Disrupting the Nation-ness in Postcolonial East Asia: Discourses of Jong Tae-Se as a Zainichi Korean Sport Celebrity

Abstract

This study explores how a zainichi (residing in Japan) Korean athlete reveals often-concealed postcolonial and post-Cold War tensions revolving around ethnic essentialism and nationalism in East Asia. The focus of the study is Jong Tae-se, a third generation zainichi Korean football player who has become a star in Japan, North Korea and South Korea. By examining media representations and online responses to Jong in South Korea as well as his autobiographies written in both Korean and Japanese, it is explained how Jong, as a zainichi Korean sport celebrity, both represents the arbitrariness of nation-ness and reproduces unresolved geopolitical and historical issues of postcolonial East Asia. Whereas his mobility, multilingual capability and fluid belongingness may signal changing dynamics of national-ness in East Asia, this analysis also reveals that his media discourses keep him tethered to anti-Japan and anti-communist sentiments. Such vicissitudes of the discourses around him attest that colonial and Cold War memories and historical wounds continue to be conjured in contemporary East Asia. Ultimately, this study discusses both the possibilities and the limits of a zainichi Korean subjectivity as a de-colonial tool for destabilizing national, colonial, and Cold War ideologies.