RT Article
T1 The Religious-Political Aspirations of North Korean Migrants and Protestant Churches in Seoul
JF Journal of Korean religions
VO 7
IS 2
SP 123
OP 148
A1 Jung, Jin-Heon
LA English
YR 2016
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1812420234
AB This article highlights an aspiration specific to Seoul that is projected onto, experienced, and contested by North Korean refugee-migrants who have recently arrived by way of China in this capitalist city of a divided Korea. I pay particular attention to the role of the evangelical Protestant Church in the process of subjectification of these migrant individuals and the performative rituals by which they negotiate religious-political aspirations toward the future. The bodily-spiritual transformation of individual North Korean migrants into Christians is not strictly teleological and is more complicated, ambivalent, and diversified. By comparing two distinctive North Korean migrant activities—the balloon leaflet campaigns and the With-U music concerts and activities—this article discusses the efficacies of the performative rituals of violence and peace that contest and constitute the particular religious-political aspirations in the context of late-Cold War Seoul.
K1 Seoul
K1 Conversion
K1 evangelical Protestantism
K1 North Korean migrants
K1 religious-political aspirations
DO 10.1353/jkr.2016.0013