Asia in our discussion represents not a solid but a relative and relational place generated and created by the vectors of mobility. From the mid nineteenth century to the present, globalizing impetus, following the trajectory of imperialism, has forged a dependent concept of Asia (or Orient) as the Other vis-a-vis the West. In the meantime, peoples in Asia have been creating new spaces, social and ethnic relations and lieux de memoire while experiencing and practicing otherness of the various boundaries, regimes, places, nation-states and cultures. And these mobility practices of nomad, migration, colonization, border-crossing and deterritorialization have evolved following the vectors of mobility within a constellation of histories of capitalism, war, labor, and colonization. This new conceptualization of Asia, constructed through the transnational flows that transcend the cultural, ideological, national and ethnic boundaries as well as post/Cold War divisions, is now opening up multiple but ambiguous spaces for inter-Asian cultural and political practices. What is at stake is, then, how transcultural practices of the returning migrants through the axes of mobility--whose historical origin is the imperialistic, (post) Cold War and globalizing drive and regulation, can transform Asia into a more democratic and ethical space of every day lives beyond the regional and national boundaries. This book seeks to find answers to these questions through the mobility practices in the colonial/imperial, Cold War and global Asia.

Contents

Preface

1. Naeji in Oeji, or the Colonized in the Metropole: The (Non)Ontology of Hole / CHA Seung-ki

2. The Japan-China Friendship Center and Sino-Japanese Relations: A Battle of Allegiances to A Nation-state and A Cold-War Bloc / KWON Heok-tae

3. "Repatriates" in Movement: Zainichi Koreans Moving to South Korea in a "Post-Cold War" Era and Re-composition of Border / CHO Kyung-hee

4. The Cultural Politics of Communication and Difference: A Case Study of the Chinese-Korean Community in South Korea / LEE Jeong-eun

5. A Study on the Settlement Experience and Everyday Life of North Korean Arrivals in South Korea / KIM Sung-kyung