RICHARD S. KIM. The Quest for Statehood: Korean Immigrant Nationalism and U.S. Sovereignty, 1905-45.

Abstract

Only in the last decade have “area studies” and “ethnic studies” begun to converge in new and critical ways. Until then, a rigid disciplinary bifurcation produced a complimentary set of Cold War narratives that tended to emphasize overseas “modernization” (rather than anti-democratic authoritarianism) and domestic “assimilation” (rather than racialized disenfranchisement). Joining a growing number of scholars who now question these American- and white-centric stories, Richard S. Kim, building on transnational approaches to the study of diaspora and its relationship to state building, brings together Korean and Korean American histories to present a more complex account that exceeds the conventional paradigms of “development” and “acculturation.” The Quest for Statehood reads primarily as an institutional history of the individuals who, as a result of Japan's colonization of Korea (1905–1945), left the peninsula in search of better employment, educational opportunities, and a firmer base from which to launch nationalist politics. However, Kim's account also reveals how the white supremacy of their adopted American home shaped this particular branch of diasporic nationalism, one that mobilized an exilic state to conduct moderate tactics of anticolonial resistance. Indeed, one of the author's most valuable contributions is to show how these U.S.-based immigrants, although barred from citizenship, engaged with “liberal” institutions of American politics to pursue their goal of national emancipation. Rather than being “assimilated” into a politics of pluralism, these stateless actors used their knowledge and expertise to create a “civic society” in the interstices of the U.S. and Japanese imperial nation-states. In addition to fund-raising activities and the exchange of information, parastatal groups such as the Korean National Association (KNA) and the Korean Commission (KC) continually pressured policy and opinion makers to support their cause, which they actively connected to the history of the United States' own revolution. Kim argues that these national politics of the homeland (rather than those of their adopted country) enabled Korean Americans to acquire a politicized identity as an ethnic minority. In practice, however, their unofficial status as a deterritorialized organization made it nearly impossible for immigrant leaders to find reliable allies. As the opening anecdote about the Hemet incident of 1913 suggests, even their seemingly “liberal” American hosts failed to suppress racist treatment of Asian immigrants and, as citizens of an imperialist power, showed little interest in supporting the anticolonial politics of Korean Americans, at least until Japan threatened to become a Pacific hegemon. As the rivalry with the Soviet Union intensified, U.S. national interests continued to take precedence over Korean decolonization, leading to the peninsula's arbitrary division in 1945 and subsequent interventions into a civil war that cost the lives of millions.