[LINK] South Korea's Chinese
Mar. 27th, 2005 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldJoe at Far Outliers linked to Oranckay's posting on South Korea's ethnic Chinese minority.
It's interesting to compare the situation of South Korea's ethnic Chinese with that of the ethnically Korean Chinese citizens who have begun to immigrate to South Korea. More than three million ethnic Koreans live in China, many in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province adjoining North Korea and most of the remainder elsewhere in China's northeast. Since South Korea's rapid economic development has made the country an immigrant-receiving state, many ethnic Koreans from China have begun to move to their nominal homeland, claiming permanent residency and citizenship rights based on their ethnicity.
South Korea had around 120,000 Chinese in the early seventies, now there are 22,000. There are many reasons as to why they've left though one of them is that most are from families that originate on mainland, whereas because of history (being in SK at the height of anti-Communism) they are all Taiwanese citizens, with the exception of the relatively few who managed too obtain Korean citizenship. Problem with Taiwanese citizenship is that you couldn't go to the mainland all those years and if you obtain Korean citizenship you have to give up your previous citizenship and still would not be able to go to the mainland all those years (things have changed). So, a good option was emigrating to the US; you can obtain US citizenship without renouncing Taiwanese citizenship while still being able to travel to the family hometown on the mainland on your US passport.
[. . .]
History in Korea, however, also made leaving Korea look like a very good option. The Japanese did not treat them well. There was a "massacre" of some sort against Chinese in Korea at one point in the thirties - there is an article written about it by a Westerner here at the time, though I'm still trying to get a hold of it. The late HH Underwood mentioned anti-Chinese sentiment rather matter of factly in an article in Koreana - the link for that seems to have died but I happened to quote it long ago. Specifically he says "....as we came into the 40s, Japanese controls increased and anti-Chinese sentiment was encouraged...."
Perhaps because he was a protégé of the Japanese, the dictator Park Chung Hee was very harsh with the Chinese as well. Chinese who served in the ROK army during the war as interrogators of PRC POWs were denied their benefits. Park limited the Chinese to mostly running restaurants, and then - get this - enacted price limits on how much you could charge for jajangmyeon! For a long time they were not allowed to own their own land and businesses, and many lost everything when Korean friends who acted as proxy property owners turned around and claimed assets as their own.
It's interesting to compare the situation of South Korea's ethnic Chinese with that of the ethnically Korean Chinese citizens who have begun to immigrate to South Korea. More than three million ethnic Koreans live in China, many in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province adjoining North Korea and most of the remainder elsewhere in China's northeast. Since South Korea's rapid economic development has made the country an immigrant-receiving state, many ethnic Koreans from China have begun to move to their nominal homeland, claiming permanent residency and citizenship rights based on their ethnicity.
