Two Types of Diasporic Return
The contemporary Korean diaspora consists of 7.185 million Korean nationals and descendants scattered across the globe. 1 During the mid-nineteenth century, Koreans began migrating to Manchuria and the Maritime Province, which became Russian territory in 1860. Between 1903 and 1905, over 7000 Koreans migrated to Hawaii. After the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early twentieth century, Korean migration to Hawaii was ended, and instead, many Koreans fled to Manchuria and the Russian Far East . After the 1920s, an increasing number of Koreans went to Japan as workers under Japanese colonial rule. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, a large number of Korans were forced to migrate to Japan as workers, soldiers, and comfort women. After the Korean War, significant numbers of Korean orphans and war brides migrated mainly to the U.S. In more recent decades, large numbers of South Koreans have moved to the U.S., but also to Canada, Europe, South America, Oceania, and other Asian countries, mainly for economic, business, professional, or educational reasons.
When compared to the diasporas of other Asian countries, the Korean diaspora is not the largest in terms of total population. However, a very high proportion of people of Korean descent live in the diaspora outside of the homeland . Since the population of South and North Korea was approximately 76.6 million in 2016, this means almost 9.5% of all peoples of Korean descent reside in the diaspora abroad. Although China has the largest Asian diaspora (at approximately 50 million people), 2 it is only 3.6% of the total population of China. Likewise, the second largest Asian diaspora, the Indian diaspora (estimated at 30.8 million peoples) is only 2.3% of the population of India. Other Asian diasporas also consist of small percentages of their respective country’s populations (4.4% for Vietnam, 3.1% for Indonesia, 2.8% for Japan, and 1.6% for Thailand). Only the Filipino diaspora rivals the Korean one, with 10.1% of all peoples of Filipino descent living abroad in the diaspora.
However, it must be noted that a significant amount of the Korean diaspora is a product of migratory dispersal after World War II, a vast majority of which was from South Korea. Most Koreans who have migrated to various countries in the last several decades are South Koreans, and emigration from North Korea has been restricted to a small flow of migrants who cross the border into China (some of whom eventually end up in South Korea as refugees) and Russia. Therefore, the percentage of those in the Korean diaspora who trace their origins to the current territory of South Korea (including before World War II when the Korean peninsula was partitioned) is proportionately higher. In fact, nearly 13% of South Korean nationals currently reside in various countries abroad, and this excludes their descendants who were born abroad and have also become part of the Korean diaspora .
However, the Korean diaspora has a significant impact on South Korea not only because so many people have left (and continue to leave), but also because a significant number of them have returned. Like other diasporas around the world, the Korean diaspora consists of not only migratory dispersal from the homeland but also a return migration flow from various Korean diasporic communities around the world back to the homeland . Many of these diasporic returnees are ethnic return migrants , descendants of earlier Korean migrants who were born and raised abroad and are “returning” to their ethnic homeland , their country of ancestral origin. They are primarily Korean Chinese and former Soviet Koreans , many of whom are settling long term or permanently in South Korea, but smaller numbers of Korean Americans and Korean Japanese have also returned, usually as temporary sojourners.
South Korea is perhaps the Asian country that is the most affected by ethnic return migration . There are approximately 776,000 ethnic return migrants currently residing in South Korea, which consists of 39% of the country’s immigrant population and 1.5% of the country’s entire population. This is a larger percentage of ethnic return migrants than any other Asian country. The other Asian country with a significant ethnic return migrant population is Japan, which has a large number of nikkeijin (Japanese-descent) immigrants from South America, who are mainly Japanese Brazilians, as well as a small number of Japanese Americans . However, in 2014, there were probably only about 237,000 nikkeijin foreigners in Japan, which is about 11% of the population of foreigners legally registered in Japan and only about 0.2% of the entire country’s population. Because most ethnic return migrants are from developing countries and work as unskilled foreign laborers in their ancestral homelands , their numbers are larger in rich, developed Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan because of the greater economic incentives for diasporic return.
In addition to ethnic return migration , there is a second type of diasporic return . This consists of Korean nationals who have emigrated from South Korea, resided abroad for significant periods of time in various countries around the world, and have then return migrated back to Korea. Unlike ethnic return migrants , they are first- and 1.5-generation immigrants from abroad who are returning to their natal homeland , their country of birth. We simply use the term “return migration ” to refer to this type of diasporic return , in contrast to “ethnic return migration .” Many of them continue to reside abroad and make only brief return visits to see family, relatives, and friends, but others have returned for long-term stays or plan to remain in South Korea permanently. There are also repeat and circular migrants, who return home from abroad, reside in South Korea temporarily, and then migrate to another country or circulate back and forth between their home and host countries. In addition, a small number of Korean adoptees, raised by American families in U.S. since they were babies, have returned to their natal homeland , usually for temporary stays. Although there are no reliable estimates of the total number of these first- and 1.5-generation return migrants, their number is probably quite large in comparison with other Asian countries, given the substantial population of Koreans residing abroad and the country’s relative wealth and prosperity, which would encourage a number of them to eventually return .
Both types of diasporic return are becoming increasingly prevalent not only in the Korean diaspora but among various diasporas around the world. In recent decades, the total volume of ethnic return migration has increased significantly (Tsuda 2009b: 1–3). The most prominent example is the millions of Jews in the diaspora who have return migrated to Israel since World War II. In Western Europe, 4 million ethnic German descendants from various Eastern Europe countries return migrated to their ethnic homeland between 1950 and 1999. Other European countries, such as Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Hungary, have received much smaller populations of ethnic return migrants from their diasporas in Latin American and Eastern Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 2.8 million members of the Russian diaspora living in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus returned to their ethnic homeland between 1990 and 1998. In East Asia, over one million second- and third-generation Japanese and Korean descendants scattered across Latin America, Eastern Europe, and China have return migrated to their ancestral homelands since the late 1980s. China and Taiwan have also been receiving ethnic Chinese descendants from various Southeast Asian countries. There has even been limited ethnic return migration to various Southeast Asian countries, especially to Vietnam and the Philippines (see Chan and Tran 2011; Nguyen-Akbar 2014).
Most of these ethnic return migrants originate in developing countries in the Global South and migrate primarily for economic reasons to richer ethnic homelands in the Global North. Relatively, few are migrating specifically to reconnect with their ancestral roots or to explore their ethnic heritage, except for possibly a small number of ethnic return migrants from developed countries (see Tsuda 2009c: 24). Although most ethnic return migration in the contemporary world is voluntary, there have been historical cases of involuntary, forced return migrations of persecuted ethnic minorities to their ancestral homelands . Examples include Jewish refugees of the Holocaust who “returned” to a newly created Israeli state, and ethnic Germans who were expelled after World War II and resettled in Western or Eastern Germany.
The return migration of first- and 1.5-generation immigrants from various diasporic communities back to their natal homelands has been an important part of global migration for a very long time. In fact, such returns to the homeland have been more the norm than the exception in human migratory history (Xiang 2013: 7). Even centuries ago, when traveling across national borders was much more difficult and less prevalent, return was an integral aspect of the migration process, and many immigrants around the world eventually returned to the countries from which they originally came (see also Oxfeld and Long 2004: 2–3; Stefansson 2004: 6). With increased globalization and the greater speed and reduced cost of international travel in recent decades, the volume of return migration has grown. Like ethnic return migration , first-generation return migration can be of various types. Much of it consists of the voluntary return of economic labor migrants as well as high-skilled professional and student migrants back to their home countries. However, there are also various types of “forced” return migrations, including of guest workers (especially low skilled) whose temporary contracts have expired, illegal immigrants who are apprehended and deported, and refugees who are repatriated against their will to the countries from which they fled.
When these various kinds of diasporic return are considered, it becomes evident that diasporas are not simply constituted by migratory dispersal across the globe, but also by migratory returns to the original homeland . In fact, most diasporas are characterized by a tension between such centrifugal and centripetal forces (Tsuda 2009b: 11). The prominence of diasporic return indicates that migration is not simply a unilinear process that terminates with permanent settlement and eventual assimilation to the host country (see also Silbereisen et al. 2014: 3; Stefansson 2004: 5; Tsuda 2009b: 7–9). Instead, it is a continuous, ongoing transnational process, especially for diasporic peoples, which involves not only further migration to other countries after their initial migratory dispersal from the homeland , but also migratory returns back to the homeland .
Objectives of the Book
Through a series of case studies, this edited book volume will examine various types of diasporic returns to the South Kor...