Abstract This article examines the case of the Koryo saram, the ethnic Koreans living in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, to reflect on how notions of diasporas, community, and identity have changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It contends that the Koryo saram are best understood through the lenses of diasporic conditions…
Abstract Under rising insecurity and precarity in the neoliberal labor market, Korean workers have protested mass job cuts and deteriorating working conditions. Although their grievances originate from the regions and workplaces where they are employed or laid off, the protest sites often move to major political landmarks in Seoul, the nation’s capital, with demands for…
Abstract In recent years digital populism has emerged in South Korea as a new type of political behavior, marked by the political use of the internet as both a form of political participation and an instrument of mobilization. Technological advances and the diffusion of social media have enabled social polarization, rooted in post-Asian Financial Crisis…
Abstract Developments in mobility have brought about a phase in which people across the planet are able to partake in movement. Inhabitants of islands are no exception. The purpose of this study is to explore ways to analyze the problem of (im)mobility depicted in cinema through the example of the film My Dream Class (2018)…
Abstract This paper explores Japanese mobile imperialism as supported by the colonial mobility system and examines an emancipatory imagination, which enables the opening of a fissure in the system, by approaching Kim Namch’ŏn’s short story, “To Chŏllyŏng (Ch. Tieling 鐵嶺),” from the new mobilities paradigm. It argues that, via modern mobility technologies, “sociality,” i.e., the…
Abstract While the current developments in the peace processes allow us to imagine the Korean Demilitarized Zone will acquire more thriving mobilities in the future, this article seeks to characterize this unique space as an absolutely different place; a “heterotopia” as suggested by Michel Foucault. In the course of the discussion, which focuses on (non)human…
Abstract This paper attempts to find ways to utilize the new mobilities paradigm in the field of education in Korea by presenting the case of the Mobility Humanities Education Center established by the Academy of Mobility Humanities of Konkuk University. Education of mobility humanities enables people to realize how mobility shapes and changes culture and…
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanatory account of the role of emotions in the trade dispute between Japan and South Korea which started in July 2019. Building on an integrated approach to the study of emotions in international relations, it argues that the collective experience of emotions in situations of…
Abstract In December 2015, South Korea and Japan reached an agreement on resolving the “comfort women” issue that sparked media interests. This article analyses how the South Korean and Japanese media covered comfort women in 2013–2018. The study collects over 20,000 newspaper articles and analyses distinctive media framings in liberal, conservative and leftist newspapers in…
Abstract In scholarship about the South Korean party system, the two main political parties are seen as organizations with a certain degree of continuity despite constant party name changes, mergers and splits, but, at the same time, as lacking insti- tutionalization because of those constant changes. This article argues that, after the democratic transition, an…