Beyond good intentions and evil regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American missionary custody

I’ll be giving a talk next week at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at UBC. It’s an updated version of the talk I gave a couple of months ago at NYU, Rutgers, and UW, dealing with notions of missionary custody. As usual, I promise unconventional analysis, moving stories and even better visuals. 😉

Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, UBC
Spring 2011 Lecture Series

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
12:00 – 1:00 pm

At the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies
2080 West Mall (028) Jack Bell Building

Everyone welcome!

Beyond good intentions and evil regimes: North Koreans in Korean/American missionary custody

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, many of these undocumented North Koreans—majority women—experience dire conditions including criminalization and forcible repatriation, slave wage labor, forced marriages, and sex work. In this bleak situation, South Korean and Korean American evangelical Christian missionaries and religious NGOs carry out significant humanitarian advocacy work in what has been described as an “underground railroad,” managing relations with state authorities and trafficking brokers, operating safe houses, and facilitating travel for those seeking asylum. However, with no systems for transparency or accountability in place, there is also growing concern for how these underground missionary networks regulate and discipline the expectations and experiences of North Korean border crossers in their custody. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic research of evangelical missions, this talk will present questions about intentionality and power, and discuss the legal-ethical-spatial politics of the safe house, touted as both temporary and necessary.