[KS] multiracialism/some random statistics
Vladimir Tikhonov
vladimir.tikhonov at ikos.uio.no
Wed May 3 06:48:18 EDT 2006
According to the statistics given by Dr. Pak SOngjin in his, very
informative, book, <Sahoe chinhwaron kwa singmin sahoe sasang> (Social
Darwinism and the Ideology of the Colonial Society, SOnin, 2003, p.
118), in the 1910s- early 1920s the number of such "integrative
marriages" between the Japanese and Koreans varied from year to year
between approximately 100 and 400-500. For example, 1912 gave only 116
such cases, but 1916 - already 149. After 1919, interestingly enough (I
suspect connection to the March 1 Movement and the general nationalist
mood in the air), the numbers plummeted (only 68 in 1919), but then, a
special law facilitating such marriages was adopted in June 1921, and
the numbers grew again - up to 404 cases in 1925. I guess that the
numbers might have become actually much higher to the end of the
colonial period. Another interesting detail - Kim T'aesin (Ildang sunim)
recollects in his belletrized memoirs that his famed mother, Kim WOnju
(IryOp) declined to marry his Japanese father partly due to the
nationalist belief in the undesirability of the marriages with the
oppressors. Which may mean that the colonial "assimilation" policy,
officially encouraging intermarriage, could also backfire and, on the
contrary, intensify the nationalist objections to such marriages.
Best greetings,
Vladimir Tikhonov (Pak Noja)
On 02.05.2006 18:09, Hyung Pai wrote:
> Dear members,
> I wanted to add my comments based on my research on the origins of
> Japanese racial theories ( Jinshuron) which still continues to be a very
> popular topic of " Nihonjinron".
> The colonial anthropologists, archaeologists and historians conducting
> fieldwork in Korea from the 1900s onwards ( Torii Ryuzo, Shiratori
> Kurakichi, Hamada Kosaku etc.) mainly subscribed to the "mixed" racial
> origins
> (honhyol) theory of the Koreans/Japanese beginning around the time of
> the annexation. Based on their much touted 'Scientific" evidence in the
> form of prehistoric archaeological objects, historical documents,
> anthropometric measurements, linguistic studies, and ethnographic
> observations, colonial publications published by the Chosen Sotokufu
> framed the racial discourse as one of common descent as in
> "blood-lineage" (hyol-t'ong-Tungus, Yemaek, Koguryo, Silla, Koryo, Yi
> dynasty) + "cultural lineage " (munhwa kyet'ong-similarities in
> language, religions of Buddhism, Shamanism. myths. legends etc. ) + and
> shared historical/territory body/destiny (Nikkan. Nissen ittai). Thus,
> as it has been pointed out earlier, we have to understand the Post-war
> rhetoric of homogenous race ( tanil minjok) as nationalistic re-action
> to Pre-War Japanese imperialists discourse that had attempted to
> integrate the Koreans as well their citizens (Naichi) as part of the
> broad colonialists project of assimilation. I am not sure of the source
> but as I recall there were only about five hundred legal marriages
> recorded amongst Japanese and Koreans during the colonial period even
> though inter-marriage was encouraged by the colonial authorities (
> though there were undoubetdly many illicit arrangements amongst high
> ranking Japanese men and Korean women). I would appreciate if anyone can
> guide me to these kinds of statistics for the colonial period.
> On Apr 29, 2006, at 5:37 PM, <johnfrankl at yahoo.com
> <mailto:johnfrankl at yahoo.com>> <johnfrankl at yahoo.com
> <mailto:johnfrankl at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>> This is all very interesting.
>>
>> Yesterday I was listening to a news program on the radio detailing the
>> objections of the Viet Namese government to the commodification of
>> Viet Namese women by South Korean marriage brokers. Perhaps
>> coincidentally, yesterday I also saw my first banner advertising
>> Cambodian brides. The banners advertising Viet Namese women can be
>> seen in many places around Seoul. I would imagine they are even more
>> prevalent in the provinces, but that is only conjecture. Both
>> banners advertise the women as ch'OnyO, which different readers may
>> interpret in different ways.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> John.
>>
>> */Balazs Szalontai <aoverl at yahoo.co.uk <mailto:aoverl at yahoo.co.uk>>/*
>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Stephen,
>>
>> thank you so much for this highly informative reply! Are there any
>> statistical data available about the composition of recent mixed
>> marriages? Two issues seem particularly interesting, at least for me:
>>
>> 1) How many mixed marriages involve persons outside the
>> East/South-east Asian cultural circle? The case of Hines Ward
>> notwithstanding, the cases of which I read in Seoul in 2004-2005
>> mostly involved persons from Vietnam, the Philippines and other
>> Asian countries. Americans are another main potential source. But
>> what about persons who are neither East/South-east Asian nor
>> American? That is, are there are perceptible biases in the
>> patterns of mixed marriages? Korean prejudices against Africans
>> are certainly strong, and I wonder how widespread Japanese-Korean
>> marriages are.
>>
>> 2) How many cases involve Korean women and non-Korean men? In
>> countries where prejudices against mixed marriages are strong
>> (e.g., in the Central Asian states), it is often considered more
>> acceptable to marry a female foreigner than a male one. This is
>> because of the combination of racial and gender hierarchy. If the
>> foreigner is female, she will supposedly play a subordinated role
>> in the relationship and thus the situation is relatively
>> acceptable from a nationalist/xenophobic viewpoint, but if it is
>> the other way round, then a female member of the community is
>> considered taken (some may say, stolen) by a foreigner.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Balazs
>>
>>
>> The issue of mixed marriages and mixed-race offspring, as
>> you're probably aware, has recently been given a great deal of
>> attention in S. Korea as a result of Hines Ward winning the
>> MVP in the latest Super Bowl. Ward was born to an
>> African-American GI father and Korean mother, and the Korean
>> press had a field day with this (for an English piece see, e.g.,
>> http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200501/200501260022.html
>> ). It also called forth the requisite hand wringing over the
>> treatment that mixed children in Korea have received over the
>> years. Such pieces might be a good place to start for some of
>> the information you are looking for.
>>
>> More interesting to me are the recent spate of articles and
>> stats that have come out concurrently on int'l marriages in
>> Korea, such as,
>> http://news.media.daum.net/society/affair/200604/03/joins/v12245774.html
>> <http://news.media.daum.net/society/affair/200604/03/joins/v12245774.html>,
>> which reports that an astonishing 40% (82 of 205) of marriages
>> in Boeun County in Chungcheongbuk-do in 2005 were
>> international. According to the piece 18.2% of marriages in
>> Seoul itself last year were international as well. As the
>> article notes, the concept of the danilminjok is in for a
>> radical challenge. I include some other pieces that have
>> dealt with this issue below. My apologies, though, as I read
>> these a few weeks ago and when I just went to recheck them
>> they were unavailable. Here they are, in case this is a
>> temporary server problem (I don't know how long joins.com
>> leaves things up):
>>
>> http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030415551001300030103011.html
>> <http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030415551001300030103011.html>
>> http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030414548331300030103011.html
>> <http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030414548331300030103011.html>
>> http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030416574101300030103011.html
>> <http://news.joins.com/society/200604/03/200604030416574101300030103011.html>
>>
>> While I'm here, I'd also like to toss out some other very
>> intriguing stats that have come my way in the last month or so
>> in the hope of generating discussion similar to our very
>> interesting conversation on the current disciplinary makeup of
>> AAS. One colleague in the US just reported to me that in his
>> two upper division courses in Korean culture and religion (at
>> a large research university, with a fairly even male/female
>> ratio), he has the following numbers: 54 students total, 52
>> female 2 male (3 non Koreans total, 1 male 1 female) in one;
>> and 46 students total in the other: 44 female 2 male (1 non
>> Korean, male). Although I suspect many of us are used to
>> unbalanced ratios in our classes, this is extraordinary.
>>
>> Conversely, in our first-year Korean course at my university
>> here in Wellington, New Zealand we have 41 students, of whom
>> 31 are Chinese (all from the PRC, as far as I'm aware), with
>> no one of Korean descent present (gender ratio: 28 F/ 13 M).
>> In case you're wondering, Koreans actually make up the 3rd
>> largest Asian ethnic group in NZ with some 35,000 out of a
>> population of 4 million (almost 1%), but immigration from
>> Korea only took off in 1991 and language maintenance in the
>> community has been high. Our course numbers seem to be a
>> direct reflection of the hallyu phenomenon and large int'l
>> student populations. I'm curious if Korean language programs
>> elsewhere are seeing different demography over the last, say,
>> 3-4 years.
>>
>> Cheers, Stephen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Dear Aidan,
>>
>>>
>>
>>> [snip]
>>
>>
>>
>>> It would be good if some colleagues provided us with
>>> information about the situation in South Korea from 1945 to
>>> the 1990s, since I heard several concrete examples about
>>> strong prejudices against mixed marriages, which I have no
>>> reason to doubt.
>>
>>>
>>
>>> Best,
>>
>>> Balazs
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> 24 FIFA World Cup tickets to be won with Yahoo! Mail. Learn more
>> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/fifa_trueswitch/*http://eur.i1.yimg.com/java.europe.yahoo.com/uk/mail/fu/trueswitch/index.html>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC
>> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/postman5/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=39666/*http://messenger.yahoo.com>
>> and save big.
>
>
--
Vladimir Tikhonov,
Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages,
Faculty of Humanities,
University of Oslo,
P.b. 1010, Blindern, 0315, Oslo, Norway.
Fax: 47-22854828; Tel: 47-22857118
Personal web page: http://folk.uio.no/vladimit/
http://www.geocities.com/volodyatikhonov/volodyatikhonov.html
Electronic classrooms: East Asian/Korean Society and Politics:
http://folk.uio.no/vladimit/eastasianstudies.htm
http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2002/main.html
East Asian/Korean Religion and Philosophy:
http://www.geocities.com/uioeastasia2003/classroom.html
More information about the Koreanstudies
mailing list