Korean Diaspora and Capitalist Modernization in the United States and Japan

Abstract

Korean Diaspora in the United States and Japan represent opposite patterns of ethnic boundaries reproduction in capitalist societies. Korean Americans developed their ethnicity as reaction to successful upward economic mobility. From the very beginning, the trust towards Korean immigrants was reflection of how well they were doing economically. However, this made Korean American Diaspora dependent on the contradictions of American society. The inevitable outcome of their economic activities (successful or not) was increase of racial/class tensions and conflicts that they could not ignore. Every economic activity represents temporal balance between scarcity and abundance and ethnic boundaries of Korean American Diaspora guarantee that scarcity of money and goods is once again present in American society, even for another ethnic group that motivates latter to pursue their own American dream. Japanese Koreans on the contrary developed moralized ethnic boundaries in response to social and economic exclusion. The disadvantaged status forces Japanese Koreans to mobilize their members for protest movements legitimized by the moralized image of Koreans in Japan as victims of discrimination. This does not always produce compassion among Japanese public but very often produces social irritations and eventually counter-protest movements that are also legitimized by moralized image of Japanese society as victim of Japanese Korean demands of compensations. Eventually this gives opportunity to Japanese Koreans to refer to unsuccessful attempts to obtain compensations and the cases of counter protest movement as a new proof of ongoing discrimination against their community to start this cycle of moral discontent once again.