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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how the war in Ukraine fractures ethnic Korean migrant families from the CIS living in South Korea. Focusing on one transnational family split by political loyalties, it shows how war reconfigures kinship and belonging even far from the battlefield.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how the war in Ukraine produces new forms of familial rupture among Koryo-saram (ethnic Koreans from the CIS) families who are geographically distant from the battlefield yet deeply entangled in its political and emotional aftermath. Drawing on ethnographic material from South Korea, it focuses on one extended Koryo-saram family whose members migrated from Ukraine and Uzbekistan to South Korea before the outbreak of the war.

The family’s internal divisions crystallised along political lines: while the father openly supports Putin, his daughter and her husband—who lived in Ukraine before moving to South Korea—found this stance irreconcilable and withdrew from communication. Similar tensions emerged with extended relatives, also Koryo-saram migrants in South Korea, whose pro-Putin views forced the young family either to sever ties or to carefully avoid political discussion altogether. While such fractures may seem expected, the paradox of this case lies in the fact that the extended family lives in South Korea, was born in Uzbekistan, and is ethnically Korean.

The paper argues that war operates not only as a geopolitical event but also as a moral and affective force that reshapes kinship ties from afar. In South Korea, Koryo-saram identities become increasingly marked as culturally Russian, compelling individuals to “take sides” within a conflict that does not formally claim them as nationals. This paradox—where families are ethnically Korean, legally Uzbek, and geographically displaced, yet nonetheless experience war as an intimate rupture—reveals how conflict reorders belonging and kinship across borders.