Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea: History, Politics, and Sociology, 1910 to the Present

Contrary to the image of Korea as a largely self-contained country until its economy became global during the 1990s, this book shows that transnationalism has firmly been part of modern Korea’s national experience throughout its existence.

The volume portrays Korea’s frequent transnational entanglements with other nations in East Asia and the West from the start of its annexation into the Empire of Japan in 1910 to the present day. It explores how modern Korea negotiated its complicated colonial relations with imperial Japan and its political and economic relations with the West in meeting the challenges of the globalized world. Early chapters cover the origins of Korea’s democratic republicanism among Korean immigrants in the United States, the Royal-Dutch oil industry in Korea, and prisons in the Japanese empire. From the latter half of the twentieth century to the present, the book probes Cold War politics between Korea and Europe, transnational Korean communities in China, Japan, the Russian Far East, and the West, and ethnic Korean returnees from the Russian Far East.

With contributions from leading international scholars, this collection’s attention to modern Korean history, economy, gender studies, and migration is ideal for upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates.

Joanne Miyang Cho is a professor of History at William Paterson University. She has edited/co-edited Germany and India, Germany and China, Germany and Japan, Germany and Korea, Germany and East Asia, Gendered Encounters, Musical Entanglements, and East Asian-German Cinema. She is a co-editor for Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies.

Lee M. Roberts is a professor of German at Purdue University Fort Wayne specializing in Asian German Studies and Holocaust. Recent publications include chapters in German East Asian Encounters and Entanglements (2021), and The History of the Shanghai Jews: New Pathways in Research (2022).

Sang Hwan Seong is a professor of Germanic linguistics at the Department of German Language Education, Seoul National University. He was a guest professor of Korean Studies at the University of Bonn in Germany (1998-2005). He is the Director of the International Center for Korean Studies at SNU Kyujanggak.