On December 2, 2005, Tobias Hübinette
will defend his Ph.D. dissertation in Korean Studies Comforting
an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted
Koreans in Korean Popular Culture at the Department of Oriental
Languages, Stockholm University, Sweden
Supervisors: Professor Staffan Rosén, Department
of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, and Dr. Lars Lindström,
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University
External examiner: Dr. Koen De Ceuster, Centre for Korean Studies, Leiden
University
Examining committee members: Professor Raoul Granqvist, Department of
Modern Languages, Umeå University, Professor Tiina Rosenberg,
Center for Gender Studies, Stockholm University, and Professor Johanna
Schiratzki, Department of Law, Stockholm University
The dissertation can be read and downloaded at the
Swedish Digital Scientific Archive: http://www.diva-portal.org/su/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=696
The dissertation has also been accepted for publication
by the Korean Jimoondang Publishing Company (http://www.jimoon.co.kr/)
as monograph No. 7 in the Korean Studies Dissertation Series.
Abstract
International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this
study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued
for over half a century, resulting in a population of 156,000 overseas
adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 main host countries on the continents
of Europe, North America and Australia. Both the demographic scope,
the time span and the geographic spread are absolutely unique from a
comparative child migratory perspective, and still over 2,000 children
leave Korea annually for international adoption. This massive intercontinental
trafficking of Korean children was for many years silently taking place
in the shadow of Korea's rapid transformation from a war-torn and poverty-stricken
country to a formidable success story in the postcolonial world. Even
if the subject of international adoption and adopted Koreans turned
up now and then in the political debate throughout the years, it was
not until the end of the 1980s that a comprehensive discussion started.
Ever since then the adoption issue has been haunting Korea, from the
mid-1950s and up to the mid-1990s the leading global exporter of children
and by far the country in the world having sent away the highest number
of its own citizens for international adoption in modern history.
This is a study of representations of adopted Koreans
in Korean popular culture. The study is carried out by examining how
adopted Koreans are represented in four feature films and four popular
songs. After having given the cultural background to adoption in Korean
tradition, the history of international adoption from Korea, an account
of the development of the adoption issue in the political discourse
and the appearance of adopted Koreans in Korean popular culture, the
first reading takes up the gendering of the colonised nation and the
maternalisation of roots in Chang Kil-su's film Susanne Brink's Arirang
(1991) and Sinawe's song Motherland (1997), drawing on theories of nationalism
as a gendered discourse. The second reading examines the issue of hybridity
and the relationship between Koreanness and Whiteness in Kim Ki-duk's
film Wild Animals (1997) and Moon Hee Jun's song Alone (2001), including
its album cover, related to the notions of third space, mimicry and
passing. Linked to studies of national division, reunification and family
separation, the third reading looks at the adopted Koreans as symbols
of a fractured and fragmented nation in Park Kwang-su's film Berlin
Report (1991) and Clon's song Abandoned Child (1999). The fourth and
last reading focuses on the emergence of a global Korean community in
Lee Jang-soo's film Love (1999) and Sky's song Eternity (1999), including
its music video, with regards to theories of globalisation, diasporas
and transnationalism. At the end, the study argues that the Korean adoption
issue can be interpreted as a national trauma threatening to disrupt
the unity and homogeneity of the Korean nation and to question the country's
political independence and economic success story that is so valorised
in the master narrative of the nation.
Keywords: Korean studies, international adoption,
adopted Koreans, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, nationalism,
diaspora, representation, popular culture, reconciliation
Tobias Hübinette a.k.a. Lee Sam-dol
Ph.D. candidate in Korean Studies
Department of Oriental Languages
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: 46-8-16 15 88
Fax: 46-8-15 54 64
Presentation:
http://www.tobiashubinette.se
