Suchergebnisse

The quest for spirituality among young urban dwellers represents a novel and highly distinctive form of social reproduction in contemporary South Korea. As young people are forced by a hyper-competitive work environment, fragmenting family, and high youth unemployment, they strive to overcome the attendant feelings of stress and anxiety, turning to the anti-materialist values of Buddhism. Within this context, the emergence of Mahayana Buddhism's 'engaged Buddhism' – as manifested in Jungto Society – provides an interesting case study to examine the ways in which the culture of healing is being popularized among the young city dwellers. Of particular appeal to this generation is Jungto Society's combination of individualistic practice with social action, which also differentiates it from other Buddhist organizations. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with young city dwellers who engage in Buddhist meditation and practices, this article aims to analyze how a young urban population strives to reconcile the knowledge and management of one's heart, promoted by Buddhist religion, with the neoliberal ethos of self-improvement. This article argues that the fundamental Buddhist concepts generate a certain form of self-reflection among their practitioners that expands both their religious and civic minds.

South Korea may have transformed itself from a refugee-producing country into a refugee-receiving country since 1992, but the application procedures on granting refugee status and the appeal process are still arbitrary and problematic for applicants. Many studies on transnational political communities have elaborated on the arduous experiences of asylum seekers in various countries, but few have explored in detail the actual situations which asylum seekers face in host countries in Asia. This article examines the struggles and survival strategies of a group of Burmese as a transnational political community in South Korea whose lives are 'on probation' due largely to the arbitrary categorizations of their statuses as 'migrants' and 'refugees.' This paper provides a better understanding of how they devise various strategies to survive as migrant workers, and defend their political beliefs and human rights as refugees. More significantly, I argue that the acquisition of refugee status can be a process that not only requires a community to function in a transnational public sphere, but is also a perilous journey wherein migrant workers-refugees experience a 'life on probation' and ambiguities as they attempt to have a sustainable life.

This article analyzes the experiences of female marriage migrants who have returned to their home communities in Vietnam and Mongolia after escaping from their marriages in South Korea. It examines how these women returnees experience the transnational production of legal precarity during the processes of divorce and return migration. National marriage migration policies and institutions that determine the conditions of precarity are not confined to the sovereignty of a territorially circumscribed state but are transnationally extendable, affecting the lives of marriage migrants long after they have returned to their home countries where they suffer from various forms of liminal legality. This article discusses how women become separated or divorced, how they arrive at a legally ambiguous status, and what limits their capacity to be reintegrated into their home countries. A new transnational framework for legal assistance is urgently required to find solutions to the problems faced by marriage migrant women and their children. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

An examination of multiculturalism in East Asia using a transnational approach. The collection focuses in on Japan, Korea and Taiwan to examine key issues including policy, racial discourse, subjectivity and the implications for established ethic minority communities.

Pt. 1: Transformation and reconstruction Pt. 2: Gender, sexuality, culture