Paper short abstract:

This paper argues the utopist habitus of South Korean people which originates from the oppression of people until the late 1980s and still leads them to seek for an alternative social order in another time or space.

Paper long abstract:

Since the new millennium began, the population of newcomer Koreans has perceptively been growing in the Greater New York area. As a distinct contrast with recent immigrants and Koreans that emigrated to the U.S. during last century, this new group has wealth and social position high enough to live as middle-class people in today's South Korea --- a modern, technologically advanced country with a thriving popular culture. Instead of political economy, what motivates them to leave their motherland is a more sentimental and emotional issue. Feeling a particular psychological sense of oppression, depression and hopelessness, they come to yearn for and seek out an alternative social order in another place. Many have found the GNY area offers the most efficient and prompt solution to this issue. My paper attempts to weave their narratives to interpret this mentality by making the best use of a social scientific concept which has been looked down upon unjustly in mainstream anthropology for a long time: utopia.