Junyoung Verónica Kim
The University of Iowa
(212) 234-1715
(917) 291-6752
Is Korea in Mexico?: Reimagining National History in Kim Young-ha’s Black Flower
In 1904, as the Russo-Japanese War deepened and the rise of the Meiji Empire began to take hold including Japan’s annexation of the Korean peninsula, a thousand Koreans left their homes for Yucatan, Mexico, thereby becoming the first case of Korean migration to the Americas. Without the protection of the Korean government and lured by Mexican and Japanese contractors with the false promise of wealth and comfort, these immigrants were sold into indentured servitude to work in the henequen plantations of the Yucatan. One of the most recognized writers of the Korean New Wave, Kim Young-ha recuperates this slice of history that had been silenced by all the nations involved – Korea, Japan and Mexico – in his novel Black Flower (2003). This presentation examines Kim’s rewriting of history that situates the 1904 Korean immigration to Mexico not as a minor event in Korean history, but rather as a central event in the transpacific chain that links Korea and Mexico in contemporary geo-history. As such, this paper contends that Black Flower in centering this historical event questions the construction of national history and comments inadvertently on the role of immigration and diaspora in re-imagining the Korean nation in our era of globalization.
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