South Korea and the Returning Korean Chinese Melody Chia- Wen lu and shin hyunjoon
Since the 1980s the Republic of Korea (henceforth ROK or South Korea) has transformed itself from a country of emigration to one of immigra-tion, and from a monoethnic country to a multicultural society open to the world. In defining and redefining its relation to the world and the South Korean nationhood in this context, the South Korean state has also corre-spondingly made regulation over the Korean diaspora’s mobility an issue for policy deliberation. In particular, the notions of return and homecom-ing have been strongly invoked in both government policies and civil- society actions regarding overseas Korean communities. For instance, the orchestrated family- reunion programs in the late 1980s, the “hometown- visit visa” introduced in the 1990s, and the Overseas Koreans Act in 1999 are all aimed at welcoming some diasporic groups “home” while discour-aging others from returning. But on the other hand, the term return has not been explicitly used in policies. The government’s active engagement in ethnic Koreans’ homecoming without articulating the meanings of return precisely signifies the tensions between nationalism and globalization, and
the contradictions between ethno- nationalism and civic nationalism. This chapter sets out to disentangle this very ambiguity.
The South Korean state simultaneously adopts three strategies to man-age return migration to its shores in ways commensurable with its state- centric globalization agenda. The ethnicizing strategy highlights bio-logically determined ethnicity as an overriding principle in mobilizing resources and defining memberships. Capitalizing in this chapter indi-cates the rationality that stresses economic value as the paramount con-cern, for instance by differentiating groups according to their skill levels and potential contributions to economic competitiveness. Nationalizing implies the recognition of civic and social contractual relations between state and citizens internally, and of other nations’ sovereignty externally.
There are obviously various discrepancies between the three strategies, and tensions between them have shaped the interaction between the South Korean state and the returning diaspora. In the end the ethnicizing and capitalizing strategies seem to be accommodated into the nationalizing principle of structuration.
In order to disentangle the intertwinement of these three strategies, this chapter focuses on the case of the Korean Chinese (Chaoxianzu in Chi-nese and Joseonjok in Korean)—citizens of the People’s Republic of China of Korean descent. Korean Chinese are the numerically largest overseas Korean population, and their relation with South Korea has probably been the most complex, as evidenced by the policy changes and public contes-tations related to their return at different stages. Following the historical vicissitudes, we organize the chapter chronologically. We start by reviewing how Korean Chinese, as a population and as a category, emerged from the century- long history of mobility. The self- identity of the Korean Chinese and their relation to China, South Korea, and other ethnic Koreans were conditioned by the Japanese colonial rule, communist revolutions, and the Cold War geopolitics in East Asia. As a result, their return to South Korea has always been a complex and ambiguous project from the begin-ning. We then discuss how the South Korean government encouraged the conditional return of ethnic Koreans in the 1980s as part of the Korean vision of globalization. This is followed by two sections that examine the logic behind the exclusion of the Korean Chinese by the 1999 Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans (henceforth, Overseas Koreans Act or oKa),1 and the subsequent contestation and amendment in the early 2000s. We conclude with an analysis of how the new policies,
though more inclusively based on ethnic ties, remain differentiating, be-cause they are based on national residency and skill levels.
The Making of the Korean Chinese: A History of Mobility and Return Korean Chinese occupy a unique position in the Korean diaspora due to the specific history of and the politics in East Asia. Korean Chinese today are descendants of Koreans who migrated to China from the middle of the nineteenth century when the Qing dynasty opened up Manchuria in northeast China for Korean immigration. The famine in the late 1860s fur-ther quickened outflows from the peninsula. The Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910 and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911 at-tracted many Koreans to Manchuria to develop overseas bases of resistance against the Japanese. After the Japanese annexed the region and created the puppet Manchukuo government (1932–45), they brought in a large number of Koreans to serve in their colonial projects, including agricultural and infrastructural developments (Chen X. 2005).
After Japan’s defeat at the end of the Second World War in 1945, some Koreans in Manchuria returned to the Korean peninsula, but a sizeable number chose to stay and eventually became citizens of the People’s Re-public of China (PRC). During the Korean War (1950–53), some Korean Chinese participated as soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army against U.S.- supported South Korea (Choi 2001, 124; Jeon 2004). In 1954, ethnic Koreans (Chaoxianzu) were designated as one of the fifty- five ethnic mi-norities of the PRC, and in 1955 the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefec-ture was instituted in the border region between China and North Korea.
As a result of the PRC’s ethnic- minority policy, Korean Chinese today enjoy a relatively high degree of cultural autonomy in the PRC, especially in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. For instance, they are free to choose between schools where Korean is the first teaching medium and other Mandarin schools that offer bilingual education.2 Within the Korean diaspora, the Korean Chinese are the only ones who receive formal edu-cation in Korean and are fluent in both Korean and Chinese, spoken as well as written.
Throughout the Cold War period the contacts between Korean Chinese and South Korea were very limited. While South Korea was portrayed in China as a reactionary capitalist zougou (running dog) state of U.S. im-perialism, Korean Chinese were regarded as traitors of the Korean nation in South Korea. They were seen this way because they fled the fatherland
in times of hardship, collaborated with the Japanese imperial govern-ment, and, above all, participated in the Korean War in support of North Korea. Until the 1980s, Korean Chinese were thus seen as allies of North Korea. That affinity is still reflected in the name Joseonjok, a translation of the Chinese name Chaoxianzu, in that the term Chaoxian (associated with North Korea) was chosen instead of Hanguo (associated with South Korea). In the 1960s the Chinese government decided to standardize the Korean- language education for Korean Chinese and adopted the Joseoneo dialect used in North Korea instead of Hangugeo used in South Korea. As a result, Joseonjok in South Korea speak North Korean–accented Korean, which is easily recognizable in South Korea. As Park Jung- Sun and Paul Y.
Chang put it: “It is not simply a matter between an ethnic homeland and its diaspora, but among two ethnic homelands and their diaspora groups that are divided along ideological lines” (2005, 8).
The mid- 1980s marked the beginning of direct contacts between Joseonjok and South Korea, with family reunions arranged by the ROK government and endorsed by the PRC. This early wave of cross- border mobility was officially called “hometown visit” by the ROK government.
Since there was no direct flight between China and South Korea at that time, the Korean Chinese had to travel to Hong Kong first before transit-ing to a flight to Seoul. The Korean Chinese were treated as quasi- citizens by the ROK government, partly due to its ethno- nationalist perception and partly because of the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Korean Chinese were not required to produce passports or apply for visas for entering South Korea; instead they were issued travel certificates or entry permits.3 After diplomatic relations between PRC and ROK were established in 1992, large numbers of Korean Chinese migrated to South Korea in a short period of time, partly because of the introduc-tion of direct transportaintroduc-tion between the two countries. The normalizaintroduc-tion of bilateral relations also meant that the Korean Chinese were regarded as fully fledged PRC nationals and were required to travel to South Korea with passports and visas. Most of the Korean Chinese visited on the short- term visa (C type) for the purposes of a hometown visit. A small number were recruited as workers under the official Industrial Technical Training Program (iTTp) (see Xiang, chapter 4)
In order to be eligible for return with the hometown- visit visa, Korean Chinese needed to establish that they were born in the Korean Peninsula or had parents or siblings who were currently ROK nationals. Applicants typically did so by producing household registrations and birth
certifi-cates issued before 1948 in the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, or Japan.
Suspicious that some of these documents might be fabricated, the ROK government set an age limit stipulating that only those who were aged sixty or above were eligible to apply for the hometown- visit visa, assuming that they were more likely to be genuinely born in Korea. Exceptions were given to younger offspring of principal applicants who needed company during travel for health reasons. The age limit was also meant to prevent the abuse of the hometown- visit visa as a backdoor for labor migration. In reality, however, many older Korean Chinese and their accompanying sons stayed on in South Korea and worked without being properly documented.
A small number of them were naturalized. They referred to themselves as
“returned compatriots in South Korea.”4
Precisely because of the wide and deep connections between Korean Figure 8.1. The Xinhua News Propaganda Billboard, a notice board in Garibong, Seoul, is almost identical to the once- ubiquitous billboards of the Xinhua News Agency in China that were dedicated to disseminate government policies and display party slogans, but the Xinhua News in the photo is a privately run Chinese- language newspaper that caters to migrants in South Korea. Migrants’ mimicry of the state in public representation is another aspect of how transnational mobility is nationalized. (Courtesy of Melody Chia-wen Lu [2009])
Chinese and South Korea, the return flows soon reached levels beyond that envisioned by the South Korean government, and brought many other actors into the picture. Despite the migration control imposed by the PRC and ROK governments, these return flows became rather “dis-orderly” (luan in Chinese). As summed up by Ms. Jin, a Korean Chinese turned Korean citizen who worked in a state- owned enterprise in north-east China before migrating to South Korea in her early sixties in the late 1990s: “Joseonjok came in numbers and in so many ways. Simple over-stayers used their original names; others were smuggled, using fake pass-ports; and you have bogus household registrations with bogus parents, sham marriages, bogus tourists, bogus students[,] . . . anything you can imagine. Han Chinese also came in these ways.”5
Commercial migration brokerage was sought to facilitate various types Figure 8.2. Korean Chinese migrants in front of a day- job agency in Daerim, a district in Seoul with a large concentration of Korean Chinese. These Korean Chinese have low status as compared to educated returnees, but they are privileged as compared to nonethnic Korean migrants because only ethnic Koreans on h- 2 visas can work in the informal labor market. Ethnic Koreans from other countries also formed their own communities in different parts of Seoul. (Courtesy of Melody Chia-wen Lu [2009])
of mobility, regardless of whether the person was potentially a genuine returnee as defined by the South Korean government. The brokerage fee could amount to ten million Korean won (roughly usd 8,500), which put many migrating Korean Chinese in heavy debt. It would take at least three years of full- time work in South Korea to repay the debt. Many overstayed.
According to the official statistics, as of 2002 it was estimated that there were 84,793 Korean Chinese residing in South Korea, 79,737 of whom did not have legal status (Seol and Skrentny 2009, 155).
In sum, the social group of Korean Chinese emerged from multilay-ered histories of imperialism, national and socialist revolutions, and wars.
Korean Chinese never had a fixed identity, and in the early stages, they took return more as an economic opportunity than as a response to ideo-logical and political concerns. This also explains the chaotic conditions in the 1990s. This situation changed after 1999 when the South Korean gov-ernment attempted to define its relation to overseas Koreans and made re-turn a politically charged and ideologically significant subject. In order to understand this change, we need to first examine the South Korean state’s perception of return.
Return as Part of “Korean Globalization”
Overseas Koreans have been an important concern of the South Korean state and public for various reasons. It was a dominant ideology in South Korea since its existence that the nation (minjok) ought to be the single ethnic Korean community consisting of the north, the south, and the di-aspora, and the community’s divide was due to Koreans’ subjugated posi-tion in the world. The naposi-tion must be reunited again. The eventual return of overseas ethnic Koreans was seen as critical for addressing injustices of the past, as well as for helping to establish a more open and inclusive society for the future.
During the Cold War period, Koreans in China and the states of the former Soviet Union (or the present Commonwealth of Independent States, or Cis) were strategic targets of the South Korean state’s “politi-cal work,” aimed at infiltrating them, cultivating their loyalty, and even turning them into intelligence agents. Starting from the late 1980s when the iron curtain was gradually lifted, they were embraced as part of the transnational (ethnic) Korean community (hanminjok gongdongche) and included in official statistics as Overseas Koreans.6 However, there was no official definition of Overseas Koreans until the oKa was promulgated.
A turning point came on June 14, 1998. On his return flight from a state visit to the United States, the then newly elected president, Kim Dae Jung, instructed his aides to draft a law governing Overseas Koreans. While a primary objective of that trip was to decide the international interventions needed to resolve the financial crisis that hit South Korea hard in 1997, it was also a diplomatic visit to seek the support of the Overseas Korean community. As a result of the president’s instruction, the oKa was passed on December 3, 1999. The oKa regarded overseas Koreans as members of the (South) Korean nation- state by granting them various residential and social rights that were compatible with those of ROK citizens, such as long- term residence, property ownership, participation in medical insurance, and financial transactions (Articles 10–16). Park and Chang (2005, 3) call these entitlements “quasi- citizenship.”
It is not the offer of quasi- citizenship but the definition of Overseas Koreans that created controversy. The oKa defined Overseas Koreans as consisting of two groups. There were nationals of the ROK who obtained the right of permanent residence in a foreign country or were permanently residing in a foreign country. And there were “Koreans with a foreign na-tionality” (oKa, Article 2, Definitions), referring to those who had previ-ously held the nationality of the ROK and their lineal descendants. This definition is at once unusually broad and unusually narrow. It is broad be-cause ROK nationals who resided overseas were defined as Overseas Kore-ans, thus differentiated from citizens who were actually based in South Korea, even though they held ROK passports. The main concern was that Korean nationals overseas did not fulfill their civic duties, such as paying taxes and serving in the military, and thus should not automatically enjoy the same rights as local citizens do (see Kalick 2009). In this sense the act expressed a deep civic nationalism that regarded formal membership alone as insufficient for determining one’s status and rights in relation to the nation- state, emphasizing as well actual services that were being ren-dered to the country.
The oKa definition is unusually narrow in the sense that, by limiting Overseas Koreans to those who possessed or had possessed ROK citizen-ship, it effectively excluded a large number of ethnic Koreans who had never had any formal political ties to the country. It categorically ruled out North Korea nationals. As the vast majority of the Korean Chinese left the Korean Peninsula before the establishment of the ROK in 1948 and never had ROK citizenship, they were by definition no longer Overseas Koreans despite their strong kinship ties with Korean nationals and the fact that
many regarded Korea as their second home. This definition also excluded those in the Cis countries for the same reason. By comparison, Koreans in Western countries, most of whom migrated recently, fell into the category of Overseas Koreans. A large number of Koreans in Japan also left Korea before 1948, but were never granted Japanese citizenship and remained as Korean (either as ROK or DPRK) citizens. The act thus created a divide between Koreans residing in developed countries (primarily the United States, Japan, and countries in Europe) and those residing in developing countries, resulting in what Seol Dong- Hoon Seol and John D. Skrentny (2009) call “hierarchical nationhood.” In other words, different Korean diasporic groups were treated differently, according to their nation of resi-dence and citizenship (see Lee C. 2003).
Academic publications and public commentaries in South Korea and overseas suggested that the act adopted the particular definition of Over-seas Koreans partially for the purpose of excluding the Korean Chinese and Koreans in the Cis (Jeanyoung Lee 2002a, 2002b; Park and Chang 2005). There are a number of possible reasons for this. The first and most straightforward explanation is that Korean Chinese constituted the largest number of Overseas Koreans who were likely to stay permanently, unlike Korean Americans and other Koreans residing in Western countries who were not likely to return to South Korea or acquire ROK citizenship. The sheer size of the Korean Chinese population, in other words, would pose a demographic and social challenge. Second, in the highly sensitive geo-political context of Northeast Asia, the idea of building a global Korean ethnic nation could potentially cause anxiety among South Korea’s neigh-bors. It was alleged that China was wary of separatist movements among major ethnic groups within its borders, and the Korean Chinese’s blood and cultural (language) ties with the two Koreas were deemed a threat (Jeanyoung Lee 2002b; Park and Chang 2005).7
The last and probably the most important reason is that Korean Chi-nese do not fit well in South Korea’s vision of globalization. When Presi-dent Kim Young- Sam institutionalized the nation- state’s relation with the diaspora, the purpose was no longer for readdressing historical injustice;
it was to embrace globalization (segyehwa in Korean). As Shin Gi- Wook (2006) points out, Kim Young- Sam’s segyehwa drive was in essence to re-form South Korea’s political and economic systems in order to face the challenges of the rapidly changing global economy. The primary goal was to increase and maintain the nation’s competitiveness, and globalization