into the Korean national community. Yet, the "quasi" and "dual" nature of the legal category creates many problems including the questioning of identity and loyalty.

Focusing on the Overseas Koreans Act and the changes in the family laws, I will discuss (1) how globalization and South Korea’s new nation-building efforts are related to the changes in legal definitions of Korean membership; (2) the ramifications of the new legal Korean membership for the national identity, gender relations and ethnic/racial/cultural diversity of the country; and (3) the significance of the Korean case for the study of citizenship and nation-building in the contemporary globalized world.

Eleana Kim, New York University

Since the late 1990s, adult adopted Koreans have been officially welcomed back to their country of birth as "overseas Koreans," a legal designation instituted by Korea’s state- sponsored "globalization" (segyehwa) project. Designed to build economic and social networks between Korea and its 6.7 million compatriots abroad, this policy projects an ethnonationalist and deterritorialized vision of Korea that depends upon a conflation of "blood" with "kinship" and "nation." Adoptees present a particularly problematic subset of overseas Koreans: they have biological links to Korea, but their adoptions have complicated the sentimental and symbolic ties of "blood" upon which this familialist and nationalist state policy depend. Because international adoption replaces biological with social parenthood and involves the transfer of citizenship, to incorporate adoptees as "overseas Koreans," the state must honor the authority and role of adoptive parents who raised them, even as they invite adoptees to (re)claim their Koreanness. The state optimistically construes adoptees as cultural "ambassadors" and economic "bridges," yet for adoptees themselves––whose lives have been split across two nations, two families and two histories––the cultural capital necessary to realize their transnational potential seems to have already been forfeited. Based on fieldwork with an expatriate community of adoptees living and working in Seoul, this paper examines how adoptees are specters of both family and foreignness in Korea. I argue that, rather than demonstrating the possibilities of a borderless world, Korean adoptees illuminate the exclusionary boundaries of kinship and nation for transnational subjects caught up in contemporary dialectics of nationalism and globalization.

Hijoo Son, University of California, Los Angeles

Touted as one of (if not) the first gatherings of artwork produced from five of the oldest and largest overseas Korean communities – Brazil, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, and the United States – the 2002 Kwangju Biennial project "There" reveals the gamut of strategies at play in an analysis of diasporic art. This paper explores tensions stemming from forces of contemporary cultural production by Korean diasporic artists and the history of social relations surrounding the art objects and their production. Such tensions highlight critical nodes that challenge a nation-state’s exclusive conceptions of identity construction. I argue that a more complicated identity is negotiated by artists through the social production of visual objects created by its reception, exchange, circulation and discourse. Key to this project, however, is the awareness of the mediatory role of art objects within a social process, rather than the interpretation of objects based upon aesthetic readings of art. Based on fieldwork with organizers and participants of "There," I question some of the basic interconnections between diaspora and identity construction, especially in light of segyehwa (globalization) discourses and changing government policies. Examining art objects and practices, I delve into a particular diasporic, spatial domain in the Pacific Rim. I will historicize the relations between the artist and object as well as the social indices that surround the art production. In so doing, I combine the various actors in this field - artists, artwork, production – to map out a diasporic web that speaks to conditions of identity construction in a global world.