I’m giv­ing a Korean stud­ies col­lo­quium talk at the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle next week. My talk at NYU was announced over the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) list, and I think that’s how the folks at the University of Washington heard about my work. Although it’s very last minute — and even though I’m work­ing on a dif­fer­ent talk at UBC on November 9 — this will be an oppor­tu­nity to improve my argu­ments on the “space of cus­tody,” incor­po­rat­ing the won­der­ful feed­back I received from all the smart crit­i­cal folks at Rutgers and NYU.

***

Thursday, November 4, 2010, 3:30pm

Beyond Good Intentions and Evil Regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American Missionary Custody
The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
Denny Hall 314 (email uwcks@​uw.​edu for more information)

Since the early 1990s, tens of thou­sands of North Koreans have left their famine-stricken homes in search of food and liveli­hood. Living with­out legal sta­tus in north­east China, the major­ity of these undoc­u­mented North Koreans are women, many of whom are traf­ficked into sex work or forced mar­riages. In this bleak sit­u­a­tion, South Korean and Korean American evan­gel­i­cal Christian mis­sion­ar­ies and reli­gious NGOs carry out sig­nif­i­cant human­i­tar­ian advo­cacy work, deal­ing with state author­i­ties and traf­fick­ing bro­kers, oper­at­ing safe houses, and mak­ing travel arrange­ments for those seek­ing asy­lum. But with no sys­tems for trans­parency or account­abil­ity in place, there is also con­cern for how the mis­sion­ary net­works reg­u­late and dis­ci­pline the expec­ta­tions and expe­ri­ences of North Korean bor­der crossers in their cus­tody. Drawing on inter­views and ethno­graphic research on Korean/American evan­gel­i­cal mis­sions, Dr. Han I will dis­cuss how the mis­sion­ary net­works raise ques­tions about inten­tion, power, and the pol­i­tics of custody.