Korean Refugees Research Articles

‘Beginning wherever you wish’: Sappho, Homer and the HomericHymn to Demeterin Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’sDictée

AbstractTheresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée expresses, in experimental and avant-garde form, the fragmented, disrupted and multilinguistic experiences of its author and her family against the tumultuous backdrop of twentieth-century Korean history. In the decades since its publication, the text has become established as a cornerstone of Asian American literary studies. This essay reads Dictée through the lens of its engagement with the ancient Greek classics, identifying how Cha responds to Sappho, Homer and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in the context of her subversive and irreverent poetics. It demonstrates the important role that the Western classical tradition plays in Dictée as a structural and communicative resource for Cha’s expression of her migratory identity as a Korean refugee in the United States. Cha engages with some of ancient Greece’s most canonical texts from a direction that is radically askew from the typical approaches of classical scholarship, mediated in part by twentieth-century writers like James Joyce and Monique Wittig, advancing understandings of classical material that are feminist, anti-imperial and non-Eurocentric. Dictée should be recognized not just as a landmark of Asian American literature, but also as one of the most original creative responses to Greco-Roman antiquity of the late twentieth century.

The Korean diaspora and belonging in the UK: identity tensions between North and South Koreans

Previous studies of North Korean migrants and refugees in the UK have focused on labour issues, inter-Korean diaspora issues and how inter-Korean peninsula geopolitics affects North Korean integration in a third country such as the UK. This paper explains the role of identity formation in processes of belonging and integration for the North Korean group. This group is significant in the sense that the group shares strong beliefs in a unified Korean ethnicity with the South Korean diaspora, and yet comes from a specific Korean state that is territorially divided from the majority of Korean migrants who emigrate from South Korea. This tension creates a number of alternative scenarios regarding expectations of the relationship between national identity, diaspora politics and processes of belonging in a host nation.

Collateral damage: Americans, noncombatant immunity, and atrocity after World War II

1. Modern War and Mass Killing 2. The Revolt of the Admirals and the Limits of Mass Destruction 3. The Hydrogen Bomb and the Limits of Noncombatant Immunity 4. A Limited War in Korea 5. Taming the Bomb 6. Korean Refugees and Warnings 7. The Thermonuclear Challenge 8. The Uneasy Reconciliation

Seminars on North Korea Organized by the Editor

The United States and the Two KoreasA Joint Seminar by the Korea Economic Institute of America and the University of Detroit Mercy12:30-17:00, March 23, 2005Commerce & Finance Building, the University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MichiganSix distinguished speakers provided an outstanding overview of the Korea problem and United States-Korea relations at The United States and the Two Koreas, a seminar held at the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM) on March 23, 2005. During the seminar, which was co-hosted by the UDM College of Business Administration Institute for Korean Studies and the Korea Economic Institute (KEI) of Washington, D.C., six distinguished speakers-three provided by UDM and three provided by KEI-presented a variety of information on these topics from both a political and an economic standpoint. Over 80 guests from the business community, the academic community, and the student population attended the seminar.James J. Przystup, Senior Fellow and Research Professor at the National Defense University began the first panel of the seminar, North Korea's Defining Moment, by reviewing the activities that led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, the Sunshine Policy, and today's six-party framework. Mr. Przystup stated that Korea's nuclear strategy is not just a U.S.-North Korea bilateral issue, due to the fact that nuclear proliferation involving the peninsula is a threat to the whole world. Since the six-party talks are currently stalled, in order to move forward there will need to be concessions or pressures. The goals of all of the six parties are the same: no war, no collapse of the current Korean regime, and a de-nuclearized peninsula. However, not all of the six parties prioritize these goals in the same manner. For instance, the threat of a collapse of the Korean regime is greater for South Korea, as they know from their studies of the collapse of East Germany and German reunification. In contrast, China may be more prepared to live with a nuclear Korea as long as the situation remains ambiguous, and for the U.S. the biggest priority is the removal of nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula.Mr. Przystup stated that he does not see any concessions coming from the Bush administration, since they appear to believe that concessions would legitimatize the Korean regime. He also does not believe that Korea will use nuclear weapons, because it is against their best interests to do so. Mr. Przystup went on to clarify that the world should not make the assumption that Korea desires to join the international community. For the Korean elite that makes up the regime, isolation is the best guarantee of their continued prominence.Next to speak was Scott Rembrandt, Director of Research and Academic Affairs of the KEI, who gave the South Korean perspective of the Korean problem. He believes that the current process of having six-party talks is necessary and correct. From South Korean viewpoint, the U.S. needs to be more flexible in its stance. South Koreans see Koreans as weak, in decline, and lacking the will and capacity to attack. Since they therefore see no direct threat from Korea, and due to the fact that they have a cultural alliance bound by blood, they believe that more concessions are necessary than pressures. South Korea would recommend that the U.S. offers more concessions, and avoids any type of roadmap such as that in use for the Middle East. Koreans are less linear and would prefer a buffet of concessions.Mr. Rembrandt went on to discuss the recent Korean Human Rights Act. He sees this as a good-faith effort on the part of the Bush administration, meant to help Korean refugees. However, this Act also masks the desire of the Bush administration to bring about regime change, and that desire will lead to reluctance on the part of Korea to return to negotiations within the framework of the six-party talks. …

Flight From Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees

IN November, I950, the Human Resources Rethrows light on both North and South Korean search Institute, Air University, under the direactions to communism, the group collected rection of Dr. Raymond V. Bowers, organized other systematic data on the Sovietization of and sent several teams of social scientists to Korea. the Far East to study certain human factor John W. Riley is Professor of Sociology at problems in connection with the war in KoRutgers University; Wilbur Schramm is Dean rea. The psychological warfare team was corof the Division of Communications at the Uniposed of the authors of the present article, versity of Illinois; and Frederick W. Williams Dr. John C. Pelzel of Harvard University, and is Chief, Psychological Warfare Division, HuMajor C. N. Weems. man Resources Research Institute; respectively. In addition to the following report, which