TransnaTional Korea 1

Multiethnic Korea?Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary south Korea

edited by John lie

a publication of the institute of east asian studies, University of California, Berkeley. although the institute is responsible for the selection and acceptance of manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the accuracy of statements rests with their authors.

The Transnational Korea series is one of several publication series sponsored by the institute of east asian studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The others include the China research Monograph series, the Japan research Monograph series, the Korea research Monograph series, and the research Papers and Policy studies series.

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Katherine lawn Chouta, Managing editorinstitute of east asian studies1995 University avenue, suite 510HBerkeley, Ca 94720ieaseditor@berkeley.edu

library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataMultiethnic Korea? : multiculturalism, migration, and peoplehood diversity in contemporary south Korea / John lie (editor).        pages cm. —  (Transnational Korea ; 1) includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-1-55729-110-3 (alkaline paper) — isBn 1-55729-110-1 (alkaline paper) 1. Cultural pluralism—Korea (south) 2. Multiculturalism—Korea (south) 3. Korea (south)--ethnic relations. 4. Korea (south)—race relations. 5. immigrants--Korea (south) 6. Korea (south)—emigration and immigration. 7. Korea (south)—social conditions—1988–  i. lie, John.   Ds904.5.M85 2014   305.80095195--dc23 2014007574

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Cover image by David Chung. Cover design by Mindy Chen.

Notes to this edition

This is an electronic edition of the printed book. Minor corrections may have been made within the text; new information and any errata appear on the current page only.

Transnational Korea 1Multiethnic Korea? Multiculturalism, Migration, and Peoplehood Diversity in Contemporary South KoreaJohn Lie, editor

ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-168-4 (electronic)ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-110-3 (print)ISBN-10: 1-55729-110-1 (print)

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Send correspondence and manuscripts to

Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing EditorInstitute of East Asian Studies1995 University Avenue, Suite 510HBerkeley, CA 94720-2318 USAieaseditor@berkeley.edu

May 2015

Preface vii

Contributors ix

1 Introduction: Multiethnic Korea 1John Lie

Part I: an EMErgEnt MultIEthnIC/MultICultural SoCIEty?

2 late Migration, Discourse, and the Politics of Multiculturalism in South Korea: a Comparative Perspective 31Timothy C. Lim

3 Korea: Multiethnic or Multicultural? 58Nora Hui-Jung Kim

4 tolerance, Tamunhwa, and the Creating of the new Citizens 79EuyRyung Jun

5 Makeshift Multiculturalism: the transformation of Elementary School teacher training 95Nancy Abelmann, Gayoung Chung, Sejung Ham, Jiyeon Kang, and Q-Ho Lee

Part II: MIgrantS anD othErS

6 the needs of others: revisiting the nation in north Korean and Filipino Migrant Churches in South Korea 119Hae Yeon Choo

7 north Korean Migrants in South Korea: From heroes to Burdens and First unifiers 142Jin-Heon Jung

Contents

IEAS-MultiEthnic-text.indd 5 2/17/15 10:57 AM

8 Beyond Motherlands and Mother love: locating Korean adoptees in global Korea 165Eleana Kim

9 Diverging Paths, Converging Ends: Japan’s and Korea’s low-Skilled Immigration Policies, 1990–2010 184Keiko Yamanaka

Part III: DIvErSIFyIng KorEa

10 race-ing toward the real South Korea: the Cases of Black-Korean nationals and african Migrants 211Nadia Y. Kim

11 almost Korean: Korean amerasians in an Era of Multiculturalism 244Sue-Je L. Gage

12 Can the union of Patriarchy and Multiculturalism Work? Family Dynamics in Filipina-Korean rural households 277Minjeong Kim

Part Iv: CoDa

13 Korean Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective 301Jack Jin Gary Lee and John D. Skrentny

Index 331

IEAS-MultiEthnic-text.indd 6 2/17/15 10:57 AM

This chapter focuses on two migrant groups at the margins of multi-cultural projects in south Korea—north Korean migrants and Filipino migrant workers—and examines how religion has intervened in the proj-ect of nation-making as south Korea’s self-definition has begun to shift from ethnically homogeneous to multiethnic.1 Despite being state-driven, south Korea’s multicultural initiatives are far from cohesive and clearly defined; instead, they are better understood as contingent and in-the- making, typifying what nancy abelmann and her colleagues call in this volume “makeshift multiculturalism.” various state and civil society actors have participated in the making of south Korean “multicultural apparatuses” (Jun, chap. 4), compelled by a moral calling and sense of urgency (abelmann et al., chap. 5) as well as religious and spiritual com-mitment (W. Kim 2007). These diverse partnerships with moral and reli-giously motivated civil society actors have stimulated an ongoing debate about the subjects and contents of state-sponsored multiculturalism in south Korea.

The Protestant churches i studied in south Korea were major actors in the area of migrant advocacy and assistance for north Korean and

1 This research was supported by the social science research Council international Dis-sertation research Fellowship, the national science Foundation Dissertation improvement grant in sociology, and the american Philosophical society lewis and Clark Fund. i thank John lie and my fellow participants in the Multicultural south Korea Workshop at UC Berkeley; Joseph Hankins, Chaitanya lakkimsetti, and Jessica Cobb who offered comments on an earlier draft; and all the research participants who opened their chapels, homes, and hearts to me, especially the late Pastor Peter seung-Pil Chang, whose commitment to mi-grant advocacy continues to inspire many.

siX

The needs of others

Revisiting the Nation in North Korean and Filipino Migrant Churches in South Korea

Hae yeon CHoo

120 Hae yeon Choo

Filipino migrants. These churches were deeply involved in the production and implementation of south Korea’s migration and settlement policy through collaboration and contention with the state. Within the structure of restrictive refugee and immigration policy, Protestant churches play an integral role in ensuring that migrants’ de jure rights are translated into de facto rights.2 For example, in acknowledgment of a shared eth-nic nationhood, south Korean law and policy stipulate that north Korean migrants receive south Korean legal citizenship as well as the associated rights and provisions upon arrival in south Korea. However, without the assistance of south Korean Protestant churches that operate shelters and mission homes in China and other asian countries on the route to south Korea, it would be nearly impossible for north Korean migrants to make their way to south Korea to claim these rights.3 in the case of migrant workers from asia and africa who are not ethnically Korean, Protestant churches have advocated expanding labor rights for both documented and undocumented migrant workers whose claims to rights and belong-ing are curtailed by restrictive immigration laws and guest-worker poli-cies. Both groups face discrimination and disrespect in their daily lives in south Korea, and Protestant churches help them bring claims to the south Korean state and civil society. as such, south Korean Protestant churches are important sites for symbolic boundary work (lamont and Molnar 2002).

The significant role that religion and faith-based advocacy groups play in the lives of migrants is not limited to south Korea but is instead a global phenomenon. scholars have documented how religious institutions meet migrants’ various needs; these institutions offer a space to maintain eth-nic identity and solidarity, obtain day-to-day social assistance and sup-port, pursue opportunities for upward mobility in the host society, and organize for immigrant justice.4 in addition, researchers have investigated how religious institutions challenge the state as they operate according

2 Protestant-based organizations and churches dominate the field of social assistance and activism for north Korean migrants and migrant workers, with the exception of one Bud-dhist organization for north Korean migrants and the Catholic Church’s advocacy network for Filipino and vietnamese migrant workers. see W. Kim (2007) for a detailed historical examination of the Christian church’s role in advocacy work on behalf of migrant workers in south Korea.

3 For a more detailed description of the involvement of south Korean Protestant churches with north Korean migrants in China and south Korea, see Jung (chap. 7).

4 For research on the use of religious institutions for upward mobility, see Cao (2005), ng (2002), ong (2003), and yang (1999). see Chong (1998) and Min (1992) for research on mutual support and the maintenance of ethnic identity. For a comprehensive review of the literature on religion and immigration, see Cadge and ecklund (2007), ebaugh and Chafetz (2000), and yang and ebaugh (2001).

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to principles derived from religious tenets that differ from the law and policy of the host nation-state.5 While this literature offers a rich account of the various ways that religious institutions have collaborated with and struggled against the state to meet the needs of migrants, few scholars have critically examined how these institutions have defined and acted upon migrants’ needs and how their actions influence boundaries around nationhood and citizenship.

Following political theorist nancy Fraser (1989), i suggest moving the analytic gaze from needs satisfaction—whether and to what extent the state should satisfy certain needs of a given constituency—to the politics of needs interpretation—how these needs are defined and interpreted, and which actors have the final say on these matters. For Fraser, such “needs talk” moves beyond a simple tallying of which needs are met to function “as a medium for the making and contesting of political claims: it is an idiom in which political conflict is played out and through which inequalities are symbolically elaborated and challenged” (1989, 161–162). in this chapter, i delve into needs talk via competing claims of inclusion and exclusion and address the undertheorized issue of “constituency” in Fraser’s discussion. Fraser considers the group to whom needs belong “a given constituency” that is more or less taken for granted. However, whether a certain group is regarded as a legitimate constituency whose needs should be taken seriously and which specific boundaries define that constituency are open to contestation. Therefore, i argue that the politics of needs interpretation is inseparable from the politics of constituency: the discursive and material contestation of whether a group is considered a deserving constituency that merits the attention and resources of the state and civil society.

Using data from fourteen months of ethnographic research, i compare needs talk within two migrant Protestant church settings in south Korea.6

5 For research on church-based collective immigrant activism that challenges the state, see Christiansen (1996), Hondagneu-sotelo (2008), and Menjívar (2007); for an exploration of faith-based ngos’ refugee resettlement work operating under government jurisdiction, see nawyn (2006, 2007).

6 i conducted the field research for this chapter in two phases. i conducted the study of Protestant churches for north Korean migrants from May to august of 2005 in two churches in seoul (Prosperity Church and Blessing Church), and i completed the study of the Filipino migrant churches from July 2008 to april 2009 in three Protestant churches (Peace Church, Justice Church, Jesus Church) in a segregated migrant neighborhood (which i refer to as Factorytown) on the outskirts of seoul. i conducted participant observation in sunday wor-ship services, Bible study meetings, religious and social events, choir practices, and small prayer groups; in addition, i completed in-depth interviews with pastors, church leaders, and migrant church members. The denomination of the churches included Methodist, Pres-byterian, and episcopalian, but denominational affiliation mattered little to migrants and

122 Hae yeon Choo

i examine everyday interactions in the churches as a space that transforms migrants into a deserving constituency of the Korean nation-state. Within this space, the needs of migrants are produced, interpreted, and con-tested by migrants and church leaders. This comparison reveals the ways in which the Protestant church, via north Korean and Filipino migrant churches, partakes in the politics of constituency through the rhetoric of inclusion for migrants, and how this rhetoric relates to needs talk among south Korean church leaders and migrant congregational members. approaching needs talk as a site of political claims-making, i demonstrate how the boundaries of the nation are redrawn through the daily conversa-tions within the church.

Reclaiming the Nation in North Korean Migrant Churchesit was north Korea Mission Week at Prosperity Church, a south Korean megachurch located in central seoul famous for its evangelical zeal. “oh, dear god,” Pastor Donghyun lee intoned as he took the stage for the opening prayer in front of more than two thousand people gathered in the main chapel for the sunday worship service, “We pray for north Korea with all our hearts. Though they have sinned and fallen on the side of evil, have mercy on them. Father god, save north Korea from evil, and unite the divided nation with Thy power.” as the congregation responded with fervent shouts of “amen,” Pastor lee associated the evil of north Korea with its idol worship, which, in his opinion, is a cause of extreme poverty:

There are a few things that god punishes most harshly. one of the most serious sins in god’s eyes is to worship false idols. Do you know why north Korea is so poor and undeveloped? look at all the statues of Kim il-sung and how they made the people worship him. north Korea is cursed because they worship a human as a false idol instead of god.

after the prayer, youn Hee, a thirty-five-year-old north Korean migrant woman, took the stage to offer her testimonial. she began, “i am here today

church leaders; instead, the “migrant church” identity was paramount. in south Korea, the primary form of Protestantism, regardless of denomination, is evangelicalism (Chong 2006; Kim 2000); this identity was reflected by church members, who referred to these churches as “born again” or “Christian” instead of referring to a specific denomination. overall, the churches for north Korean migrants tended to be politically and theologically conservative, while migrant worker churches were more progressive in terms of advocating for minority rights, although these divisions were fluid on the ground. in north Korean migrant churches, the Korean language was used, and in Filipino migrant churches, english was used for wor-ship while Filipino members communicated in Tagalog. interviews were conducted in Ko-rean, english, and Tagalog, depending on the interviewee’s preference. all names of people and churches are pseudonyms, and all quotes were translated by the author.

The Needs of Others 123

to talk about how people live in hardship in north Korea.” as youn Hee spoke in a soft voice, the congregation fell silent. she described her fam-ily’s suffering during the north Korean food crisis—her grandmother and father had starved to death. she described her father’s last day: “i was so glad that day because i brought home some corn flour. He was very weak, but he ate a little bit and said it tasted very good.” The next morning youn Hee’s father never opened his eyes. “at least i was glad that he enjoyed his last meal,” she said with tears shining on her cheeks.

youn Hee went on to speak about crossing the river to China to earn money to send to her family by working in a variety of jobs from waitress-ing to farm work before she met a south Korean pastor who helped her migrate. Her testimonial highlighted the great suffering in north Korea, including starvation, police brutality, censorship, and political repres-sion. youn Hee juxtaposed her struggles in north Korea with the help she had received from south Korean churches. she spoke with rever-ence of the south Korean pastors who had saved her and the energy she gained through morning prayers at the governmental educational facil-ity of Hanawon, where north Korean migrants are required to stay for three months upon their arrival in south Korea. Many in the congregation were sobbing by the time youn Hee closed her testimonial by saying, “it is Kim il-sung and Kim Jung-il that are evil. They are to blame, not common north Koreans,” to which the people responded, “amen.”

as demonstrated in youn Hee’s presentation, north Korean migrants played a central role in constructing the idea of a bifurcated nation in mainstream south Korean churches, reinforcing the long-standing politi-cal standoff between south and north Korea.7 in the form of testimonials, these migrants offered concrete accounts of how the “evil” north Korean regime persecuted its citizens, emphasizing the need to save north Kore-ans and achieve a unified nation. The presence of north Korean migrants on south Korean soil served as a testament to both the failure of north Korea and the superiority of south Korea. as people of freedom (as they were referred to in Prosperity Church), north Korean migrants were portrayed as having crossed from oppression to liberty. By demonstrat-ing that they had actively terminated their affiliation with the evil north, these migrants were welcomed into south Korean society as an affirma-tion of the possibility of national unity.

on the same day that youn Hee delivered her testimonial at Prosperity

7 The exclusion of north Korea was central to the imagined community of south Korea. The division of a single Korean nation into two opposing states during the Cold War led to a process of nationhood and state-building in which each state used the other as the negative part of its self-definition (Moon 2005).

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Church, Pastor sungchul Park, a thirty-eight-year-old north Korean migrant, delivered a sermon at Blessing Church, a small gathering of north Korean migrants located in a neighborhood on the east side of seoul in a public housing project. Pastor Park used his personal experi-ence as a refugee in China and a newcomer in south Korea to build his north Korean congregation. “We have a special mission to pray for north Korea,” he explained in front of the small gathering of fewer than twenty people who sat on the floor of a cramped room with no air conditioning. in contrast to Prosperity Church’s message that poverty is a sign of god’s condemnation of north Korean evil, Pastor Park claimed that Christianity is a religion for the poor. He drew the congregation’s attention to the suf-fering of Jesus Christ:

People called him Jesus of nazareth. What does that mean? Calling him Jesus of nazareth is not a compliment. as i studied biblical history, i found out that nazareth was an impoverished region, and people from that region were stigmatized. it’s just like calling us north Korean defec-tors. it’s pejorative . . . Jesus knows how much we suffered, because he himself suffered like us. He will hear our cry and our prayer before any-one else’s and give us the blessing we all deserve.

By linking the suffering of north Korean migrants to the suffering of Jesus, Pastor Park expressed a strong connection to north Korean citizens living in poverty. He told his congregation that one day, he had cried out to god in tears and prayed, “god, why are you only in south Korea, and not in north Korea? Why haven’t you come to north Korea? even you don’t like to be in poor places, do you?” Pastor Park continued, “god told me, ‘i have a special mission for you. Keep praying for north Korea. Have faith in my power.’”

in Pastor Park’s understanding, god’s blessing of material pros-perity would not be freely granted but instead must be achieved through faith and prayer. Under this theology, north Korean migrants had a spe-cial mission to pray for the spiritual salvation and material well-being of those they left behind. according to Pastor Park, north Korean migrants would be integral to the nation’s reunification and to achieving prosper-ity in both the north and south. Because of this conviction, Pastor Park strongly opposed the south Korean government when it changed the term for north Korean migrants from “north Korean defectors” (t’albukcha) to “new settlers” (saet’ŏmin) in 2005. Using the term “new settler” was a depo-liticizing move on the part of the south Korean government; by remov-ing the reference to north Korea, the government intended to decrease the stigmatization of new migrants. While some north Korean migrants

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appreciated this change, others vehemently opposed it, including many members of Blessing Church. as Pastor Park explained:

There’s nothing wrong with the term “north Korean defectors” itself. That’s what we are, and changing the name to “new settlers” would not change that. if anything, “new settlers” sounds like we are like other mi-grants, like foreigners, but that’s not true. We escaped north Korea in search of freedom, and we risked our lives to come here.

according to Pastor Park, the term “north Korean defectors” high-lighted migrants’ active choice to leave north Korea for south Korea, which they considered a land of freedom. Conflating these migrants with “any other migrant” would downplay their struggle for their own free-dom and that of their countrymen, a spiritual mission that was at the heart of the politics of constituency for north Korean migrants.

In Need of a Work Ethic: The Problems of a Socialist Upbringing

When north Korean migrants stepped down from the pulpit after deliver-ing testimonials about the atrocities in the north, they resumed daily lives in which they faced negative stereotyping and discrimination. although these migrants made the move from “poverty to wealth,” by migrating from north Korea to south Korea, in mainstream south Korean churches, migrant poverty and other social problems were attributed to their ori-gins. For north Korean migrants, acceptance into south Korean society hinged on the condition that they rid themselves of the “stains” associated with north Korea. south Koreans asserted that these stains were notice-able in migrants’ speech, appearance, and manners.8 “They are not to be easily trusted,” asserted Pastor Junghyun Kim, a major figure in mission-ary work for north Korean migrants. He continued:

They lack a sense of morality, because in north Korea, they are used to saying whatever was asked of them, so they didn’t learn to think for themselves what is right and wrong. They would tell you lies without any qualms because that’s how they survived there—by being selfish and deceiving one another.

Pastor Kim claimed that north Korean migrants, because of their ear-lier experiences, needed the Christian religion to settle successfully in south Korea. He believed that Christianity would serve as a corrective to a north Korean upbringing. in the eyes of Pastor Kim and other south

8 see Choo (2006) for an examination of the gendered production of ethnic markers for north Korean migrants in south Korea.

126 Hae yeon Choo

Korean pastors who worked closely with north Korean migrants, north Korean traits must be unlearned through the church. The stain of being north Korean was also connected to migrant poverty. Pastor Kim argued that north Korean migrants lacked a strong work ethic, which rendered them incompetent in the south Korean market economy. in his words,

even if you get [north Korean migrants] a job, they just cannot adjust to the work, and usually they leave even before the month is out. When they leave, i get them another job, but . . . the reason that they leave is that they were in communist society for a long time, right? What is socialism? in socialism, just going to work is all the work you have to do. you don’t have to work hard. They have the same attitude even when they come here. . . . so they just don’t have any idea what competitive society is, what capitalism is, so what kind of employer would like that?

For Pastor Kim, instilling a capitalist work ethic in north Korean migrants was an important part of his Christian mission. He explained, “Whenever i meet north Korean youth, i tell them, ‘you should not sleep more than four hours a day. you are already behind compared to south Koreans your age. you cannot possibly imagine that you can compete with south Koreans. That’s not as easy as you think. you should work two times, three times harder to catch up.’ ”

Church leaders, because they believed that a deficient work ethic was a central problem for north Koreans, used church interactions to cul-tivate a strong work ethic among migrants. sermons, hymns, and prayers were commonly used to help produce hard-working subjects. For exam-ple, at Prosperity Church, a south Korean choir leader in her forties taught the north Korean migrant congregation a hymn promoting hard work. Before she sat down in front of the piano, she told the congregation: “This hymn is really powerful for you. How wonderful it is that all of you are now in south Korea, after all the hardships in the north. now let us praise god, who blesses those who work hard.” The congregation then sang the following hymn:

Don’t ask why you are the only one facing hardships. Be grateful and see the blessings the lord has saved for you. although at this moment, your burden seems too difficult to bear, god is working even now. even when others are tired and sitting down, you should stand up. Be strong, be strong. The lord is holding your hands. if you believe that the lord is with you, you can overcome any hardships.

The lyrics and the leader’s presentation emphasized the value of individ-ual hard work and god as a source of power in that effort. The depiction

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of god in these lyrics is noteworthy—god is portrayed as someone who perseveres when others have given up.

Pastor Park of Blessing Church was also a firm believer that dedica-tion to god would transform a person with an impoverished north Korean past into someone with a wealthy south Korean future. However, whereas the leaders of Prosperity Church viewed each north Korean settler as an individual who needed to cultivate a work ethic, Blessing Church was grounded in a mission of collective empowerment based on shared expe-riences as north Koreans. in his sermon, Pastor Park spoke passionately of the need for hard work and upward mobility in the name of god:

although we are now living in small public housing apartments, if we keep good faith and pray, one day god will bless us and we will be liv-ing in 60 p’yŏng [2,000 square foot] apartments. We should pray, and we need to work hard to make nonbelievers think, “ah, that family was blessed and became wealthy because they accepted Jesus as their lord,” and then they will follow our path.

Following the sermon, the congregation sang an energetic hymn: “We can do it. let’s do it. For believers, nothing is impossible. Though i am little, though i am weak, the lord supports me. Have no doubt, have no fear. Miracles happen. Within the Word, within the faith, we can do it, let’s do it!”

Both Blessing Church and Prosperity Church emphasized hard work as a Christian virtue that the congregation must cultivate and wealth as a sign of god’s blessing.9 By emphasizing individual effort through prayer and hard work, north Korean migrant churches like these incorporated congregants in a “self-improvement” project that ignored the discrimi-nation that north Korean migrants confronted in the labor market and other spheres of everyday life. given this context, how did north Korean migrants participate in and respond to the needs interpretation put forth by the church?

North Korean Migrants and the Pursuit of Progress through the Church

Most north Korean migrants i met during my fieldwork discussed the importance of working hard to “make progress.” These north Korean

9 in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber claimed that capitalism grew out of cultural habits and expectations rooted in Protestantism. according to Weber, a belief in both an individual’s dedication to work in the secular world as god’s calling and the accumulation of wealth as a sign of personal favor from god fostered the development of capitalism. This analysis is reflected in south Korean Protestant churches’ focus on material concerns (Kim 2000).

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settlers defined progress in various ways: for some, progress meant bet-ter academic performance or obtaining a stable and well-paying job; for others, it meant losing their accents and learning how to cook and dress “better” to be more in sync with the south Korean middle-class style. The common element in their pursuit of progress was the strategy of distanc-ing oneself from other north Korean migrants; my north Korean migrant interviewees believed that avoidance of their fellow migrants was critical to achieving upward mobility. Hyun suk, a thirty-seven-year-old migrant, exemplified this attitude. When i asked whether he spent time with other north Korean migrants, he shook his head firmly and replied: “What good is that going to do? if i associate with other north Koreans, there is no progress. i don’t learn anything. i want to stay away from them.”

avoiding other north Koreans and interacting solely with south Kore-ans was not easy, however, because of discrimination against and hostility toward north Korean migrants. in addition, migrants noted that not every south Korean represented progress equally. su young, a sixty-one-year-old woman migrant, contrasted south Korean members of her church with other south Koreans she met in her daily life, especially her neigh-bors in the public housing project:

They are totally different people. When i go to church, people speak nicely to me. They understand what we went through and how we suf-fered. They would come and talk to me, [saying] “it must have been re-ally hard,” and it feels very good to be understood. But the people in my apartment building are of low quality. They treat us really badly. you know, in my building, there are disabled people, poor people, and us north Koreans. our neighbors don’t have any culture whatsoever. They say nasty things to us. one night, the old guy, the head of my apartment complex, shouted to us, “shut up! Did you learn to behave like that in north Korea from general Kim?” . . . We weren’t even that loud. and other neighbors call us north Korean beggars, something like that. so i try to spend little time at home.

Compared to the blatant hostility she encountered from her neighbors, the church was a welcoming place for su young. Because su young was one of the few north Korean settlers who came to south Korea through a family network instead of assistance from the church, she first encoun-tered Protestantism after migrating to south Korea. su young connected her decision to become Christian to attaining membership in south Korea:

i thought to myself, “now i am a south Korean, i will do things in the south Korean way.” and when i met the Christian volunteers at Hana-won, they are like college graduates. They are not fools. if church does something bad to them, why would they go to church, you know? it must

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do something good. so i decided to become Christian myself and began attending services at Hanawon.

Church groups were active in providing social assistance for north Korean migrants, illustrating their prominence in south Korean civil soci-ety. north Korean migrants like su young accepted Protestantism as part of “the south Korean way.” The fact that well-educated middle-class citi-zens—in contrast to the “disabled people and poor people” su young met in her public housing project—attended Protestant churches suggested that Protestantism was not only a reliable source of benefits, but also a pathway to upward mobility and belonging in south Korea.

Protestant church leaders in south Korea defined progress and self-improvement against migrants’ north Korean past and the lifestyle of their fellow migrants, reproducing the hierarchy between north and south Korea in north Korean migrants’ daily lives. eun sim, an ambi-tious nineteen-year-old woman, attended an alternative school for north Korean migrant youth where she was preparing to take the exam to attend college. in 1997, when she was barely eleven, eun sim left north Korea for China at the height of the food crisis. in our conversation, she described the tension she felt between her desire for progress and her discomfort at being grouped with other north Korean migrants at the alternative school, saying:

i like the teachers here, and they are all very nice and i learn a lot. But when i spent time with north Korean students here, they are so different from the university elder brothers and sisters i meet in the church. They are like different kinds of people. i know that that’s an elite university and only really smart people attend, but when i spent time with them, they are very considerate of others. even a small thing, like when we get water, they would bring my water too, something like that. But here, people are crude, use a lot of bad language, fight with each other, and i find myself using more bad language, [having] a stronger north Korean accent, and becoming aggressive. i don’t like that.

eun sim repeated this contrasting perception of south and north Koreans in her descriptions of many different events in her life, from her refugee years in China to her transition period in south Korea. she proudly emphasized how she had been helped by many south Korean adults, including diplomats in the south Korean embassy where she sought asylum, teachers and government officials at Hanawon, pastors in the church, teachers at alternative schools, and university students. The south Koreans she met at church encouraged and supported eun sim’s aspirations and hard work in pursuit of upward mobility. in contrast, she

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described other north Korean migrants in a negative light, as people who did not work hard and distracted her from her goals. eun sim’s descrip-tions reflect a dilemma that many north Korean migrants faced: they had to distance themselves from other north Koreans to achieve success and upward mobility in south Korea.

For many north Korean migrants, the Protestant church was a para-doxical space. While it offered the resources and support necessary for north Korean settlers to achieve social mobility and acceptance, church leaders also viewed migrants as deficient people from a deficient state. This perception of north Korean migrants led church leaders to promote an active project of self-transformation for migrant churchgoers, in which the standard of progress was distance from their north Korean pasts. Under this framework, Blessing Church faced significant disadvantages in mobilizing north Korean migrants compared to mainstream south Korean churches like Prosperity Church. in addition to lacking material resources, Blessing Church encouraged its members to embrace their asso-ciation with their pasts and with other north Korean migrants. The Prot-estant Church’s inclusion of north Korean migrants was a complex move to reclaim a Korean nation that encompassed north Korea by transform-ing these migrants into proper capitalist subjects with a strong work ethic who were able to assimilate to south Korea as reformed individuals. The politics of constituency within the Protestant Church were significantly different in the case of migrant workers without a shared ethnic nation-hood, however. i will examine this different type of needs talk in the next section.

Transcending the Nation in Filipino Migrant Churches“sojourners are like orphans and widows,” Pastor Paul at Jesus Church observed as he began his sermon during the sunday worship service for the congregation of Filipino members and south Korean visitors. He con-tinued, “god commands us to serve them. like orphans and widows in Jesus’ time, migrants today can’t survive without help from the people in this country.” as part of a mission to provide assistance to migrants, Pas-tor Paul and other south Korean pastors in “Factorytown”—a segregated migrant neighborhood on the outskirts of seoul—led migrant churches for over ten years. When south Korean visitors from more affluent, estab-lished churches visited Jesus Church, Pastor Paul spoke passionately about the importance of migrant worker mission work as god’s calling to serve the sojourners.

similarly, at Peace Church, migrant workers were accepted as “the least of these,” for whom Christians had a responsibility to care. as the

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national church convention approached, Pastor Jaehoon Won at Peace Church asked lisa, a Filipina migrant worker in her late twenties, to read the prayer of the people in Korean at the gathering. among the four people assigned specific roles, lisa represented marginalized groups. Her prayer read, “We pray for the homeless on the street, the poor who strug-gle for daily bread, the sick who need your care, and the migrant workers whose work is hard and difficult in this land. Please give your blessing and protection.” Through this form of representation, migrant workers who did not have a Korean ethnic identity were symbolically incorpo-rated into south Korea as subjects who needed protection, provision, and blessings “in this land.” alongside widows, orphans, the sick, the home-less, and the poor, migrant workers were considered a vulnerable group in south Korea.

Creating a space of acceptance for migrant workers was not an easy task within the restrictive guest-worker system in south Korea, which did not grant legitimate long-term residency, thus rendering migrant work-ers undocumented. The church’s understanding of migrant workers as sojourners to be welcomed clashed with state immigration policy impos-ing a division between legal temporary workers and “illegals.” When i accompanied a deacon of Peace Church to the immigration office, Mr. Baek, the government official in charge, looked at us with disdain and said, “you are helping illegals, right?” He continued, “We Koreans need to learn from Japan. i heard that the ngos there don’t offer any help to illegals. They are law-breakers; they are breaking the law of our country, and we shouldn’t be dealing with them.”

Despite immigration officers’ negative attitude toward undocumented migrant workers, in the eyes of the church, migrant workers’ legal status was not important. Migrant workers were brothers and sisters in need of help and protection as sojourners. During a sermon one sunday at Justice Church, Pastor suan lee asked, “Many of you are illegal, but are you sin-ful under god?” after a pause, a few congregants quietly answered “no.” The pastor affirmed this, saying, “of course not. somebody might say breaking a law or a regulation is sin, but that’s the law of the world. god’s law is different. Under god, you are not sinful because you are helping other people. you are helping your family back home. We are on the side of god.”

in order to include migrant workers as part of the deserving constitu-ency in south Korea, Korean churches engaged in active symbolic work. For example, a skit titled “Migrant Workers and the story of simchŏng,” written by Pastor lee and performed by Filipino members of Justice Church, adapted a popular Korean folktale to depict the lives of migrant workers. in the original folktale, a young woman, simchŏng, sacrifices her

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life to cure her blind father, is saved by a god of the sea, and becomes the wife of a king. every Korean knows this story, which is a morality tale emphasizing filial piety and sacrifice for the family, but how does this story relate to migrant workers who do not share this folk culture?

Pastor lee’s script began with a story of a Filipina migrant woman, dramatizing how she left her country when her father died and the fam-ily was in dire poverty. Her mother cried in despair, “now he’s gone, and there’s nothing to eat in the house. How will i feed my four children?” The daughter replied, “Don’t worry, mother. south Korea is recruiting migrant workers. i will go.” The mother cried even more, “i am so sorry, i am the one who should go, but with these little ones . . .” The daughter traveled to Korea, but with her meager salary as an industrial trainee, she could not send enough money home to support her family; she then decided to run away from the factory and earn more money as an undocumented worker. similar stories of sacrifice were enacted as the skit continued and another mother and daughter came to south Korea to help their families. The skit ended with an explicit message as the migrant workers met with sim Ch’ŏng. “you are just like me,” sim Ch’ŏng said, “because we were all willing to make a sacrifice for our families.”

after Filipino migrants performed this play in three churches in seoul, Pastor lee expanded on this point in his comments. “i hope you now understand why migrant workers are here,” he said. “even with-out visas, they need to work to help their poor families.” Many congre-gation members nodded, affirming, “yes, we do,” and “amen.” Many people in the audience cried. after one performance, the pastor of the host church came up to the stage and thanked the group, saying: “Thank you so much for coming here. god told us to be with the lowly, the poor, and the oppressed, that is, to be in Canaan. instead of our going down there, Canaan came to us today.” a particular understanding of migrant workers as a group of the vulnerable, the lowly, and the oppressed emerged from interactions such as these. By acknowledging that migrant workers shared with south Koreans an ethic of sacrifice in the name of family, Christian churches engaged in the work of establishing migrant workers as legiti-mate members of the “lowly” class residing in south Korea and requiring Christian care.

In Need of Protection and Surrender: Problems of Vulnerability

Filipino migrant worker churches shared an understanding of migrant workers as sojourners, and based their needs interpretation on the prob-lem of vulnerability. according to the churches’ assessment, this vul-nerability had multiple sources. The first element of vulnerability was

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migrants’ disadvantaged position in the workplace. even though migrant workers—both documented and undocumented—were legally entitled to labor rights, language barriers and/or undocumented status rendered migrants vulnerable to labor violations such as withholding salary, sever-ance pay, or overtime pay. Migrants therefore often sought the assistance of the church to enforce their rights by filing cases at the labor office or negotiating directly with factory owners. Peace Church also ran a migrant advocacy ngo with a government contract to offer assistance with labor and medical issues, and other churches offered similar assistance. every sunday, church members shared their concerns with the pastor and the congregation, and pastors did whatever they could to assist with various problems that extended well beyond labor violations to include medical emergencies, family conflicts, and domestic violence.

For example, during one sunday worship service at Jesus Church, Mike, a Filipino migrant worker in his forties, shared his concern and asked for prayers. Mike had not received his salary for two months, and the factory owner had not kept his promise of paying the overdue amount. Pastor Paul responded to Mike’s request, saying: “god doesn’t like it when people do not get what they deserve. it is [the owner’s] responsibility to give the fruit of your hard work.” He then led the group in a collective prayer:

Dear god, please help Mike to receive the money he earned. The owner might be having difficulty, but help him to have a change of heart and give [Mike] the money. god, Mike worked in December and January, during the cold and difficult times. Be with him so that he can get the pay on the day he was promised.

Pastor Paul not only prayed for Mike and other church members but also visited factory owners to advocate on their behalf. after the sunday ser-vice, Pastor Paul visited Mike’s boss to ask for the payment, and Mike successfully received the money two weeks later.

For church leaders, a second source of vulnerability was migrant workers’ undocumented status. instead of welcoming migrant workers as sojourners sent by god, the immigration office regularly arrested and deported migrant workers. Whereas the church was able to assist with workplace vulnerabilities, in matters of immigration control, churches were as helpless as the migrant workers they served. When a large-scale immigration crackdown took place, it disturbed the whole migrant com-munity, significantly affecting migrant churches as well as migrant work-ers. The crackdown was viewed as a setback to their hard work, and clergy members were enraged and dismayed. Pastor Paul was visibly shaken

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after a major crackdown in Factorytown in november 2008, when eleven out of forty congregation members were deported. “How can they do this to them?” he exclaimed. He was especially upset by the manner in which the government conducted the crackdown, breaking into people’s homes, chasing them, and arresting them with handcuffs, all of which took place right in front of his church. Pastor Paul continued, “What did they do wrong? all they wanted and did was to work hard. and they treat the people like criminals, without any respect!” Pastor Won at Peace Church concurred with this sentiment of rage and betrayal: “How could they do this to us? How dare they come in here and take our people like that?” His words described a shifting boundary between “us” and “them,” where south Korean churches and migrant workers were constituted as a “we” that was under attack by the immigration office.

The first sunday after the crackdown, the worship services were emo-tionally intense. at Peace Church, Pastor Won was barely able to contain himself. He kept repeating, “i am sorry. i am so sorry that i couldn’t pro-tect you. i am the sinner. i failed to do my work.” as the hymn “god Be My shelter” filled the room, church members hugged one another and consoled church members whose family members were taken by the immigration department. after worship, the congregants gathered in the houses of those who had been arrested and helped pack their belongings. in all the churches, people collected money to help purchase airline tickets to the Philippines for those in detention centers. Korean pastors drove back and forth to bring migrants their luggage, passports, and money.

after the initial wave of strong emotions subsided, migrant churches in Factorytown decided to take refuge in god’s plan to handle their vulner-ability to immigration control. “There is one thing that i want you all to remember,” said Pastor Won at Peace Church in a desperate voice:

it breaks my heart so much when i see people get hurt. When the immi-gration grabs you, don’t jump. ali from Bangladesh, you know, is lying in a hospital bed now because he ran to the mountain and fell off a cliff. He broke his arm, and he will not be able to recover completely. What is that? When the immigration comes, just go with them. There’s nothing you can do at that point, is there? your health is more important than anything. remember that, because it is a god-given body. god has plans for you, so don’t hurt yourself and go with them.

The Filipino congregation, consisting largely of undocumented migrants, affirmed Pastor Won’s message by laughing and nodding their heads. They had seen fellow migrant workers become disabled from injuries incurred during crackdowns and had heard about people who died while

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running from immigration officials. Under such difficult circumstances, the message that god had a plan and that Christians needed to surrender to god’s will was delivered by pastors and affirmed by congregations.

The act of surrender was required not only for migrant workers, but for all church members. During a sermon one month after the crackdown, Pastor Paul confessed that his own confusion and despair led him to real-ize that he needed to surrender.

That day [of the crackdown], i thought to myself, why am i doing this here? What’s the meaning of all this? i was crying in my heart, thinking, “maybe i will just quit.” But before i could think of anything, a word came out of my mouth that we would begin a hundred-day prayer. it wasn’t my word but was from god. . . . see now, through our hundred-day prayer, how we have grown, our faith has been strengthened. Have faith in god. once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, where you are doesn’t matter. We are all sojourners. you are sojourners in Korea, but you are sojourners in the Philippines as well. Wherever we are, we are only temporary before we enter the Kingdom of god. although it is sometimes hard to accept, god has His plan, and we follow His will for the expansion of His Kingdom.

after the sermon, linda led the group in singing the hymn “i surrender.” The congregation sang, “all to Jesus i surrender; all to Him i freely give. i will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live. i surrender all; i surrender all. all to Thee, my blessed savior, i surrender all.”

in response to shared vulnerabilities, pastors of Filipino migrant churches encouraged their congregants to follow god’s will and plan. Whereas migrant workers had to live with the insecurity of possible deportation, Korean pastors struggled to cope with the insecurity that they could lose their congregants at any time. The notion of shared vul-nerabilities distinguished Filipino churches from north Korean migrant churches. in the case of north Korean migrants described earlier, the work ethic prescribed for migrants was viewed as a quality south Korean church members already possessed and could transmit to migrants. in contrast, the cultivation of surrender in Filipino migrant churches was understood as a communal effort. The process of surrendering to god’s will engendered a transformation of the self, not only for migrants but also for Korean pastors and churches. This understanding of the south Korean church and Filipino migrants as a collective led to a discursive transforma-tion; the term “sojourner,” at first limited to migrant workers, ultimately became an expansive category including all people on earth. The national boundaries of Korea and the Philippines were thus transcended, creating

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a mutual bond among church members. However, the Korean nation was bypassed in the process, rather than expanded and reworked to include migrants; as a result, the idea of the Korean nation as intact and homoge-neous remained unchanged.

Filipino Migrants and the Building of Extended Family in the Church

in Factorytown, all three churches shared an understanding of migrant workers as sojourners in vulnerable positions. They distinguished three elements of need among migrant workers: the need for spiritual guid-ance, the need for assistance with matters of labor and daily living, and the need to cultivate surrender to god’s plan. south Korean Christian churches’ understanding of migrant workers as sojourners—temporary residents who long to return to their home countries—and their belief in the need to cultivate surrender resonated with some migrant workers. Tessa, a Filipina woman in her fifties who had lived in Korea for over a decade, accepted Pastor Paul’s suggestion to integrate her life as a migrant with her spiritual journey under god’s plan; this integration helped her deal with the insecurities she felt as an undocumented worker. “god will decide when i will return home,” said Tessa. “i would like to stay and work to save more money and learn more about the Bible, but i will follow god’s plan. if the immigration [officials] come to my factory one day, i will just say, ‘Thank you, god,’ and follow them.” yet Tessa had no plans to return until that day, and intended to live her life in Factorytown “accord-ing to god’s will.”

However, many migrant workers did not view themselves as sojourn-ers. instead, they wished to stay in Korea “as long as i can,” “as long as god lets me,” or “forever.” “We like it here,” Boyet, a Filipino man in his early fifties explained. He continued, “Why don’t Koreans and Filipinos just switch our countries? Koreans seem to like it in the Philippines,” referring to the many Koreans who travel the Philippines for business, tourism, and learning english. Katherine was another migrant worker who wanted to stay in Korea permanently. she explained, “i’d love to work and live here and take vacations in the Philippines. Here there are jobs, and you can walk around at night without worrying about safety. i’d like to immigrate if they let me!” Katherine was acutely aware that Koreans, including the church members who helped her, did not appreciate her desire to immi-grate. although she had lived in south Korea for thirteen years, Katherine often said she had been in the country for only six years to avoid looking like “too much of an old-timer,” and to avoid hearing, “isn’t it about time to go back?” Katherine told me about a Korean woman she met through the church in another factory town:

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she was very nice and would bring me oils and fruits. But she would always say to me, i wish you would earn enough money soon to return home. i just smiled and didn’t say anything. But in my mind, i was like, “no, i am not leaving. i am not going anywhere. i will stay here forever.” But i didn’t want to say that to her.

By selectively presenting herself and her intentions, Katherine demon-strated an awareness that the benevolent assistance from churches was contingent on their understanding of migrant workers as sojourners—temporary residents with vulnerabilities.

Despite rhetoric framing migrants as sojourners, Christian churches functioned as a primary site for Filipino migrants to develop roots in Factorytown and elsewhere in south Korea by providing support and a sense of respect that migrants often lacked. For example, when Julie, a forty-year-old Filipina woman found out she was pregnant with her fifth child, Pastor Paul and the Jesus Church members were the first to cel-ebrate with her. Pastor Paul took her to the hospital for a check-up because her husband worked during the day. although Julie had worked in the same factory for more than five years, she did not tell the Korean owner and managers about her pregnancy until she was five months along. she explained,

Because had i told them two months ago, they would say, “you stupid, go to a doctor” [for an abortion]. Many say, “Why don’t you just abort the baby? Here in Korea, it’s legal.” and i tell them, “Why? This is god-given life.” We didn’t plan this, but my husband and i are happy that we have a baby.

Julie expressed discomfort that the Korean factory owner and manager did not respect her as a mother: “They don’t think about me, [they] only think about themselves and the work. if i leave, it’s difficult for the factory, but what about what i want and my personal life? They don’t think about that.” Within her church community, Julie was able to garner the respect and support that was absent in her workplace. When she gave birth to her daughter, Pastor Paul baptized the baby, and 107 church members wit-nessed the baptism as godparents. not all of these congregants made it to the baptism party, but many did, and they contributed money to the family.

The social support offered by the church community also provided migrants with a sense of kinship. in Factorytown, Filipino migrant work-ers referred to themselves and one another by church affiliation; for exam-ple, a member might say, “i am a Peace member,” or “He’s Justice, so i don’t know him too well.” Migrants’ core groups in south Korea consisted

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of church acquaintances, and which church Filipino migrants attended had less to do with religion than social networks. Thirty-year-old Flor-ence was a Peace Church member, but she was also a devout Catholic and missed Catholic rituals like confession and ash Wednesday services. When i suggested that she might attend a Catholic church, she shook her head. “How can i do that?” she whispered, “What would ate lhisa say? you know how she is. We all go to the Peace, period.” By “we all” Florence meant her extended family (from the Philippines), including her husband Tommy, Tommy’s second cousin Peter, Peter’s brother Jhun, Jhun’s wife lhisa, and lhisa’s sister Bella and her husband ato. among the family, 45-year-old lhisa had spent the longest time in Korea, living in Factory-town for seventeen years. Her husband joined her a few years after she arrived and found work at a furniture factory, and one by one other family members came as well, including Florence and Tommy, who arrived only two years prior to our interview.

as the family spent more time in Korea and welcomed new family members, they built strong bonds in the migrant community through the space of Peach Church. not all family members attended church regu-larly, but regardless of how religious they were, they were always “Peace Church people.” Many migrant workers had more relatives and friends in Korea than in the Philippines because their family members had migrated to countries around the globe in search of work. as they built kinship net-works around the church, migrant workers in south Korea responded to their needs interpretation by creating a space of home as long-term settlers within a Christian church that embraced them as “temporary” sojourners.

Conclusionin this chapter, i comparatively examined the needs talk occurring in south Korean Protestant churches regarding north Korean migrants and Filipino migrant workers. in north Korean migrant churches, which were charged with Cold War ideology, north Korean migrants were included as “people of freedom,” and church leaders emphasized migrants’ active journey from oppression in north Korea to the freedom of south Korea. Church leaders considered north Korean migrants to have a poor work ethic because of their socialist upbringing and believed that the trans-formative process of Christianity could help migrants become appropri-ate capitalist and south Korean subjects. Many north Korean migrants affirmed the needs talk of the church in their pursuit of upward mobil-ity and acceptance. in Filipino migrant churches, migrant workers were included as sojourners in need of protection who provided examples of “the least of us” alongside disadvantaged Koreans. These churches

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constructed migrant workers’ needs against the problem of vulnerabili-ties. Church leaders provided protection against these vulnerabilities in the form of assistance and advocacy, but they also encouraged members to surrender to god’s plan in the face of immigration control. in response, Filipino migrants built kinship and ethnic communities using migrant churches as a basis for their long-term stay in south Korea.

examining the politics of needs interpretation within Protestant churches reveals the everyday actions and messages through which the churches maintain the boundaries of the south Korean nation while advo-cating for and fulfilling the defined needs of migrants. in north Korean migrant churches, church leaders acknowledged and problematized the north/south divide; dichotomies between Christians and the unsaved, good and evil, and capitalism and communism were compared to the division between south and north Korea. in this sense, the church’s work with north Korean migrants served as a testing ground where the nation could be symbolically reunited by renouncing the “evil” north Korean state. in contrast, in Filipino migrant churches, the rhetoric of the sojourner as a temporary resident, combined with the cultivation of surrender, tran-scended the nation, bypassing the work of expanding the national bound-aries beyond ethnic nationhood to actively include migrant workers. as such, the work of needs interpretation involved creating a constituency whose group definition fit the symbolic boundaries of the south Korean nation, as these churches instilled a certain set of values and morals to a selective group of newcomers while discursively expelling the national others. These everyday interactions between migrants and south Koreans buttress state-driven “makeshift multiculturalism” in south Korea and shape the shifting meanings of south Korean nationhood and citizenship.

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