Purifying the Nation: Law and the Making of Marginalities in Post-Colonial South Korea

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel explores the formation of marginal subjects who were legally categorized as ‘vagrant,’ ‘juvenile delinquent,’ ‘prostitute,’ or ‘mixed-blood’ in post-colonial South Korea. Such subjects were often regarded as intrinsically transgressive figures who had the potential to contaminate the morality, health, and pure blood of the new-born nation state. In the process of making ‘sound’ citizens through constitutional, civil, and criminal laws, however, such marginal subjects became ironically fixed and naturalized as abnormal citizens. Conducted under the banner of creating a ‘new and pure’ nation, such legal practices also revealed the intersection of transnational influences such as Japanese colonial legal structure, post-colonial domination by American power, and the desires of Koreans for decolonization.

Each presentation on this panel seeks to pay particular attention to the role of law in the making of marginal citizen in Korea after 1945. To trace the construction of laws around vagrancy, Soyoung Lee examines the marking of non/vagrant subjects in Hyongje Pokchiwon case. Delving into juvenile law, Hyunsoog So reveals dual treatment of ‘juvenile delinquents’ in terms of protection and discipline, and its colonial legacy. Analyzing the partial abolishment of licensed prostitution, Jeong-mi Park highlights the complicity of the elite feminist movement with American military power in purifying the nation. Focusing on ‘mixed-blood’ children born between American GIs and Korean woman, Chung-kang Kim reveals the function of nationality law in excluding the ‘mixed-blood’ children. Taken together, these presentations offer a new reading of post-colonial South Korean history from the perspective of the legally marginalized.

Area of Study

• Korea

Session Organizer

• Soyoung Lee, Jeju National University

Chair

• Chung-kang Kim, Hanyang University

Individual Presentations

• Legally Marked as Non/Vagrant: The Signifier of Vagrant in the Hyongje Pokchiwon Discourse (1987) and Its Post-Colonial Traces - Soyoung Lee, Jeju National University

• Making Nation between Protection and Surveillance: Transformation of Colonial Juvenile Justice System in Post-Colonial Korea - Hyunsoog So, Hanyang University

• Liberation or Purification? Prostitution, Women’s Movements, and the Post-Colonial Nation-State Building in South Korea, 1945-1948 - Jeong-Mi Park, Library of Congress

• Legally (In)visible: Citizenship, Human Rights, and the Social Belonging of Mixed-Blood Koreans in Post-Colonial South Korea - Chung-kang Kim, Hanyang University

Discussant

• Namhee Lee, University of California, Los Angeles