Short Abstract

Centering on Japan, this panel explores Korean diasporas in Northeast Asia from the Cold War to the post–Cold War era, focusing on China and the post-Soviet space. It examines how borders, ethnicity, and memory shape diasporic differences through history, social movements, literature, and film.

Long Abstract

This panel examines the formation and reconfiguration of Korean diasporic communities across Northeast Asia from the Cold War to the post–Cold War era. It focuses on how “difference” has been produced through borders, ethnicity, and memory across interconnected contexts, including Japan, China, and the Soviet/post-Soviet space. Rather than treating “Korean” identity as fixed or homogeneous, the panel approaches diaspora as a dynamic and relational process shaped by changing geopolitical structures, political practices, and cultural representations.

Bringing together four papers, the panel explores diverse sites and media through which Korean diasporic difference has been articulated and transformed. The first paper revisits the concept of ethnicity through a diachronic analysis of people categorized as "Chaoxianzu" in China and positioned as "Chōsenseki" in Japan, focusing on how these classifications have been reinterpreted in South Korea since the post–Cold War era.

The second paper examines the Japan–North Korea friendship movement in postwar Japan as an alternative political imagination that challenged dominant Cold War antagonisms. Through analysis of organizational activities, publications, and participants’ narratives, it demonstrates how grassroots actors sought to reconfigure political and emotional relationships across national and ideological borders.

The third paper turns to literary expression, analyzing how geopolitical and ethnic divisions are internalized in the poetry of Zainichi Korean poet Kim Si-jong. Focusing on metaphors such as the “wall,” alongside images of the horizon, sea, and windows, it explores how experiences of division, exclusion, and belonging are negotiated at the level of individual subjectivity.

The final paper extends the panel’s scope by examining post–Cold War cinematic representations of Korean diasporas in Central Asia and the Soviet/post-Soviet space. Through readings of films by Lavrenty Song and Kim So-young, it investigates how marginalized diasporic histories are rediscovered and reframed through gendered perspectives and transnational circuits of cultural production, including their reception in Japan.

By placing historical perspectives, social movements, literature, and film in dialogue, this panel offers an interdisciplinary and trans-regional perspective on Korean diasporas, highlighting how borders, memories, and differences are continuously reconfigured across interconnected spaces.