earticle

영어

The places in Seoul the long-resident overseas Chinese in Korea flock together to live nearby to each other today have lost their continuity in significance with “Chinatown”. Chinatowns in many world cities succeeded in their old networks notwithstanding the diversified settlement composition with the new-wave Chinese immigrants who need not be restricted to Chinatown. The situation in Korea where Chinatowns are newly ‘developed’for commercial functions seems not totally different on surface, but the vicissitudes of Chinese enclave in Korea are atypical. This study explores the way in which the Chinese living districts in the capital city of Seoul are formed and transformed in the various East-Asian historical dynamics surrounding the Chinese in Korea. The Chinese diaspora in Korea began as Qing’s strategic dispatch, and under the patronage of the Qing army, Chinese immigrants in Seoul could settle in the political and economic center of the capital, in such regions as Jongro, Myungdong, and Sogongdong. Going through critical nodes of the modern Korean history such as Japanese colonial rule,Korean War, or the ideological divisions of both Korea and China, not only the population size but also vocational composition and native places of the Chinese in Korea are shaken up to the extent that their concentration in spatial terms could not develop into the continuously working Chinatown. Their natural ethnic enclave which started through the pre-modern Chinese imperialistic plan was disassembled by the equally nationalistic development plan of the modern Korean government. And the new Chinese cluster in Yeonhee-Yeonam area has been made possible by various national and supranational political and economic changes. The formation and transformation of the Chinese-concentrating districts in Seoul reveals the history that Chinese diaspora and the place, Seoul have gone through together.