Abstract
This chapter focuses on citizenship issues experienced and revealed by Vietnamese family members of a Sewol disaster victim. Not only does the Sewol disaster manifest the structural problems of South Korean society, which have accumulated from compressed modernization and have been exacerbated through neoliberal restructuring, but it also provides an opportunity to reflect upon issues of citizenship in a disaster situation, particularly the state’s responsibility for and the citizen’s right to life, as well as society’s role for communal solidarity . The experiences of a Vietnamese family caught in the disaster demonstrate that while one’s survival strategy has been both individualized and globalized in recent decades, her survival is still entangled with the nation-state. A Vietnamese woman had married a Korean and migrated as part of a household strategy to survive in an individualized and globalized world, and yet the basis of the global household strategy was destroyed by the Sewol disaster and the Korean state’s response. Based on in-depth interviews with the Vietnamese members of her family, this chapter explores a complex terrain where a transnational family , the Korean state and society grapple with each other over questions of a transnational family’s rights and the host country’s social solidarity in a neoliberal world that increasingly individualizes and globalizes one’ survival strategy.
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Notes
- 1.
While the majority of the victims were students from Danwon High School, there were a number of passengers who were not high-school students.
- 2.
A Vietnamese translator translated the interview from Vietnamese to English. Prior to this interview, I participated in the human rights committee’s official interview with this family as an observer, participated in multiple events, and had casual conversation with Vietnamese family members, Korean volunteers, and Vietnamese volunteers in Kwanghawmoon and Ansan in 2015. I also interviewed a Korean volunteer, who is assisting this family while they are in Korea.
- 3.
Social implications of natural disasters has been an important topic of discussion, and it is based on the influence of human activities in causing natural disasters and the existing social distinctions or inequality which disasters reveal. Cherpitel (2001) noted that “nature’s contribution to ‘natural’ disasters is simply to expose the effects of deeper, structural causes—from global warming and unplanned urbanization to trade liberalization and political marginalization” (cited in Jackson 2006).
- 4.
I identify the interviewees only with their initials to protect their privacy.
- 5.
Interviewees mentioned that the translator was provided by the government but they were not able to name which government agency it was.
- 6.
See Lee (forthcoming) for more explanation.
- 7.
It was a commercially arranged marriage brokerage, often called a “bride contest”. It was subject to criticism, as it was associated with trafficking in women. See Lee (2014) for more details.
- 8.
See Lee et al. (2016) for more details.
- 9.
Count US $1 as 1000 Won.
- 10.
It is worth noting that these were unwarranted concerns because the compensation was entirely legal and even if the government paid the compensation first, it would later collect the amount, together with the fees, from Chonghaejin, as it did in November 2015 (Kim 2015).
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Lee, H. (2017). Foreign to Disaster or New Point of Solidarity? A Vietnamese Victim’s Family in the Sewol Aftermath. In: Suh, JJ., Kim, M. (eds) Challenges of Modernization and Governance in South Korea. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4023-8_8
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