The indistinct status of the Zainichi has meant that, since the late 1940s, two ethnic Korean associations, the Chongryun (pro-North) and the Mindan (pro-South) have been vying for political loyalty from the Zainichi, with both groups initially opposing their assimilation in Japan. Unlike the Korean diasporas living in Russia, China or the US, the Zainichi have become sharply divided along political lines as a result. Myung Ja Kim examines Japan's changing national policies towards the Zainichi in order to understand why this group has not been fully integrated into Japan. Through the prism of this ethnically Korean community, the book reveals the dynamics of alliances and alignments in East Asia, including the rise of China as an economic superpower, the security threat posed by North Korea and the diminishing alliance between Japan and the US. Taking a post-war historical perspective, the research reveals why the Zainichi are vital to Japan's state policy revisionist aims to increase its power internationally and how they were used to increase the country's geopolitical leverage.With a focus on International Relations, this book provides an important analysis of the mechanisms that lie behind nation-building policy, showing the conditions controlling a host state's treatment of diasporic groups.

More than one-half million people of Korean descent reside in Japan today—the largest ethnic minority in a country often assumed to be homogeneous. This timely, interdisciplinary volume blends original empirical research with the vibrant field of diaspora studies to understand the complicated history, identity, and status of the Korean minority in Japan. An international group of scholars explores commonalities and contradictions in the Korean diasporic experience, touching on such issues as citizenship and belonging, the personal and the political, and homeland and hostland.

This book traces the origins and transformations of a people-the Zainichi, or Koreans “residing in Japan.” Using a wide range of arguments and evidence-historical and comparative, political and social, literary and pop-cultural-John Lie reveals the social and historical conditions that gave rise to Zainichi identity, while exploring its vicissitudes and complexity. In the process he sheds light on the vexing topics of diaspora, migration, identity, and group formation.

Shedding new light on how the histories of zainichi Koreans have been written, consumed, and discussed, this book addresses the roots of postwar debates concerning the wartime experiences of Koreans in Japan. Providing an overview of the complicated historiography, it explores the experiences of Koreans located at Ground Zero in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the history and processes that coerced Korean women into military prostitution. These debates and controversies continue to attract attention regionally and globally, and as this book demonstrates, they are deeply embedded in ideas dating back decades earlier. By tracing the roots of these debates in historical writings from local history groups to zainichi and Japanese scholars, we may see how written histories have been used for particular social, political, or cultural purposes, and how they have lent support to certain interpretations and memories of past events across the political spectrum. Interdisciplinary at its core, Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan will appeal to audiences including those interested in modern Japanese and Korean history, historiography and methodology, and memory studies.

Linking autobiographic writings by Korean women in Japan and the United States and the author's ethnographic insights, Writing Selves in Diaspora presents an original, profound, and powerful intervention—both literary and anthropological—in our understanding of life in diaspora, being female, and forming selves. Each chapter offers unique and original discussion on the intersection between gender and diaspora on one hand and the process of the self's formation on the other. Chapters are mutually engaging, yet have independent themes to explore: language and self, romantic love, exile and totalitarianism, the ethic of care, and critique of medicalization of identity. Through the introduction of women's lives and introspection and interpretation accorded to them, this book delivers an unprecedented text of candor and courage. This book will have appeal for both academic and intellectually-informed lay readers interested in gender, self, and diaspora.

This edited volume analyzes the Korean diaspora across the world and traces the meaning and the performance of homeland. The contributors explore different types of discourses among Korean diaspora across the world, such as personal/familial narratives, oral/life histories, public discourses, and media discourses. They also examine the notion of “space” to diasporic experiences, arguing meanings of space/place for Korean diaspora are increasingly multifaceted.

"In this book - based on a major conference sponsored by the Overseas Koreans Foundation (OKF) in Seoul in October 2002 - experts hold up South Korea as one of the most dramatic examples of participation in the global economy, having gone from being a poor, underdeveloped country fewer than 40 years ago to becoming a postwar economic success story. This report also looks at South Korea's role as a regional trading partner and its present and future relations with north Korea" -- BACK COVER.

The Korean Diaspora in Japan is a legacy of Japan's colonization of Korea in the first half of the 20th century and has always been the largest group of foreign residents in an otherwise ethnically homogenous Japan. A major issue is the role that Koreans in Japan play in supporting North Korea. Although a very small segment of the population, Koreans affiliated with the organization known as Chosen Soren have figured prominently in the triangular relationship between Japan, North Korea, and South Korea over the past 50 years. During the Cold War, Chosen Soren activities in support of North Korea severely strained Japan-South Korea relations that were already plagued by lingering animosity from the colonial period. For many years, Chosen Soren was the conduit through which Japan and North Korea attempted to expand trade and eventually establish formal diplomatic ties. However, Japan-North Korea relations have deteriorated in the post-Cold War era due to North Korea's growing military threat to Japan, and most recently, North Korea's admission that it had been systematically kidnapping Japanese citizens. Studying the history of Chosen Soren will result in a better understanding of the complexities underlying Japan's current foreign policy toward North Korea.

Winner, ASA Book Award on Asia/Transnational (2017) This book compares the Korean diasporic groups in Japan and the United States. It highlights the contrasting adaptation of Koreans in Japan and the United States, and illuminates how the destinies of immigrants who originally belonged to the same ethnic/national collectivity diverge depending upon destinations and how they are received in a certain state and society within particular historical contexts. The author finds that the mode of incorporation (a specific combination of contextual factors), rather than ethnic ‘culture’ and ‘race,’ plays a decisive role in determining the fates of these Korean immigrant groups. In other words, what matters most for immigrants’ integration is not their particular cultural background or racial similarity to the dominant group, but the way they are received by the host state and other institutions. Thus, this book is not just about Korean immigrants; it is also about how contexts of reception including different conceptualizations of ‘race’ in relation to nationhood affect the adaptation of immigrants from the same ethnic/national origin.

By drawing attention to mobility in subjectivity - to the contested nature of subjectivity in the processes of mobility - this volume seeks to connect the experiences of the Korean diaspora with those of the homeland, thereby enriching an understanding of Korean nationalism from its flip side.