ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Korean Chinese’s legal status. South Korea’s Korean Chinese population began to migrate into the country from the second half of the 1980s. This was in response to the establishment of and amendments to Korea policies on foreign industrial manpower and overseas Koreans. The state determined the hierarchical status (visa type) of these migrants based on their resources and capital. These were further differentiated and Korean Chinese sought to upgrade their statuses to ones that offered more freedom. Being able to change their legal status was one of the reasons why the enclave entrepreneur class emerged and actively sought to leverage their class position to secure citizenship rights. Moreover, these policies allowed the population of the Korean Chinese enclave, which was an important market for the entrepreneurs, to remain in South Korea and have autonomy in the labour market. We can safely conclude that legal status was an important condition for the emergence of the enclave entrepreneurs.
