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Abstract
The South Korean government continues to practice variants of what Stephan Castles (1995) calls ‘differential exclusion’, in which citizenship in the nation state for North Koreans does not confer membership in civil society. For new arrivals from North Korea, many of whom have developed a distinct distrust of anything governmental, interaction with representatives of the South Korean state bares a chilling resemblance to that which they left behind in the North.
This article argues that for newly-arrived North Koreans the failure at state level does not mean they are entirely cast adrift, as religious and secular institutions within civil society are shouldering more of the burden of adaptation for the newcomers. This article endeavours to further our understanding of the significance of these groups as spaces where, for persons in exile, the meaning of home is recreated through acts of intimate exchange and relationships are formed that have the potential to become a form of pseudo-kinship.
Acknowledgements
The research and writing of this article would not have been possible without the help of individuals from North Korea and the organisations that do such invaluable work in this community. I would also like to thank my advisor at Seoul National University, Professor Hyang-jin Jung, for her support and wise counsel.
Notes
1. Hanawon is an educational facility operated by the government. Its purpose is to teach North Korean arrivals about South Korean society.
2. All Korean names have been romanised according to the ‘The Revised Romanization of Korean’. I have presented the names of participants with family names following personal names.
3. All names of people and institutions in this article have been changed so as to protect the identity of participants.
4. For the purposes of this article, the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘talbukin’ are used interchangeably. For more information on the politics of labelling migrants from North Korea see http://www.nknews.org/2012/06/refugees-defectors-and-economic-migrants/.
5. Nknews: http://www.nknews.org/2012/11/WHY-DO-PEOPLE-KEEP-RE-DEFECTING-TO-NORTH-KOREA/: Chosun Ilbo Online Report: http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/11/09/2012110901243.html: Asia Rights Journal: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/asiarights/korean-diaspora-and-re-migration-the-ideal-and-the-reality-of-overseas-ethnic-koreans/.
6. Kim (Citation1988) explains that as a result of the partition of the Korean peninsula an estimated five million Koreans were separated from their family members.
7. The North Korean Strategy Centre Citation2010.
8. 함경북도. 양강도.
9. An article in the 2011 autumn edition of Korea Focus reported that ‘Women account for 80 per cent of all defectors and 70 per cent of the female defectors are in their 20s and 40s’ (Kim Citation2011, 12).
10. Seonggongjeogin Tongileul Mandunuen Salamdeul (성공적인 통일을 만드는 사람들).
11. Approximately US$420.
12. According to Yee (Citation2003) and Lee (Citation2003), there are two main forms of social networks that exist among South Koreans—yeon-gyeol and yeonjul (연결과 연줄).
13. In this essay I use the terms ‘pseudo-kinship’ and ‘fictive-kinship’ interchangeably.
14. Pastor.
15. ‘우리는 친척입니다’.
16. Although beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that the North Korean state has long employed the family idiom in both the creation and retelling of its founding myth, and concomitantly as a means of solidifying the central position of the Kim family. For further reference see Kwon and Chung Citation2012, Martin Citation2004 and Kim Citation2010. Thank you to the anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
17. ‘Do not turn up empty handed’ (‘Bin Sonuro gamyeon andwaeyo’).
18. US$28 (as of May 2011).
19. The Catholic Church in South Korea operates many homes for children of North Korean mothers who have arrived in South Korea without any support networks.
20. Most North Korean refugees do not have pictures of their lives prior to leaving North Korea due to the danger of carrying these across the Sino-North Korean border.
21. This exercise was used by Carol Stack ([Citation1974] 1997).
22. Woo-sung referred to two women in his life using the epithet ‘Aunt’. When asked how he would refer to these women in Korean, he explained that he would use ‘Ajumma’, a more neutral term than ‘Aunt’.
23. A different South Korean ‘Aunt’.
24. All items of significance were listed: furniture; television; computer; wardrobe; vacuum cleaner. Items such as foodstuffs, textbooks, toiletries and so on were not included.
25. Liminality, meaning ‘threshold’, is a concept developed by Arnold Van Gennep (Citation1960) and developed further by Victor Turner (Citation1967).
26. A majority of talbukin I spoke with left North Korea with nothing more than the clothes on their back.
27. Although beyond the scope of this article, it seems reasonable to assume that as a talbukin becomes more settled in South Korea, the number of borrowed/temporary goods in their home would decrease, while the number of purchased goods would increase thus marking a change from a state of being ‘inbetween’ (transition), to a state of having ‘become’ (incorporation).