Forbidden Homeland: Divided Belonging on the China-KoreaBorder

Abstract

This article explores the old Korean Chinese communist party members’ rearticulation and re-remembering of the traumatic ethnic past and ethnic politics in the wake of the Korean Wind – the massive transnational migration from Yanbian, the Korean Chinese autonomous prefecture (China) to the former enemy homeland, South Korea. The ethnographic analysis is twofold. First, I examine the influence of the Korean Wind, a unique type of economic reform and open economy that Korean Chinese have experienced as an ethnic minority, in destabilizing and reconfiguring their ethnic identity. Second, I analyze the divided sense of belonging of these Korean Chinese Communists as they discuss transnational migration to South Korea as an economic phenomenon while remaining politically faithful to socialism and China. I argue that the construction of divided belonging is a Korean Chinese effort to reconcile their ethnic place in contemporary “Yanbian socialism” as it is buffeted by the Korean Wind.