Challenging the “Hierarchy of Nationhood”: Diasporic Entitlement and the Case of Korean Chinese (Chosŏnjok) in South Korea

With about 7.5 million people, the Korean diaspora is concentrated in China, Japan, North America, and the former Soviet Union. Since the 1990s, many ethnic Koreans have been “returning” to South Korea, their putative ethnic homeland. Significantly, their treatment by the state has been unequal: On issues of residency and employment rights, ethnic Koreans from China (Chosŏnjok) and the former Soviet Union were relegated to second-class status compared to those from North America. This inequality is encapsulated in the phrase, used by a number of scholars, the “hierarchy of nationhood.” Surprisingly, perhaps, the Chosŏnjok community challenged this unequal treatment by asserting rights based on colonial victimhood, ethnic sameness, and cultural authenticity. While such expressions of entitlement are not unusual among marginalized diasporic groups, the Chosŏnjok achieved something remarkable, namely, they succeeded in gaining political and economic rights initially denied by the Korean state. Simply put, they successfully challenged the hierarchy of nationhood. Using a discursive institutional framework, we endeavor to explain how and why entitlement claims by the Chosŏnjok were effective. More specifically, we argue that the struggle by Chosŏnjok to overturn the hierarchy of nationhood had little to nothing to do with a coercive, dyadic power struggle against the Korean state, but was instead a fundamentally discursive struggle, which itself is a product or reflection of discursive agency, both on the part of Chosŏnjok but also, crucially, on the part of their key allies—religious leaders and civic organizations—in South Korea.