LAUSR

ABSTRACT This article examines the question of (return) migration among highly-skilled, 1.5- and second-generation Korean Americans and the particular social, material and cultural capital Korean Americans may acquire in Korea. Undoubtedly, Korean Americans have occupied privileged positions in Korea especially compared to other ethnic return migrants such as Korean Chinese and Zainichi Koreans. However, my research attempts to trouble a monolithic or homogeneous understanding of Korean American privilege. Using ethnographic research and by paying attention to the multifaceted and diverse experiences of Korean American returnees in terms of age, gender, level of education, class, occupation, religion and locality, I complicate Korean American ethnicity and assumptions of a “privileged” status among Korean American returnees. Such monolithic assumptions about the Korean American experience are often implicitly based on the masculine subject as the primary agent of migration and diaspora. However, attention to gender and intersectionality of Korean American returnees exposes subtle forms of pressure and aggression often obscured within narratives of Korean Americans as an elite and fundamentally masculine group. In this way, this article proffers a far more nuanced understanding of the contradictory and “double-edged” experience of Korean Americans upon return migration.