The quest for statehood
Subtitle: Korean immigrant nationalism and U.S. sovereignty, 1905-1945
By: Richard S. Kim
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
ISBN-13: 9780195369991; 9780195370003
Subjects: Koreans; Politics and government; Korean resistance movements, 1905-1945; Nationalism; History
Description: In this book, Richard S. Kim examines the central role played by immigrants in the independence movement that sought to liberate Korea from Japanese colonization. Regarding Japanese rule as illegitimate, Koreans in and out of the Korean peninsula viewed themselves as a stateless people. Their independence activities had to be carried out from abroad, creating conditions for the emergence of a diasporic nationalism. Using English and Korean language sources, Kim traces how Koreans in the United States articulated visions of national sovereignty, drawing particularly on American political rhetoric and symbolism, and increasingly relied on U.S. state power to mobilize international support for their cause. Their efforts to establish an independent homeland necessitated their participation in civic and political activities in the United States, engaging in organizational activity that led to the development of an ethnic consciousness and paradoxically established them as an American ethnic group. Ultimately, Kim argues, homeland nationalism was central to the assimilation of Korean immigrants as American ethnics, even as they were denied U.S. citizenship. -- Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Mapping the geopolitical terrain of the Korean diaspora; title: Becoming diasporic : from labor migrants to exiled nationalists, 1905-1919; title: Inaugurating a "New Korea" : the March first movement and the Korean provisional government; title: Contesting issues of state power in the diaspora; title: Local struggles and diasporic politics : the 1931 court cases of the Korean National Association of Hawaii; title: Kilsoo Haan and "constructive Americanism" : the ethnicization of Korean immigrant nationalism, 1931-1945; title: "In due course" : diasporic nationalism, the United Korean Committee in America, and U.S. sovereignty.