ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the citizenship of Korean Chinese entrepreneurs. Korean Chinese entrepreneurs were a new class emerging from Korean Chinese communities in Seoul from the mid-2000s. They became a leading group within those communities and, based on this, have tried to establish a stable and respected status in Korean society. Korean Chinese entrepreneurs were a concrete and distinct case to analyze and characterize the dynamic relationship between the South Korean state and its citizens. The localization of the enclave entrepreneur’s social citizenship is constituted by the interaction between their situational sense of fairness and the diverse roles they are asked to simultaneously perform. Therefore, it is transformative citizenship that is the primary characteristic of the enclave entrepreneurs’ identity (which we could label “rational opportunism”) in South Korea’s (or more widely, compressed East Asia’s) neo-liberal transformation.
