Fake refugee? Yemeni refugees becoming faceless labour in South Korea

The arrival of 561 Yemenis fleeing from Yemen civil war on Jeju Island in 2018 has rendered the refugee issue visible in South Korea. The unexpected influx provoked intense backlashes, stigmatising them as 'Gajja Nanmin (fake refugee in Korean)'. Aligned with critical refugee scholarship, this article challenges the long-standing refugee/migrant binary, exploring the layered and often overlooked experiences of Yemeni refugees in South Korea. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork between 2019 and 2023, the study unpacks how they have been transformed into faceless labour. Their lived experiences reveal a paradox where the state is the one who disrupts the refugee/migrant binary framework, effectively regulating Yemenis with humanitarian sojourner status categorisation, following its developmental migration policymaking trajectory. As the first longitudinal research on Yemenis, this article highlights a refugee reception experience beyond the dichotomy of the Global North and Global South, offering an opportunity to transcend multiple binaries that structure the complex terrain of migration.