Korean Diaspora across the World

Homeland in History, Memory, Imagination, Media, and Reality

Eun-Jeong Han, Min Wha Han, JongHwa Lee

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798765184424
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Korean History
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume brings together a wide-ranging account of the Korean diaspora, focusing on how "homeland" is understood, invoked, and performed in everyday life and public culture.

Spanning sites from Sakhalin and Japan to Chile, Kazakhstan, the United States, and Latin America, the contributors show how diasporic Koreans express belonging through family narratives, community life, and media, revealing place as layered and sometimes contested.
An opening reflection on migration through family history sets up two linked threads: one centered on lived experience – marginalization in Sakhalin, identity negotiations in Japan, cross-border families, food as cultural anchor, adoptee identity struggles, and generational questions in Chile – and another on public discourse, where newspapers, social media, and online communities shape diasporic self-understanding, from Koryo-saram identity and anti-Korean rhetoric to digital self-representation, platforms like MissyUSA, media-driven social capital, and Korean vlogging in Latin America.
Together, the essays present "homeland" not as a fixed origin but as an evolving construct, continually reworked through memory, communication, and social interaction.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One. Looking at Koreans’ Global Migration Path through the Lenses of Family History
• Part I. HOMELAND IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND MEMORIES: IDENTITY NEGOTIATION AND CULTURAL ADAPTION AMONG KOREAN DIASPORA
• Chapter Two. Korean Diaspora in Sakhalin: “Your Homeland Does Not Need You but We Do”
• Chapter Three. Negotiating the “Homeland”: An Analysis of Narrative Identities among First-Generation Koreans in Japan
• Chapter Four. Families Beyond Borders: Discourse of Homeland, Diaspora, and (Up)Rooted-Identity
• Chapter Five. Homeland in the Kitchen: The Intersection of Food and Diasporic Identity
• Chapter Six. Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Discursive Burden of Establishing Individual and Family Identity
• Chapter Seven. The 1.5 and 2nd Generations in Chile: Am I a Korean?
• Part II. HOMELAND IN PUBLIC DISCOURSES: MEDIA USE AND NEWS COVERAGE OF KOREAN DIASPORA
• Chapter Eight. Identity Formation of the Korean Diaspora, Koryo-Saram, in Contemporary Kazakhstan: An Analysis Based upon Articles of Koryo-Ilbo
• Chapter Nine. “Trash to the Trash Cans, Koreans to the Korean Peninsula!” Diehard Racism and the Rise of Hate Speech against Korean Residents in Japan
• Chapter Ten. “I Am Korean American”: Constructing Diasporic Identifications on a Korean American Facebook Group and Pinterest Board
• Chapter Eleven. Online Community for Information, Support, and Transnational Activities: A Case of MissyUSA among Female Korean Im/migrants in the United States
• Chapter Twelve. Context Matters: The Effect of Homeland Media Use on the Generation of Social Capital among Korean Communities in the US
• Chapter Thirteen. Coreano Vlogs: Diasporic Media and the Politics of Asian Representation in Latin America
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors