Wedding Citizenship and Culture K O R E A N A D O P T E E S A N D T H E G L O B A L FA M I LY O F K O R E A On a hot August afternoon in a bucolic setting on the outskirts of Kwangju, South Korea, a palanquin was hoisted up and brought to the site of a canopy tent, under which a table, laden with food, alcohol, and two live chickens, rested. An elderly Korean man intoned directions into a microphone and an interpreter called out the translation in English. Around fifty Koreans, the women dressed in Korean hanbok, surrounded the tent, and all eyes were on the heavily made up bride as she was helped out of the palanquin, her face turned down into her hands, elbows raised to either side of her head. She and the bridegroom knelt on opposite sides of the table, rising awkwardly to kowtow several times, pouring and cere- moniously sipping alcohol from carved out gourds — and thus endured the elaborate ritual of a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. In this pastoral location, the authenticity of the ritual performance was made conspicuous by tennis shoes and sports sandals peeking out from beneath the hanbok (which were poorly fitted––some too large and some too small for their wearers) and by men in tank tops and shorts looking on from a distance. As the spectators stood on tiptoe and craned their necks to observe the careful gestures of the bride and groom, their gazes were frequently interrupted by the aggressive movements of televi- sion camera crews. Some onlookers were elbowed out of the way by cam- erapeople getting into position, another was hit in the head more than once by a camera being wielded on a cameraperson’s shoulder. This was not, by any means, a typical Korean wedding––in fact, it was not even a legitimate union between a man and a woman. 1 The presence of the cameras and their intrusiveness on the experience of those watching suggested that the real intended audience was elsewhere, on the other side of the lens. The audience here was being captured as part of the same spectacle — for ultimate consumption by the Korean public. In fact, the “wedding” was staged for a group of overseas Korean adoptees, invited and hosted by the South Korean government under the auspices of the Overseas Koreans Foundation (OKF), a division of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The roles of bride and groom were played by Korean adoptees, and the onlookers were, for the most part, other adoptees or, like myself, camp counselors. 2 It was the seventh day of a ten-day program in which thirty adoptees, ranging in age Social Text 74, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 2003. Copyright © 2003 by Duke University Press. Eleana Kim

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The Discourse of Decolonization and Popular Memory: South Korea

Wedding Citizenship and Culture: Korean Adoptees and the Global Family of Korea

The summit meeting between the two Korean heads of state, which took place in Pyongyang in June 2000, constitutes a major turning point in the peninsula's history. As the effects of the meeting are gradually unfolding, a period of detente no longer seems impossible. But major difficulties remain unsolved and Korea will continue to be one of the world's most volatile areas. The task of this essay is to identify and analyse some of the entrenched political patterns that will challenge policy-makers in the years ahead. To do so it is necessary to portray the conflict in Korea not only in conventional ideological and geopolitical terms, but also, and primarily, as a question of identity. From such a vantage-point two components are essential in the search for a more peaceful peninsula. Substantial progress has recently been made in the first realm, the need to approach security problems, no matter how volatile they seem. in a cooperative and dialogical, rather than merely a coercive manner. The second less accepted but perhaps more important factor, revolves around the necessity to recognize that dialogue has its limits, that the party on the other side of the DMZ cannot always be accommodated or subsumed into compromise. Needed is an ethics of difference: a willingness to accept that the other's sense of identity and politics may be inherently incompatible with one's own.

background

Identity and security in Korea

Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and Reenacting the Japanese Internment

Deliberating “Liberation Day”: Identity, History, Memory, and War in Guam

To think through some of the issues attending to Asian Americanist objectification of "comfort women," Chuh examines the uses to which certain novels - namely, Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman and Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life - put the "comfort woman" Through this consideration, she works toward making some broader claims about the ways and means of critical practice in Asian Americanist discourse What can particular narrativizations of "comfort women," like those offered by Lee and Keller, tell us about the contours and objectives of our critical practices? What kind of work can and does the production of knowledge focused around "comfort women" in Asian American studies do, in terms of facilitating a particular kind of politics — or, even more pointedly, in terms of facilitating justice? Chuh suggests that by interrogating Lee's and Keller's respective novelistic uses of "comfort women," we gain critical insight into the thematicization of these figures in Asian American studies

The Discourse of Decolonization and Popular Memory: South Korea

Citations

Wedding Citizenship and Culture: Korean Adoptees and the Global Family of Korea

Identity and security in Korea

Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and Reenacting the Japanese Internment

Deliberating “Liberation Day”: Identity, History, Memory, and War in Guam

Discomforting Knowledge: Or, Korean "Comfort Women" and Asian Americanist Critical Practice

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