From Nationalistic Diaspora to Transnational Diaspora: The Evolution of Identity Crisis among the Korean-Japanese

This paper presents an evolutionary explanation of diaspora for the Korean-Japanese using a method of ‘global ethnographic revisits’. By expanding the scope of the Korean-Japanese to those who repatriated to South Korea and North Korea in addition to those who remained in Japan, the paper finds that their migration trajectory has gradually evolved from passive nationalistic migration to active transnational diaspora, a conclusion that was not easily replicable using the conventional method of observing Korean residents only in Japan. The three-stage evolution process includes passive diaspora during the colonial period, post-diaspora during the cold-war era, and transnational diaspora after the cold war. The three ethnographic cases presented in this paper indicate that motivation and environmental structures affect the whole evolutionary process, whereas distancing from their imaginary homeland is key in evolving into transnational diaspora for the Korean-Japanese.