Guest Editor’s Introduction

A reference that has become autonomous. Freestanding on its own. Once second-class citizens of a colony, residing in the metropole of the Imperial Other. Bound to tumultuous turns of history, torn between the hopes of liberation and the uncertainties of a dawn of “freedom.” By some cosmic fate, like floating seed, they took root in rocky soil. Seed dispersed by wind is said to enroot even stronger and deeper into place. The first generation now becoming the fourth, fifth and more. Generations forged lives, facing the challenges of each era. Postwar loss of Japanese citizenship and becoming stateless, having to register as “aliens.” Repatriation or stay in place was everyone’s big question. Some went back to an “independent” homeland to find disease and famine and returned secretly on illegal boats. Turmoil of political uprising and ideological division, government massacre of innocent villagers causing trauma scorched into memories of newly fleeing Cheju Islanders, mostly headed to Osaka. Transported island rituals and Gyeongsang-do tradition, in the hustle and bustle of the Osaka enclave. Multiple dialects and local language, hybrid, creolized vernacular, viscerally invocated for everyday survival. Witnessing from afar, civil war painfully halving motherland into North and South. Even on borrowed soil, pitted against one another in the Cold War division. Pledging allegiance to one, mistrusting each other. Becoming South Koreans or choosing to remain stateless.