Introduction

Abstract

The project presents the formation of the Korean diaspora (Joseonjok)’s national identity and changes in their community in contemporary China. Over-concentration on volatile separatism in China may miss the core academic and prescriptive research objectives of a broader spectrum of migration studies, such as integration policy, the state’s management of multiculturality, and the conditions for stabilizing plural nationalities among various minorities, and often misses the psychological pressure that grows among ethnic groups. The process of diasporization and ethnicization throughout the modern history of the Joseonjok in China, similar to those of other ethnic groups with strong national identity, represents a vigorous psychological struggle and continuous negotiation with central and local authorities and ordinary Han Chinese over collective identity and interests within the given geopolitical and historical structural setting. The problems that the community faces today are structural; they are becoming increasingly complex and thus more difficult to fix. Chinese marketized socialism and Han-centered development have gradually lost the human face of socialism, not because of theoretical conflicts between socialism and the market (or a theoretical clash between multiculturalism and inefficiency), but because of policy failure.