Ethnic Chinese (Hwagyo) 1 identity formation and transformation in South Korea

Abstract

Ethnic Chinese residents (Hawgyo) in South Korea have gone through several stages of identity formation and transformation, from being sojourners, to marginalized and ignored Taiwanese, and to being back to Chinese. This chapter explain ethnic Chinese identity formation and transformation as a function of South Korea’s changing nation-building strategies. For the newly independent South Korean state, the economic power and capital possessed by the ethnic Chinese was a serious threat to the sovereignty of the state. Relying on a nationalistic discourse on economic development and national independence, the South Korea state implemented repressive and discriminatory policies toward ethnic Chinese During the industrialization period (1960s–mid-1990s). But as the South Korean state has pursued global/neoliberal nation-building strategies (late 1990s–present), its policies started to treat ethnic Chinese residents as a means to attract the financial resources of the Chinese diaspora and to take advantage of the increasing economic power of China. The ethnic Chinese in South Korean reminds us of how creating and maintaining an ethnically homogenous South Korea required acts of othering, excluding, and forgetting, especially on the part of the modern South Korean state apparatus and demonstrates how the logics of othering and exclusion have shifted as South Korea transformed from a fragile nascent nation-state to one of the economic powerhouses of the world.