earticle

영어

Korean Chinese refer to those who moved from the Korean peninsula to the northeast area of China from late 19 century to early 20 century, and the people who have gathered in group as minority ethnics and their descendents in China during the establishment of northeast Asia as modern nation. Originally, Korean Chinese has maintained ethnic community with strong homogeneity while 90% or more of the population resided together in the northeast area of China. However, through political and economical modification of northeast Asia in the 1990s, mass immigration occurred to their homeland Korea and seaport city in China under development, so they are rapidly changing from ‘Local agricultural group’ anchoring in the place to an ‘Transnational civil group’ exceeding boundaries. Such existence of moving Korean Chinese became social issue in Korean and China, and is bringing up many debates related to their legal position such as ‘brother’ and ‘foreigner’, ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’, ‘recovery of nationality’ and ‘dual nationality’. The paper will review the movement of Korean Chinese and the change of their legal status in a contemporary view, and holds its purpose to consider how individuals interpret・utilize nationality through the case of families. Today, mutual reaction between the intangible ‘Transnational social space’, which forms・ maintains through movement over the boundaries of nations, and the tangible ‘nation-state space’, which restricts movement within the territory, is becoming gradually complex. The nationality which this paper focuses on as ‘legal bond linking the nation and the people’ will be the keyword for showing such relation. In addition, individual interpretation and utilization regarding nationality will become an example which provides multi-meaning of nationality in the age of total globalization, that is, ‘nomadic vision’ which differs from ‘settler essentialism’.