Table Of ContentKOREA AND THE GLOBAL SOCIETY
This book explores multiple fields and disciplines around the theme of South
Korea’s engagement and exchanges with global society focusing on development
cooperation, migration, and the media.
The core of this volume is an analysis of South Korea’sengagement and reci
procity in global society that has developed out of the country’s shift from aid
recipient and migrant sender to aid provider and migrant host. The contribu
tions approach this through the three main aspects of overseas aid, cross-border
contacts, and interplay of identities in the mediascape. These themes represent an
interdisciplinary array of research that introduces and analyses interconnected
and concurrent instances of reciprocity, convergence, tension, inclusion, or
exclusion in navigating South Korea’s interactional relations with global society,
spanning regions and countries including Africa, Asia, the USA, and Germany.
This book will be valuable reading to students and researchers from a wide
range of disciplines including sociology, gender studies, ethnic studies, media
studies, IR, and area studies, in particular Korean studies.
Yonson Ahn is Professor, Chair of Korean Studies and Deputy Executive
Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of East Asian Studies (IZO) at the
Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany.
ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH ON KOREA
The Research on Korea series surveys key topics in the study of North and
South Korea (both on the peninsula, and in the diaspora). It is a prestigious
series that is multidisciplinary, covering the social sciences and arts and
humanities. The series seeks to publish best new research from both senior
and junior scholars.
Series Editors: Niki Alsford and Sojin Lim, University of Central Lancashire, UK.
South Korean Popular Culture in the Global Context
Beyond the Fandom
Edited by Sojin Lim
The North Korean Army
History, Structure, Daily Life
Fyodor Tertitskiy
Korea and the Global Society
Yonson Ahn
KOREA AND THE
GLOBAL SOCIETY
Edited by Yonson Ahn
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Yonson Ahn; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Yonson Ahn to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-29335-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-29336-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30112-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003301127
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books
CONTENTS
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
Yonson Ahn
PART I
Korea’s Involvement in Overseas Aid and Transition 15
1 Shaping the Humanitarian Arena: South Korean,
American, and Christian NGOs in North Korea 17
Nazanin Zadeh-Cummings
2 Engagement and Encounters with the Global South
through Saemaul Undong 37
Sabine Burghart
3 Ex-Periphery: South Korea’s Position vis-à-vis the Global
Society 59
Irina Lyan
PART II
Cross-Border Contacts 77
4 Negotiating Masculinity: Migrant Husbands and Cross-
Border ‘Marrying-Up’ 79
Seonok Lee
vi Contents
5 Interactions with Samaritans from the East: Emotion and
Korean nurses in Germany 98
Yonson Ahn
6 Gendering ‘Return’: Korean American Femininities in
South Korea 120
Stephen Cho Suh
7 Towards a Multicultural Knowledge Economy? Emerging
Issues in Tech Incubation for Immigrants in South Korea 140
Felicia Istad
PART III
Interplay of Identities in the Mediascape 157
8 Neocolonial Ambivalence and Race in 내일 지구가
망해버렸으면 좋겠어 (So Not Worth It) 159
David C. Oh
9 Construction of a ‘Western’ Model Minority on South
Korean Television: Portrayals of Germans and Germany in
내 친구의 집은 어딘가 (Where Is My Friend’s Home?) 176
Tanja Eydam
10 Social Media as Vernacular Politics: YouTube Channels by
North Korean Defectors in South Korea 196
Jinhee Park
Index 214
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure
1.1 South Korean Humanitarian NGO Engagement 21
Table
7.1 Interview Participants 145
CONTRIBUTORS
Yonson Ahn is Professor, Chair of Korean Studies and Deputy Executive
Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of East Asian Studies (IZO) at the
Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany. She received her PhD degree in
Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Warwick in 2000. Her work
centers on transnational migration and gender including the Korean diaspora.
Another focus of her research is sexual violence in conflict zones with a focus
on the body, sexuality and identity of Korean ‘comfort women’ and Japanese
soldiers during WWII and beyond. Her work has been published in a range
of journals including Korean Studies and European Journal of Women's Studies.
Her recent monograph is entitled ‘Whose Comfort: Body, Sexuality and Iden
tities of Korean “Comfort Women” and Japanese Soldiers during WWII’,2020.
In addition, she has edited a volume entitled Transnational Mobility in and out
of Korea, 2020.
Sabine Burghart, PhD, is University Lecturer and Academic Director of the
Master’s Degree Programme in East Asian Studies at the University of Turku,
Finland. Prior to joining the Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) in Turku,
she was lecturer and researcher at the Department of East Asian Studies of
the University of Vienna. She holds a doctoral degree in East Asian economy
and society. Her current research interest concerns South Korea’s ODA
initiatives and global Saemaul Undong projects. Her recent work was published
in e.g. Forum for Development Studies, Asia Europe Journal, and the Journal of
Contemporary African Studies.
Tanja Eydam is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the department
of Korean studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her background
is in literary and cultural theory as well as empirical linguistics, Korean
List of contributors ix
studies, ethnology, and gender studies. Her research interests surround
national identity, migration, and power relations in South Korean society and
media. In her doctoral thesis, she examines how gender, race, and class
intersect in the depiction of Germans in popular Korean television shows and
what this means for the construction of a modern South Korean national
identity in a globalized, yet hierarchical world.
Felicia Istad is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at Korea University. Her
dissertation examines start-up programs in South Korea and intersects policy,
migration, and entrepreneurship. Felicia has a Master of Science in Manage
ment and Human Resources from LSE and a Bachelor of Arts in Korean from
SOAS, University of London.
Seonok Lee is a lecturer in the Department of Minority and Multilingualism
at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). She received her PhD in
Sociology at the University of British Columbia (Canada) in 2019. Her doctoral
dissertation examines how the production of race and racial hierarchies is deeply
intertwined with economic migration and global capitalism in contemporary
East Asia.
Irina Lyan is an Assistant Professor and the Head of the Korean Studies
Program at the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. She is the recipient of prestigious scholarships and awards,
including visiting postdoctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the University of Oxford. Her
research deals with South Korea’s economic miracle, known as ‘the Miracle
on the Han River’, and the cultural miracle, known as ‘the Korean Wave’, or
Hallyu. Irina has published several articles and book chapters on national
images, imagery, and imagination, and their impact on the global positioning
of Korea.
David Oh is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts at Ramapo Col
lege of New Jersey. He is the author of Second-Generation Korean American
Adolescent Identity and Media: Diasporic Identifications and Whitewashing the
Movies: White Subjectivity and Asian Erasure in U.S. Film Culture. He has
also co-written Navigating White News: Asian American Journalists at Work
(forthcoming) and edited Mediating the Korean Other: Representations and
Discourses of Difference in the Post/Neocolonial Nation-State (forthcoming).
Dr. Oh writes about Asian/American representation in US media culture,
representations of alterity in Korean media culture, and transnational audi
ence reception of Korean media. He serves on eight Editorial Boards in
communication, cultural studies, and media studies, and he was a Fulbright
Senior Scholar to South Korea in 2018–19 at Hankuk University of Foreign
Studies.
