Feminist Ethnography in South Korea: Documenting Conversion to Islam in “Multicultural” Korea and the Gendered Struggle for Belonging

Abstract

This paper presents a feminist ethnographic account of the gendered struggle for belonging in “multicultural” Korea through an in-depth case study of a Korean Muslim woman convert and her family. Centering the informant and her family’s narratives, I explore the gendered implications linked to her conversion to Islam, her sense of belonging and how her inter-ethnic marriage challenges existing notions of labelled “multicultural families” in Korean society. This paper sheds light on the penalties associated with the case study’s religious conversion and marriage choice, demonstrating how she experiences exclusion from mainstream society and her own ethnic community. Far from being an isolated case, I will further convey how it is linked to several others in the literature, highlighting the urgent need for further field research.