Making and Faking Kinship: Marriage and Labor Migration between China and South Korea

279 Pages·2011·1.592 MB·English

by  Caren Freeman

Making and Faking Kinship

Making and Faking Kinship
Marriage and Labor Migration between
China and South Korea
Caren Freeman
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
The Korea Foundation has provided fi nancial assistance for the
undertaking of this publication project.
Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in
writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University
Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2011 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freeman, Caren, 1968–
Making and faking kinship : marriage and labor migration between
China and South Korea / Caren Freeman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-4958-1 (alk. paper)
1. Intercountry marriage—Korea (South) 2. Intercountry marriage—
China. 3. Women immigrants—Korea (South) 4. Foreign workers,
Chinese—Korea (South) 5. Rural families—Korea (South) 6. Family
policy—Korea (South) I. Title.
HQ1032.F74 2011
306.85'2095195—dc23 2011022279
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible
suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of
its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and
acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed
of nonwood fi bers. For further information, visit our website at www.
cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my parents

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Notes on Language and Translations xiii
Introduction 1
Part I. Migrant Brides and the Pact of Gender, Kinship, Nation
1. Choso˘njok Maidens and Farmer Bachelors 31
2. Brides and Brokers under Suspicion 69
3. Gender Logics in Confl ict 109
Part II. Migrant Workers, Counterfeit Kinship, and Split Families
4. Faking Kinship 153
5. Flexible Families, Fragile Marriages 193
6. A Failed National Experiment? 227
References 245
Index 257

Acknowledgments
This book was more than a decade in the making. Over this long pe-
riod, I received a tremendous amount of support—fi nancial, intellectual,
logistical, emotional, and familial—from many different sources. The
people to whom I owe the greatest thanks remain anonymous in order to
protect their privacy: the Choso˘njok and South Korean families and indi-
viduals who gave so generously of their time and let me into their hearts
and homes. I am especially grateful to my host families in Harbin, Mudan-
jiang, and Creek Road Village who cared for me as if I were one of their
own. Without them this project would not have been possible.
While in the fi eld, I was sustained by many friendships, new and old.
I thank Shin Seungnam (“O˘nni”) for sharing her home with me in Seoul,
answering my incessant questions, and helping me track down informa-
tion related to my research. Jung Hyeouk assisted me in countless ways as a
close friend and confi dante. I am also grateful to Shin Jongjin for his readi-
ness to help me, whether in Seoul or in Charlottesville. I could not have
secured and carried out interviews with dozens of South Korean farmers
x Acknowledgments
and their Choso˘njok brides without the assistance of my patient and in-
trepid research assistants, Kim Kyo˘ngu˘n and Kim Chiyo˘ng, and, on my
fi rst rural excursion, Kim Hyunjoo.
I am grateful to the granting agencies that provided the funding I
needed to conduct eighteen months of fi eld research. USIA Fulbright
generously funded my fi rst year of research in South Korea. The execu-
tive director of Fulbright, Horace H. Underwood, eased my entry into the
fi eld and facilitated communication and camaraderie among the Fulbright
Junior Researchers in Seoul. Support from Fulbright-Hays, SSRC-IDRF,
and the Wenner-Gren Foundation enabled me to carry out the second
phase of research in Heilongjiang, China, and a follow-up study in South
Korea. Keith Clemenger of the SSRC was instrumental in helping me ob-
tain sponsorship from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in
Beijing after I was rebuffed by Yanbian University offi cials. CASS in turn
helped me establish an affi liation with the Heilongjiang Provincial Acad-
emy of Social Sciences in Harbin. Professors Liu Shuang and Bu Ping of
the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences extended a warm welcome
and helped me get acclimated in Harbin.
For the formative stages of this project, I am indebted to advisers at
University of Virginia. Susan McKinnon fi rst inspired me to write about
transnational kinship. She has challenged me every step of the way to
deepen my analysis and sharpen the theoretical basis of my arguments.
For his exacting readings of the earliest drafts of each chapter, I am grate-
ful to John Shepherd whose encouragement has kept me focused over the
years. I also thank Fred Damon who lent his enthusiasm to my research in
East Asia. I always take to heart his thought-provoking queries, even if I
fall short in my responses to them. Finally, I posthumously recognize Dell
Hymes for his expert editorial assistance and warm encouragement.
Throughout the process of writing and revision, I benefi ted from the
opportunity to present my ideas and receive critical feedback as a partici-
pant on numerous conference panels. Sections of this book were presented
at the 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007, and 2008 meetings of the American Anthro-
pological Association and the 2001 and 2010 meetings of the Association
for Asian Studies. These forums helped me crystallize my thoughts for
chapters 2 through 5. Some of the ethnographic vignettes in this book were
published earlier in Nicole Constable’s edited volume Cross-Border Mar-
riages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia (2005), which grew out of