Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This presentation explores the implications and consequences of diasporic political action. In particular, it focuses on the process of transnational political mobilization among Korean immigrants in the U.S. during the first half of the 20th century. As a diasporic community in exile, the experiences of the 10,000 Koreans, who migrated to the Hawaii and the U.S., in the years between 1903 and 1924, were framed by a continual involvement in homeland politics as a result of Japan’s colonization of Korea between 1905 and 1945. The colonization of Korea left Koreans abroad without a state or nation. At the same time, Korean immigrants were racially barred from becoming American citizens as “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” Without citizenship rights, Korean immigrants lacked any real legitimate recognition before the eyes of the U.S. state. Lacking both sovereignty and citizenship, issues of state power and its uses were central to all Korean immigrant political concerns.

By framing the Korean independence movement as fundamentally a state-making project, I examine the challenges and dilemmas of diasporic state-making. The conditions of statelessness and exile necessitated that the Korean nationalist movement create a sovereign national state entirely from abroad, which posed unique problems for coherent political action. Though the transnational networks emerging from the nationalist movement created opportunities for increased political participation among Koreans abroad, the multiple and diverse channels for political participation also led to intense contestations within the diaspora. The independence movement faced a formidable challenge of centralizing national authority as a multitude of groups within the diaspora struggled for leadership. The transnational dimensions of the Korean independence movement thus presented a fundamental paradox. Though the search for statehood was founded on territorially defined conceptions of the modern nation-state, the diasporic foundations of the state-making efforts of the Korean nationalist movement contradicted the territorial boundedness of the sovereign nation-state. In effect, the nation-state had been transcended upon its creation. This paradox created nearly insurmountable challenges in defining and achieving coherent political action, greatly constraining the ability of the Korean diaspora to establish a sovereign political state of its own that could be recognized as a legitimate actor within the international system of nation-states.

Due to these constraints in diasporic state-making, a collective identity as ethnic Americans developed among Koreans in the U.S., which was reflected in an unconditional acceptance of U.S. sovereignty as fundamental to Koreans throughout the diaspora in achieving their national goals. Through their involvement in the Korean independence movement, Korean immigrants pursued not only the recognition of Korea’s national sovereignty, but also the recognition of Koreans as a distinct ethnic group in the U.S. In unexpected ways then, zealous commitments to homeland politics promoted the articulation of an ethnic consciousness among Korean immigrants that sought to exert a political presence within the workings of the U.S. liberal state. Ultimately, these historical circumstances emerging from diasporic political mobilization helped shape a neocolonial relationship between the U.S. and Korea that subordinated Korean national interests to a hegemonic U.S. worldview.