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PP 728
Korean Women in Diaspora: "Being International = Being Graceful?" – Media, Transnational Imagination and Performative Identity
C.X. Hu
1
1
University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute, London, United Kingdom
Based on the complex Korean social culture of internalised racial discrimination, “white fetish” and Korean media’s “over-embellishment” on the West,
the West thus becomes a socially constructed terminology. Whiteness counts with a remarkable social status; white men and westernised lifestyle are
generally perceived as emblems of Western modernity (Kelsky 2011). Therefore, the perceived media discourses of “being international”as a social capital
within the Korean society and, at the same time, as a core push factor of the decision for young Korean women to move abroad. Several studies have already
examined different pathways through which media can generally lead to the creation of “imagined world” amongst the audience (Apadurai 1989, 1990,
1996; Sun 2002; Fujita 2004, 2006); and, more importantly, how it can contribute to the creation or constant redefinition of identities, especially within
a context of transnational mobility (Gillespie 1995; Madianou 2005). Regarding this latter aspect, previous studies aimed to further explore a diasporic per‑
spectives on identities, arguing that their construction has been and continues to be transformed through relocation, cross culture exchange and interaction
(Madianou 2005). Building on Foucault ́s work, Butler (1993), for instance, argued that modern notions of identity are made up with regulatory ideals
of what normal people are expected to live up to, although in most cases, identities are actually created through social practices as performance. Hence,
the analysis of identity, especially of people in diaspora, should be examined in specific contexts. This paper aims to assimilate existing literature on media
and diaspora to draw a historical pattern of performative identity, as well as to discuss the phenomenon of“being international”as“cultural grace”(Cheah
1998; Kim 2011) within diasporic Korean women in the global city of London. Leaning upon a critique of Judith Butler’s celebrated concept of performativi‑
ty, which was seeking to shape“stylistics of existence”based on individual subversion of cultural norms (Boucher 2006), through an ethnographic approach
combined with“following”in-depth interview and cyber ethnography targeting 20 Korean women live in London, this paper brings refreshments vis-à-vis
the intersectionality between the literature on media, diaspora and identity by arguing the social constructivist perspective on performative identity.