Embracing Man as the Yellow Savior: South Korea’s Encounters with War Evacuees

• In Event: 50855 - Racial Hierarchies and Identity

Abstract

In May 1978, after the Fall of Saigon, the South Korean government dispatched two LSTs to evacuate South Korean citizens and their Vietnamese family members from Vietnam. This operation, Operation Crusade, brought about 1,000 Vietnamese and 300 South Korean citizens to South Korea. Five decades later, in the summer of 2021, a South Korean Air Force refueling aircraft landed at Incheon International Airport, carrying about 400 Afghan evacuees. The covert military operation, Operation Miracle, brought local collaborators of South Korea’s operation in Afghanistan to safety. I focus on these two historical moments of South Korea’s encounters with war evacuees and theoretically construct a figure of the embracing man. Both Operation Crusade and Operation Miracle are war-induced encounters between South Koreans and ethnic "Others," in which South Korea provides refuge and safety to the evacuees. The act of embracing is a racializing process that demarcates group boundaries based on binaries, such as the one between the who of embracing versus the whom embraced: mother versus children, masculine versus feminine, and developed versus underdeveloped. During the Korean War (1950–1953), displaced Koreans were embraced by UN/US forces or by white saviors. South Korea’s assumption of the role of the embracing man reflects the post-Cold War geopolitical conditions, where some previously colonized nations have ascended to the role of a savior. The embracing man serves as a new type of savior who is racially more appropriate than the white savior. As shown in the South Korean case, the key role of the embracing man is to legitimize transnational wars. The embracing man positions itself as a success case of white savior interventions, whose preaching has valorized capitalism, anti-communism, and development. Ultimately, the embracing man upholds racial capitalist accumulation and "saves" the white savior from a legitimation crisis.

Author

• Nora Hui-Jung Kim, University of Mary Washington