“Seoul—America” on America's “Soul”: South Koreans and Korean Immigrants Navigate Global White Racial Ideology1

Abstract

Although students of race have produced impressive works on global Western racism, their mostly macro-level focus has not addressed how marginal groups respond to Western racial ideology and do so based on state and cultural influences. To capture Asians' localized responses to white- American superiority specifically, the author conducts a comparative case study of South Koreans and Korean American immigrants, fitting groups given US geopolitical dominance in South Korea since 1945 and large numbers of Korean immigrants in the USA. Drawing on 66 combined interviews (in-depth, open-ended, and focus group) in Seoul and in Los Angeles County, the author finds that while South Koreans and Korean Americans at times similarly adopt and resist white racial hegemony, their responses differ by way of state and cultural ideologies and practices. The US military presence in South Korea, supported by the Korean state, and imported American mass media culture centrally shape the residents' narratives. In the United States, the American “racial state” and attendant cultural ideologies (“democracy,” racial categories) figure centrally in Korean Americans' narrative responses to hegemony. The author concludes with the implications of localized analyses for global racism scholarship.