• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.135-162
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• 2009

The purposes of this study were to investigate Korean men that chose international marriage in terms of motivations, relationships with their spouses in terms of content and process, and quality changes by approaching them in a biography research method, as well as to look into the world of their specific experiences. Ten Korean men in international marriage participated in the study. In-depth interviews with them generated plenty of data. The analysis results of the data indicate that the instrumental nature was strong as for their motivation to marry a woman of a different nationality. They maintained partner relationships with their spouses until the exchange values became equal between them, when tension and conflicts started to happen. The ways they reacted to the crisis determined whether their marital relationships would continue or end. Most of the subjects that succeeded in maintaining their marital relationships deconstructed their own culture, reorganized it at the contact points with the culture of their spouses, and then moved to a new diaspora. The research implications emphasize an academic need to regard female marriage immigrants as a neo-diaspora in the global age. And suggestions were made as to intercultural education.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.59-83
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• 2019

The Chinese Belt Road initiatives in the Southeast Asian countries marked a new chapter in the development of China political influence on this region. This article looks at the initiative from the cultural dimension and aims to place its narrative as the entry point to understand the use of identity politics in Asian countries that target the Chinese diaspora. This topic relates to the primordial sentiments of Southeast Asian nations amid massive Chinese investment in the region. The issue of Chinese investments under the Belt Road Initiative corridor has a relationship with the formation of anti-Chinese discourse and anti-communist in some Southeast Asian countries. We took the cases of Indonesian and Malaysian elections to observe the use of identity politics and anti-Chinese political discourse in Southeast Asia. In both cases, a common issue emerged, that of the strengthening both Islamic and indigenous sensibilities. The establishment of ASEAN during the Cold War may be seen then as an anti-thesis to emerging Chinese power. However, anti-Chinese and anti-communism sentiments were not enough to unite the forces of the nations of Southeast Asia. We have concluded that brotherhood, mutual prosperity, and anti-neo-colonialism are yet to be fostered completely to make a distinct ASEAN identity.