• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.355-368
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• 2017

Regarding to Dandong as the gateway city of the Sino-North Korea trade, cultural anthropology characterizes it with a hybridity of four groups with a different combination of ethnic and national identity: Korean Chinese(Chosonjok), South Koreans, North Koreans and Chinese-North Koreans. And, microeconomics views the enterprises in Dandong area have different sizes and types in the Sino-North Korea cross-border trade depending on their owner's ethnic and national identity. However, these researches focuses mainly on the differences between the groups, falling short in showing how the group members utilize their double identities to maintain and prosper their businesses, coping with various and changing situations. This study introduces the concept of 'identity juggling' and applies it to Chosonjok cross-border traders. The results from the in-depth interview and survey indicate they juggles their Korean ethnic identity and Chinese national identity selectively in terms of their bilinguality of the Korean and Chinese, mobility crossing China, South Korea, and North Korea, and prospects on the trade revitalization thanks to potential mitigation of tensions in Korea peninsula.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.422-437
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• 2019

Compared to the significant number of researches on international immigration, there has been less attention to return migration. This is partly because return migration has been understood as a simple phenomenon resulted from a successful return with accumulated capital or adaptation failure. Since the mid-1990s, a large number of Korean-Chinese have migrated to Korea, and recently it became more common to witness the return of them. This study examines the strategic choice of self-employed Korean-Chinese returning to Yanbian, Recently, an increasing number of Korean-Chinese starts a small business, such as restaurants in Yanbian after accumulating capital in Korea. The relatively short stay in Korea is not only for saving money to initiate their own business. Rather, they could obtain new business opportunities in Yanbian by using the experiences and networks built in Korea. In short, the return migration of the Korean-Chinese to Yanbian can be understood as a strategy of capital accumulation utilizing the gap in the World-systems.