Education for Young North Korean Migrants: South Koreans’ Ambivalent “Others” and the Challenges of Belonging

This article explores the nature of the difficulties young North Korean migrants experience in South Korea, the ways in which they negotiate these constraints, and in turn how this negotiation shapes their sense of belonging. The wane of the Cold War facilitated globalization, but there are still many things on the ground that remake internal ideological/cultural/political boundaries that mediate against full citizenship. I argue that while young North Korean migrants also are products of the demise of the Cold War, Korean national division and the persistent cold war culture that the division has produced contribute to both their nearly automatic gain of legal membership and their difficulties in achieving full membership. In particular, I examine education as a key context in which these young people experience these regimes of dis/incorporation. Constructed as an ambivalent “other” at schools by peers and teachers based on their stereotypes of North Korea and the transference of these stereotypes to North Korean migrants, these young migrants are struggling to have a sense of belonging by developing various strategies. I suggest considering the disruptions of boundaries and multiple affiliations of these migrants not as signs of disloyalty and threats to social cohesion, but as a source for new visions of identity and belonging that are required to pursue national unification in this multicultural and globalized world.