Second-generation Korean American Research Articles

“I feel really special and proud that I am bilingual”: Exploring a second-generation Korean American bilingual adolescent’s emotions and sense of belonging through family language policy

Aims and objectives: The purpose of this exploratory case study is to contribute to the set of studies that center children’s perspectives on their bilingual development, with a specific focus on their emotional connection within their linguistic family landscape. Methodology: This was a case study of a Korean transnational family in the United States and included both parents and their daughter. Data and analysis: Due to COVID-19 restrictions, semi-structured in-depth interviews and a language-mapping activity were conducted via ZOOM, recorded, and transcribed. DeDoose, a qualitative collaborative research tool, was used to conduct a thematic analysis. Findings and conclusion: Findings suggest that parents positioning bilingualism as a resource for communication and expression impacts a bilingual child’s positive linguistic and socioemotional well-being. A strong sense of belonging was shaped through strong relationships with parents and family, engagement in diverse and inclusive spaces that valued multilingualism and multiculturalism, and by being given agency in one’s own language choices. Originality: This study focuses on a Korean immigrant family and centers on the child’s experiences. It provides a counter-narrative to the negative emotions parents and their children often express in extant family language policy (FLP) research. The study calls for FLP research to include a “multilingualism as a resource” orientation. Significance/implications: This case study provides the lens of multilingualism as a resource through FLP that has a different impact on the emotional dimensions of heritage language learning and maintenance.

The Bumpy Generation: An Exploration of Cultural Tensions for Second-Generation Korean Americans

Culture permeates many aspects of our lives, even in ways that we may not be conscious of. This article examines the way culture produces tensions for second-generation Korean Americans due to contrasting value systems in American and Korean cultures. More specifically, it explores the tenacity of Korean culture as it influences the everyday experiences of second-generation Korean Americans as they navigate their lives in American society.

Maintenance of phonetic and phonological distance in the English and Korean back vowel contours of heritage bilinguals

Bilingualism research demonstrates that the potential merger of vowel categories across a speaker’s two languages is affected by the age of acquisition of the second language. For heritage bilinguals, however, there is no clear L1 and L2, since they acquire their heritage language in early childhood, but become dominant in the mainstream language of society as adults. Heritage bilinguals may nevertheless will acquire distinct vowel systems in their two languages, rather than a merged system. In this study, the back vowels of California English and Seoul Korean, two varieties that are spoken by bilingual second-generation Korean Americans in California, were collected in natural speech. Formant measurements were analyzed using linear mixed effects regression modeling and generalized additive mixed modeling to see whether the vowels of each language were similar or different in their formant contours. As predicted, the bilinguals maintained distance between the vowels of both languages across their durations, and the phonological effects of coarticulation were found to be stronger in English than in Korean. The differences are attributed to “multicompetence” in heritage bilinguals’ phonology (Cook, 2020), or the interrelationship of multiple systems that exist and interact in the bilingual mind without merging completely, in opposition to models that frame heritage bilingualism as inherently imbalanced in favor of the dominant language.

Second-generation Korean Americans in U.S. Universities: experiences and perspectives on transnational sport activities

ABSTRACT Globalization and advances in technologies permit contemporary immigrants to build their lives through transnational engagement in activities that help reaffirm their worth in host societies. Although previous studies focused on the children of immigrants’ transnational engagement, a dearth of research is available regarding the extent of involvement and relevance of the children of immigrants’ participation in sports across national boundaries. The purpose of this study was to examine second-generation Korean Americans’ experiences and perspectives on transnational sports and to discover the role they play in their lives. Data analysis involved thematic analysis. The findings of this study reveal that the Korean Student Association Olympics (KSA Olympics) provided the Korean Americans a space to establish both ways of belonging and promote self-development, which help mediate identity crisis. Implications for this study concern the extent to which these activities impact Korean Americans’ identity negotiation while facilitating their sustainable transnational engagement in activities which occurred allowed for the improvement of affirmative ethnic identity, ethnic language fluency, contributing to the promotion of health welfare of Korean Americans.

Black-Korean Romance: Racially Triangulated Interracial Relationships and Immigrant Narratives in The Sun Is Also a Star

This article navigates Afro-Asian relations and immigration issues through its analysis of the romantic relationship between a Jamaican American immigrant and a second-generation Korean American in Nicola Yoon’s young adult novel The Sun Is Also a Star (2016). My textual analysis of Yoon’s work shows how this novel functions as a counterhegemonic literary project that problematizes systemic racism, anti-immigration policy, prejudice against interracial relationships, and stereotypical images of Asian men and Black women. Because representations of interracial relationships between Black women and Asian men in American culture are still scarce, Yoon’s literary work has social and political implications in need of scholarly attention. Unfortunately, the cinematic adaptation of this novel dismisses its discursive discourse, and the filmic narrative arc reproduces dominant ideologies of race and immigration. My analysis of the novel thus serves to recognize the literary activism of Nicola Yoon, on the one hand, and to critique the hegemonic discourses of the cinematic adaptation on the other.

(Divergent) Participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Southern California

This study investigates the participation in the California Vowel Shift by Korean Americans in Los Angeles. Five groups of subjects participated in a picture narrative task: first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean Americans, Anglo-Californians, and (non-immigrant) Korean late learners of English. Results showed a clear distinction between early vs. late bilinguals; while the first-generation Korean Americans and the late learners showed apparent signs of Korean influence, the 1.5- and the second-generation Korean Americans participated in most patterns of the California Vowel Shift. However, divergence from the Anglo-Californians was observed in early bilinguals’ speech. Similar to the late bilinguals, the 1.5-generation speakers did not systematically distinguish prenasal and non-prenasal /æ/. The second-generation speakers demonstrated a split-/æ/ system, but it was less pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that age of arrival has a strong effect on immigrant minority speakers’ participation in local sound change. In the case of the second-generation Korean Americans, certain patterns of the California Vowel Shift were even more pronounced than for the Anglo-Californians (i.e., /ɪ/-lowering, /ɑ/-/ɔ/ merger, /ʊ/- and /ʌ/-fronting). Moreover, the entire vowel space of the second-generation Korean Americans, especially female speakers, was more fronted than that of the Anglo-Californians. These findings suggest that second-generation Korean Americans may be in a more advanced stage of the California Vowel Shift than Anglo-Californians or the California Vowel Shift is on a different trajectory for these speakers. Possible explanations in relation to second-generation Korean Americans’ intersecting gender, ethnic, and racial identities, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

“I had the best of both worlds”: transnational sense of belonging-Second-generation Korean Americans’ heritage language learning journey

This study explores how a transnational sense of belonging is constructed within and through heritage language (HL) learning among second-generation Korean American adults throughout their life trajectories. Drawing from eight semi-structured interviews, I show how engaging in HL learning has situated these individuals within transnational social fields, where they, as children of immigrants, were consistently invited through the learning and use of HL to revisit an imagined Koreanness. From being forced speakers of an HL to being willing and inclined to speak it, my participants started to pursue a transnational sense of belonging as a response to the impossibility of being a full American. Their response to transnationalism took place in a less preferable space in which to live, a space where a transnational way of being and living became an alternative or the second-best. Findings from this study suggest that their HL learning trajectories, characterized by care and support from the wider immigrant communities, enabled them to become attuned to the broader transnational community while rearticulating belonging from both worlds.

A Double-edged Sword: Gender and Intersectionality of Korean American Ethnic Return Migration

ABSTRACT This article examines the question of (return) migration among highly-skilled, 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans and the particular social, material and cultural capital Korean Americans may acquire in Korea. Undoubtedly, Korean Americans have occupied privileged positions in Korea especially compared to other ethnic return migrants such as Korean Chinese and Zainichi Koreans. However, my research attempts to trouble a monolithic or homogeneous understanding of Korean American privilege. Using ethnographic research and by paying attention to the multifaceted and diverse experiences of Korean American returnees in terms of age, gender, level of education, class, occupation, religion and locality, I complicate Korean American ethnicity and assumptions of a “privileged” status among Korean American returnees. Such monolithic assumptions about the Korean American experience are often implicitly based on the masculine subject as the primary agent of migration and diaspora. However, attention to gender and intersectionality of Korean American returnees exposes subtle forms of pressure and aggression often obscured within narratives of Korean Americans as an elite and fundamentally masculine group. In this way, this article proffers a far more nuanced understanding of the contradictory and “double-edged” experience of Korean Americans upon return migration.

Struggles of Korean Second-Generation Leaders: Leaving the Immigrant Church

The Korean immigrant church has served as not only a religious institution but also a cultural base for the first generation of immigrants, who have a common interest in keeping their traditional values. Such an emphasis, however, has resulted in conflicts between the first and second generations. The purpose of this study is to explain the struggles of second-generation Korean American leaders that led them away from the first-generation immigrant church. Two main elements of the Asian culture emerged as the source of the intercultural identity struggle: (1) striving to maintain the honor balance and (2) struggling with due order.

Postmemory and the Imaginative Work of Those Who Come After

Postmemory and the Imaginative Work of Those Who Come After Caroline Kyungah Hong (bio) In our time of perpetual crisis and the proliferation of collective trauma, Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory seems more relevant and necessary than ever. Hirsch first coined the term in the early nineties in her article "Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-Memory" (1992–93). A beautiful reading of Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking graphic memoir and its use of photographs, her essay would rightly become an influential work in Maus criticism and comics studies at large. In it, she sketches postmemory as the purview "of the child of the survivor whose life is dominated by memories of what preceded [their] birth" (Hirsch 1992–93, 8), specifically the Holocaust. She also underscores the connections between the memory of the survivor and the postmemory of the second generation, calling attention to both "as equally constructed, equally mediated by the processes of narration and imagination" (1992–93, 9). This naming of the experiences of the second generation as postmemory was incredibly powerful and evocative even in this earliest, still somewhat fuzzy, theorization. Thankfully, Hirsch has continued to circle back to postmemory since then in order to clarify and complicate the concept. For example, in her 2001 article, "Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory," she elaborates on the significant role of repetition: The postmemorial generation—in displacing and recontextualizing these well-known images in their artistic work—has been able to make repetition not an instrument of fixity or paralysis or simple retraumatization (as it often is for survivors of trauma), but a mostly helpful vehicle of working through a traumatic past. (Hirsch 2001, 9) [End Page 129] This understanding of postmemory as potentially productive—not stuck or static, and as a condition and an approach that is haunted (a word that comes up frequently in scholarly discussions of postmemory) yet also hopeful—can be profoundly moving and motivating for those of us engaged in and with this kind of cultural work. In Hirsch's 2012 book, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, her fullest account of postmemory to date, she further emphasizes its "imaginative investment, projection, and creation" and, in her dual commitment to aesthetics and ethics, argues for its potential as "a form of repair and redress" (Hirsch 2012, 5, 6). She also broadens the scope of postmemory to think through "affiliative structures of memory beyond the familial" (2012, 21), and beyond the generational. In the two decades since she first used the term, it has become clear that postmemory is not limited to its applications and implications for the Holocaust, the photograph, and the graphic narrative, where Hirsch began, but is a capacious and portable concept that has impacted thinking about trauma and memory across histories, cultures, forms, and fields. In my primary fields of Asian American and ethnic studies, postmemory has been fruitfully taken up by many scholars and critics, including one of this issue's guest coeditors, Maria Rice Bellamy, in her monograph Bridges to Memory: Postmemory in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction (2016). My colleague Seo-Young Chu, in Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation, draws on Hirsch's work to theorize what she terms postmemory han and, like Hirsch, stresses "the power of the imagination" (S. Chu 2010, 191) to represent and work through the traumas inherited by second-generation Korean Americans. Both Sandra So Hee Chi Kim and Malissa Phung have written articles about the "affective force" of postmemory (Kim 2016, 654; Phung 2012, 5) and its diasporic dimensions, while analyzing very different texts. Long Bui has applied postmemory to an archive he calls "the refugee repertoire" to illuminate how "many in the postwar/postmemory generation aim to revise and complicate simplistic notions of the refugee or war subject" (Bui 2016, 112, 115). Viet Thanh Nguyen, in his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, cites Hirsch's postmemory as part of his articulation of and call for what he terms "just memory" (2016, 268). Patricia Chu also writes of her indebtedness to Hirsch's insights about postmemory in her book Where I...

VOT merger and f0 contrast in Heritage Korean in California

Author(s): Cheng, Andrew | Abstract: Recordings of read speech in Korean and English were made by native South Koreans and Korean Americans of varying generational status (“second-generation” American-born or “1.5-generation” foreign-born) and analyzed for differences in usage of VOT and fundamental frequency to contrast production of Korean lenis and aspirated stops and affricates. The speech was then played back to listeners of Korean heritage and judged metalinguistically regarding proficiency in Korean and other attributes relevant to the speech and demographics of immigrant speakers. Results show that second-generation Korean speakers, especially females, are not showing the collapse of VOT contrast found in the other two groups, one part of the “tonogenetic” sound change nearing completion in Seoul. Female second-generation speakers are also not using f0 to differentiate between the stops to the extent that first- and 1.5- generation speakers are. These second-generation speakers were easily identifiable as having been born in the United States, but the correlation with their generational identification and use of VOT and f0 to contrast lenis and aspirated stops and affricates is mild. It is concluded that because second-generation Korean Americans vary in their production of Korean, there is no clear sociophonetic marker for a Korean American “variety” of the language. The most proficient second-generation speakers closely resemble native speakers and do demonstrate the tonogenetic sound change, but the least proficient second-generation speakers diverge from this norm in a variety of ways. Second-generation Korean American speakers are easily identifiable as not speaking in the same way as native South Korean speakers, although this does not hinge on their use of the f0 contrast. The analysis makes a stronger case for applying new models of language acquisition, speech production, and identity formation to heritage language speakers that differ from those used for bilingual speakers.

Suji Kwock Kim's “Generation” and the Ethics of Diasporic Postmemory

Regarding her highly acclaimed first book of poetry, Notes from the Divided Country, second-generation Korean American poet Suji Kwock Kim has stated that she considers the representation of the traumatic experiences of the Korean War as “the responsibility that one has, in terms of using the imagination as a means of compassion, and understanding things one couldn't have experienced.” If Notes from the Divided Country is a work created from a sense of ethical responsibility, we could perhaps also see it more specifically as a project of ethical memory and ask, along with ethnic studies scholar Jodi Kim, “What does it mean to want to represent or ‘remember’ a war that has been ‘forgotten’ and erased in the U.S. popular imaginary, but has been transgenerationally seared into the memories of Koreans and Korean Americans, and experienced anew every day in a still-divided Korea?” Notes from the Divided Country in many ways grapples with this very question and can be seen as an effort to remember the “Forgotten War” through vivid, chilling, moving poems that depict the enduring trauma of wartime violence from the perspective of diasporic postmemory. Taking Hirsch's work on Holocaust photos as a point of departure, this article reads in the poem “Generation” the poetics of postmemory and the ethics of memory from the perspective of diasporic subjectivity.

Ethnic Insularity Among 1.5- and Second-Generation Korean American Christians

Building on insights from Min’s (2010) comparisons between Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus, and my findings of elite freshmen Korean racial insularity (Park 2012), I use data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (2004) survey to examine the extent to which religion serves to not only preserve ethnicity but also support insularity in young adult 1.5- and second-generation (“second generation” hereafter) Korean Americans. Findings suggest that at the racial level of comparison, second-generation Korean-American endogamy resembles that of white, black, and Latino endogamy; second-generation Korean-American endogamy reflects not only the highest intraracial marriage rate, but also the highest intraethnic marriage rate of all Asian groups in the sample. Further, religious married second-generation Korean Americans have the highest racially homogeneous composition rate in the congregations they attend relative to other racial groups and other Asian ethnicities. In multivariate analyses, these two dynamics of marital endogamy and congregational racial homophily produce strong effects on one another and diminish the unique Korean effect. Findings suggest that these group relational patterns are more evident for second-generation Korean Americans and may have implications for social mobility in a racialized context.

Introducing K-Town: Consumption, Authenticity, and Citizenship in Koreatown’s Popular Reimagining

This article examines representations of Koreatown provided by three contemporary television/web programs: Ktown Cowboys (2009), K-Town (2012–13), and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013). I argue that the act of consumption by second-generation Korean Americans is deployed centrally in each program, albeit for considerably different purposes. In Ktown Cowboys and K-Town, consumption by second-generation Korean Americans serves to validate their claims to a reimagined Koreatown, or K-Town, as well as to the larger U.S. society. In Parts Unknown, their consumption instead functions to authenticate Koreatown as a culturally unique, and thus newly desirable, ethnic space for the masses.

The Korean War, the Cold War, and the American Novel

From a Cold War literary and cultural studies perspective, the Korean War (1950–1953) is a distinctive moment in US cultural history. This essay proposes that there are two broad phases of Korean War literature: the first phase is work written in the 1950s and early 1960s generally by white, male Americans who fought in the war, reported on the war, or had some other ties to the US military. Work of this phase renders the Korean War in terms of the bipolar global imaginary dictated by the Cold War: even as this imaginary is ultimately unsuitable for capturing the complexities of the war, writers of the first phase understand Korea’s meaning only in terms of US political imperatives. The second phase, marked by Richard E. Kim’s The Martyred (1964) but not gaining traction until the 1980s and 1990s, is work generally written by first- or second-generation Korean Americans who either experienced the war directly or explored the cultural memory of a war that, some scholars have argued, is a precondition of the very idea of Korean Americanness. Work of this phase begins with the premise that the US framing of the Korean War is damaging, and as such is marked by meta-engagements with the Cold War rhetorical frame that shift the meaning of the war away from US claims about it. The category of “Korean War literature” changes how we understand “Cold War literature” and therefore post-1945 American literature and culture.

Identity and language: Korean speaking Korean, Korean-American speaking Korean and English?

The identity formation of a diaspora community is complex. The present study examines native language maintenance and ethnic identity of first-, 1.5-, and second-generation Korean-Americans in the United States, through the lenses of various identity construction and sociolinguistic theories. Identity and language are closely linked, and this relationship is bound by social contexts. Both identity and language are viewed as dynamic and mutable. The study also identifies social factors that affect linguistic behaviors and identity formation. The study further provides detailed analysis of the issues relevant to the conflict of identity in a current setting where pluralist ideology is strongly discouraged, as in the case of the United States. The perspective of English as an international language, and its power and influence on the formation of ethnic identity in the United States and Korea, are also addressed.

Caring across generations: the linked lives of Korean American families

Five decades into the post-1965 immigration, the first cohorts of immigrants have quietly begun the transition out of the labor force into retirement and old age. In 2010, one in eight Americans among the population aged 65 and older was of foreign-born stock, with Asian Americans reporting the largest proportions of elderly population among the post-1965 ethnoracial groups. More specifically, 22 percent of the Asian American population is expected to be 65 years of age or older by 2050 (174). In light of these trends, this book examines how second-generation Korean Americans renegotiate the caring responsibilities as their first-generation parents approach retirement and beyond. Specifically, how do children of immigrants take care of their parents over their life course? How do they make sense of their parents’ sacrifices? What cultural and filial expectations shape the meaning of such care work? This important book effectively addresses these three intricate questions, while providing original insights into the complex lives of immigrants and their children. The book has several strengths. Theoretically, this book adopts a life course perspective to trace out the changing dynamics of family life over time. As the second generation transitions from adolescence to adulthood, the first generation also transitions from middle adulthood to old age. As children of immigrants, many of them serve as “brokers of culture and language” (2) from an early age—providing a crucial bridge between their immigrant parents and the American society. From translating for their parents to helping them pay monthly bills, the second generation takes on many pseudo-parental roles throughout their lives, a process that begins in their early adolescence. As their parents transition into retirement, the second generation finds themselves taking on even more responsibilities, including financial assistance, healthcare aid, and emotional support. Describing these forms of assistance as a “labor of love,” the book argues that these intricate negotiations and renegotiations of responsibilities provide the broader cultural contexts for our understanding of Korean American families. Book Review 1

Where Have I Come from?: Ethnicity and Place in Pre-1965 Second-Generation Korean American Life Writing from Hawai‘i

Where Have I Come from?: Ethnicity and Place in Pre-1965 Second-Generation Korean American Life Writing from Hawai‘i

Contextual influences on ethnic identity formation: a case study of second-generation Korean Americans Baby Boomers in midlife.

This paper details a study on ethnic identity in midlife, illuminating identity formation as a complex life course phenomenon. The study addresses the importance of ethnic identity in understanding the experiences of racial and ethnic Baby Boomers as both recipients of care and as caregivers to their aging parents (first generation immigrants). Using a case study of second-generation Korean American Baby Boomers, the primary aims of this study are: (a) to explore how the relationship between age and race/ethnicity influences identity formation, and (b) how contexts influence ethnic identity formation. Findings reveal that cumulative experiences over earlier developmental years resulted in resolutions to appreciate their ethnic identity at midlife. Increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S., combined with the large number of aging Baby Boomers, necessitate recognition of the cultural and racial differences within the Baby Boomer generation.

Partly colored or almost white? Racial intermediacy and identificational ambivalence of grown children of Korean immigrants

Prior research suggests that Asian Americans fall between whites and African Americans in the American racial stratification system. However, scholars know relatively little about how this position shapes Asian Americans’ understandings of racial discrimination. This article examines the discourses surrounding individual experiences of racism among Korean Americans and the association between discourses and Korean Americans’ intermediate race position. Drawing upon 69 in-depth interviews with 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans, I identify three discursive subgroups: honorary whites, racial intermediaries, and racial progressives. The tendency to deny, minimize, or acknowledge the significance of experienced racism characterizes the three groups. A critical discourse analysis reveals that the largest subgroup employs discourse minimizing racism, reflecting the respondents’ ambivalent racial identification. These respondents do not consider themselves part of a minority, yet say they are not white. Findings suggest that the Korean Americans’ racial ambivalence is closely associated with racial intermediacy.