[KS] Joowon Park: "Violence, Citizenship, and the Politics of Life in the Resettlement of North Koreans to South Korea" (January 12, 2015)

Frank Joseph Shulman fshulman at umd.edu
Wed Jan 7 23:54:33 EST 2015


From: aparc-events [aparc-events-bounces at stanford.edu] on behalf of Debbie Warren [dawarren at stanford.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 5:01 PM
Subject: Special Event  January 12, 2015, 12:00-1:30PM

ANTHROPOLOGY COLLOQUIUM SERIES • winter 2015

Monday January 12, 2015 12:00 - 1:30 PM Building 50, 51A

Belonging in a House Divided:
Violence, Citizenship, and the Politics of Life in the Resettlement of North Koreans to South Korea

Joowon Park

In politics, mainstream media, and humanitarianism, people equate North Korea with oppression and vio- lence while characterizing South Korea along the lines of freedom and liberation. However, North Koreans resettling into South Korea are not newborn, unformed citizens ready to regain qualitative life. Violence— visible and invisible, public and private, intentional and unintentional—permeates the experience of forced migrations and often extends into post-resettlement life, shaping and defining every phase of refugee resettlement processes. It is of paramount importance, therefore, to examine how violence operates in the lived experiences of citizenship as refugees resettle into host societies of asylum. In this talk, Joowon Park will discuss the ways in which North Korean “defectors/refugees” experience ongoing structural and invisible violence in South Korea (e.g. stunted growth from malnutrition, stigma and discrimination, family separation and remittance networks, legacies from the Korean War), and how this violence impacts their citizenship and belonging. Based on ethnographic research, his study traces the active role of violence in post-resettlement life and the structural obstacles complicating—even shutting out—the possibility of gaining social entrance within the country of resettlement despite the seeming advantages of shared history, culture, and language.

Joowon Park is a PhD Candidate and Lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC. His research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Explorers Club Washington Group, and numerous internal grants from American University. His interests in violence and citizenship have been influenced in part by his background as a Korean raised and educated in Kenya where he encountered these issues in everyday life. Thus,
the themes of power, governance, and structural inequality—which are the central themes of his research—also frame his teaching. Joowon Park holds a BA from DePauw University and a MAPA from American University.


See flyer in browser<https://web.stanford.edu/dept/anthropology/cgi-bin/web/?q=system/files/JoowonPark_Jan12-2015.pdf>
[cid:B74A9761-E86E-4A30-B527-8A272FF74C51]
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