• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.295-314
• /
• 2010

The paper attempts to balance the discourses of transnational spaces that have focused on de-territorialization, by emphasizing that transnational spaces are maintained also through re-territorialization. Reviewing the literature of transnational social fields, translocality, multicultural spaces and transnational places, I aim to show the way the main issues from the literature help understand an actually existing transnational space, Little Mania in Daehangno, Seoul. I specifically address the dialectic relation between de-territorialization and re-territorialization, multi-scalar networks, and hybridity of multicultural spaces in interpreting the weekend enclave of Filipinos in Seoul. I argues that Little Manila is a grounded translocality operating through multi-scaled networks of various actors. Furthermore, it is not a unified space where one dominant Filipino identity stands out. Different Filipinos and Filipinas constitute the space imagining different homes. It is also a multicultural space open to other minorities, which suggests the possibility of alternative spatial politics based on co-presence of different 'Others'.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.51 no.3
• /
• pp.311-326
• /
• 2016

Assemblage has become a popular concept in modern socio-spatial theories with relational and material turns. This article investigates the concept of assemblage focusing on Deleuze and Guattari. By comparing similar concepts such as Foucault's apparatus and Actor-Network Theory, this article demonstrates that assemblage emphasizes not only deterritorialization but also (re)territorialization, and that the exteriality of relations is a critical aspect that differentiate assemblage from other relational spatial concepts. Assemblage can highlight the value of empiricism as an analytical tool, and be open to new spatial imaginations as well as multiple existences and possiblities of alternative political projects and practices.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.44 no.2
• /
• pp.146-160
• /
• 2009

Recent studies on development are increasingly focusing on analyzing development discourse and de constructing its institutionalization process in the nation-state. By pushing up the limit of the research on development, these studies particularly emphasize how development is articulated with the nation-state, its governmentality, and various representations. These studies overall consider development a powerful discourse, which invents under-development, mobilizes resources for changing particular space, and institutionalizes modem systems of socio-spatial control at a local scale. In this sense, it is particularly interesting to look at how the nation-state, faced with the deterritorialization of labor and capital, reterritorializes overseas resources and networks for the purpose of development. By problematizing the Overseas Koreans Foundation as a transnational state apparatus, this paper interrogates the way in which its institutionalized practices conjure up the national imagination, ethnic solidarity, and collective allegiance to the homeland in diaspora communities. This paper conclusively reports that the state apparatus circulates the discourse of transnational nationalism in Korean diaspora so as to appropriate their resources and networks for securing foreign currencies and investment in the homeland.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.393-408
• /
• 2018

This study aims to raise our understanding of how memory of a social group is transnationally appropriated and utilized by other subjects. A collective sense of justice for comfort women has been handed to many Koreans either in Korea or in overseas countries since the early 1990s. In the U.S., the first comfort women monument was established in Palisades Park, New Jersey by Korean-Americans and local politicians as they wanted to strengthen the common sense of Korean ethnicity with the symbolic power of the memoryscape. Exploring the diffusion of comfort women memorials in the U.S., this study examines the complexity and multilayered structure of memory politics and its transnational mobility, which are connected to Korean-Americans' struggle for belonging.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.51 no.4
• /
• pp.541-558
• /
• 2016

Landfill has been a long pending issue in the Seoul Metropolitan Region since it was created. Adopting Painter's notion of "territory-effect," this paper analyzes the network formation and change of diverse actors and territory as an effect of networked relations according to four periods from the creation of the landfill to current extension of landfill use. The results are as followed. First, the network formation and composition of major actors has been changed together with historical-geographical conditions. Second, these networks created territory as an effect and re-articulated the configuration of conflicts and solidarity of diverse actors. Third, territory created as an network-effect are different in each period, and is continuously reterritorializing. These findings suggest that territory is never complete and always in the making.