Books in the Korean Communities across the World series

Digital Media, Online Activism, and Social Movements in Korea studies online activism and its impacts on society by highlighting how various forms of social movements have been mobilized in Korea. This book analyzes how people have utilized the development of digital media to facilitate social movements and effect change.

Since their arrival in the 1960s, Korean immigrants in Argentina have been massively involved in the garment industry. Nevertheless, despite their decades-long concentration in the same sector, over time they have reshaped their motivations and business styles throughout the twists and turns of the host country's junctures. Applying rigorous immigrant entrepreneurship theories, yet wary of orthodoxies, Kim examines the intriguing paths which Korean entrepreneurs have taken to develop their businesses in the Argentine garment industry amidst complex, frantically volatile social and economic circumstances, and argues for the application of a new approach that combines existing theories with historically contextual perspectives.This unique case study on Korean immigrant entrepreneurship in Latin America represents a significant milestone in the fields of migration and Korean studies and a substantial contribution to bridging the gap between the North, where such inquiries abound, and the South, where the history, settlement, and current status of Korean immigrants have been notoriously under-examined.

Medical Transnationalism examines Korean immigrants' distinctive healthcare behaviors, contributing factors to their medical tourism, and their experiences and evaluations of medical tourism. Analyzing survey data of 507 Korean immigrants and in-depth interviews with 120 Korean immigrants in the New YorkNew Jersey area, this book finds that there are three distinctive types of healthcare behaviors that Korean immigrants employ to deal with their barriers (e.g., the language barrier and not having health insurance) to formal US healthcare: dependence on co-ethnic doctors in the United States, the use of Hanbang (traditional Korean medicine) in the United States, and medical tours to the homeland. This book also finds that social transnational ties and health insurance status are the most influential contributing factors to Korean immigrants' decision to take medical tours to the home country. The vast majority of Korean immigrant medical tourists are satisfied with their medical tourism experiences. In this book, Sou Hyun Jang makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to the literature on immigrant healthcare and immigrant transnationalism by focusing on one immigrant group and connecting medical transnationalism to other types of transnationalism. The findings of this book imply that health programs for the most marginalized groupsmall business owners and their employeesand better support for bilingual Korean-English translators at hospitals are needed.

An analysis of the ways in which the intersection of class, race, and ethnicity shape the practices of diaspora-building and knowledge transfer and cause heterogeneous consequences in society, this book examines emergent highly skilled Asian migrants as racialized transnational elites through interviews with Korean international students.

In this book, Jaehyeon Jeong examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization.

Korean Immigrants from Latin America explores the migration and resettlement experiences of Koreans from Latin America now residing in the New York metropolitan area. It uses interview data from 102 Korean secondary migrants from Latin America to explore the religious, familial, economic, and educational dimensions of their migration and resettlement processes in the U.S. As Korean and Latino immigrants share increasingly close interactions with each other in various urban settings, these Korean remigrants can serve as links between Korean and Spanish speakers as well as liaisons among diverse groups. This book shows a surprising degree of diversity within the seemingly homogenous Korean population in the U.S. and demonstrates the unacknowledged linguistic and cultural differences among them.

This volume explores the analogous and heterogeneous nature of Koreatowns throughout the globe, challenging the LA-NYC based ethnic-entrepreneurial discourse that dominates the narratives of the Korean diaspora.

The first of its kind, this book helps readers better understand Korean American mental health issues and their ongoing implications. The editors offer culturally competent practices, program developments, and policies that will better address the Korean Americans who are dealing with mental health issues.

LA Rising revisits the Los Angeles unrest of 1992 and the interethnic and racial tensions that emerged as well as how structural inequality impacted relations among Koreans, African-Americans, and Latinos.

This volume explores the analogous and heterogeneous nature of Koreatowns throughout the globe, challenging the LA-NYC based ethnic-entrepreneurial discourse that dominates the narratives of the Korean diaspora.

An in-depth investigation of the complex relationships among food, culture, and society in Korea, Communicating Food in Korea presents diverse interpretations of food's economic, political, and sociocultural relevance. Grounded in a variety of disciplines, the chapters research the ways food intersects with social issues in Korean society.

This book analyzes the intersections of race, class, gender and inequalities in global migration through an examination of migration policies and migrants in South Korea from undocumented workers to white elite migrants. The chapters reveal the differentiation and divergence of migration experiences due to race, class, gender, and place of origin.

This edited volume unveils diverse issues and factors related to health disparities in contemporary Korean Society. It illustrates how economic and social changes unequally impact different subpopulations, including employees, the elderly, children, and immigrants and describes why health policy and intervention is needed now.

This book explores the role of new media technology in transient migration in terms of mobility, national identity, and sense of home. Through 40 personal interviews with Korean migrants, Claire Shinhea Lee analyzes how homeland media in the transnational space helps migrants make, connect to, and complicate home.

Through a series of empirical studies, this edited volume examines socio-cultural aspects of transnational mobility in and out of Korea as well as the process in which overseas Koreans, returnees, and marriage migrants in South Korea gain agency and negotiate multiple identities.

This book examines the experiences of Korean New Zealanders who have returned to Korea from a transnational perspective. The author highlights the conflicting experiences that the returnees face as "cultural outsiders" as well as the ability they gain to embrace their hybrid identities.

This book examines Korean immigrants' transnational activities, in particular their consumption of transnational media, and the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet and smartphones, on cross-border engagement and its impact on their sense of home, identity, and belonging.