Mobile Subjects: Boundaries and Identities in the Modern Korean Diaspora

From the publisher’s website:

The essays in this collection offer a rich and complex picture of changing circumstances on the Korean peninsula over the past one-and-a-half centuries. 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.

Mobile Subjects draws attention to modern Korean experiences with mobility, experiences that played an important role in forming Korean constructions of an ethnonationalistic discourse of territoriality. 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. The essays in this collection, by focusing on mobility, offer a rich and complex picture of changing circumstances on the Korean peninsula over the course of the past one-and-a-half centuries. They underscore the point that there have been intimate connections between national constructions and spatial mobility. They also demonstrate the intellectual fruitfulness of an approach to the peninsula that brings in the continental as well as maritime dimensions of the Korean diaspora.

Contributors

Jane Cho (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a visiting lecturer in history at the University of California, Berkeley. Her current research interests focus on how immigration affects practices surrounding funerals, weddings, and childbearing within the Korean diasporic community.
W. Taejin Hwang (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a lecturer at the Underwood International College of Yonsei University in South Korea. Her research focuses on Cold War transpacific migrations of institutions and peoples, and she is currently examining American postwar developmentalism in Asia.
Kwangmin Kim (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and postdoctoral associate at the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. His research focuses on the role of the two global currents of the early modern world—colonialism and transnational trade—in transforming East Asia.
Miriam Kingsberg (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her book, Moral Nation: Modern Japan and Narcotics in Global History (forthcoming, UC Press), examines illegal drugs as the foundation of a global consensus on the nature of political legitimacy in nations and empires. She is currently researching the history of anthropology, archaeology, and national identity in twentieth-century Japan.
Sungyun Lim (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research interests include the histories of modern Korea, the Japanese empire, women, and law. Her dissertation, “Enemies of the Lineage: Widows and Customary Rights in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945,” examines the transformation of Korean family customs under Japanese colonial rule.
Yishi Liu (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a lecturer at the School of Architecture in Tsinghua University in China. He is researching modern Chinese architectural history and has published articles in Architectural Journal (Jian zhu xue bao) and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review.
Ivo Plsek is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Waseda University.  His dissertation project investigates the role of political elites in the reconciliation politics of Japan and Germany after 1945.
Wen-hsin Yeh is Walter and Elise Haas Chair Professor in Asian Studies and the Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair in History at the University of California, Berkeley.  An authority on twentieth-century Chinese history, Yeh is author or editor of fifteen books and numerous articles examining aspects of Republican history, Chinese modernity, and the origins of communism and related subjects.

Contents

Introduction | Wen-hsin Yeh

1. Korean Migration in Nineteenth-Century Manchuria: A Global Theme in Modern Asian History | Kwangmin Kim
2. Status and Smoke: Koreans in Japan’s Opium Empire | Miriam Kingsberg
3. Women on the Loose: Household System and Family Anxiety in Colonial Korea | Sungyun Lim
4. An Indispensable Edge: American Military Camptowns in Postwar Korea | W. Taejin Hwang
5. U.S.-Educated Elites and the Phenomenon of Study Abroad | Jane Cho
6. Homes on the Border: Ethnicity, Identity, and Everyday Space in Yanbian | Yishi Liu
7. Exit, Voice, and Refugees: A Case Study to Understanding Political Stability and Emigration in North | Ivo Plsek