ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of transnationalism and migration in modern Korea, situates the volume within current scholarship, and explains the arguments of the next 12 chapters. The first section examines migration and ensuing transnational experiences in modern Korean history focusing mainly on the outbound migration of various groups of Koreans over the last 150 years as well as on transnational encounters between Koreans and foreigners that since the 1990s have become more frequent and diversified. It also covers inbound migration to South Korea in the twenty-first century, including both the return of ethnic Koreans from some diasporic communities and also the arrival of non-Korean migrants to South Korea, which challenged Korean society to become more multicultural. The second section, “Historiographical Overview,” presents recent scholarly works dealing with transnationalism and migration in modern Korea and explains this volume's unique contributions. Finally, the third section, “Organization of the Volume,” presents brief descriptions of the chapters to come. They cover non-migratory transnational encounters between Korea and several other nations as well as the migration of Koreans to other countries and of ethnic Korean and non-Korean migrants to South Korea.
