2022, Vol.12, No.1

Asia Review 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.86

pISSN : 2234-0386
https://journal.kci.go.kr/asiareview

This article aims at understanding the striking difference visible in the ways in which the Yemeni asylum seekers who entered South Korea in 2018 and the Afghans who were rescued by Operation Miracle in 2021, were each received in the country. Under which global political context and as what kind of “racialized and gendered bodies” did 500 Yemeni asylum seekers enter the country? Also, what is the global and South Korean context in which the 378 Afghans were defined as “special contributors” and what is the structure of hospitality that welcomed them as such? This article will discuss the way in which the “real refugee” and/or “refugee-ness” have been defined by global humanitarian politics since the mid to late 20th century and discuss how both Yemeni asylum seekers and Afghan special contributors exceed the “refugee-ness.” They are marked as “dangerous Muslim men” and “de-Muslimizing subjects of development” and thus exceed the refugee-ness. This reveals not only that humanitarian politics that regulate who the real refugee is, creates a politics of recognition among those who are not citizens, but also that it operates on top of the racial and sexual politics of empire and capital that have been reconfigured after 9/11. In this context, the difference between the event of 2018 and that of 2021 not only exists only on the surface but indeed veils the way in which South Korea becomes involved in the complicit workings between global humanitarian politics and the post-9/11 regime of racial and sexual politics. This article examines that the ways the coming of the above two groups were received in South Korea ultimately reproduce the post-9/11 politics of empire and capital.

On February 16, 2021, the Bukgu District Office in Daegu City suspended the construction license of the Daruleeman Kyungpook Islamic Centre (Daruleeman Mosque) based on the petitions submitted by the neighbouring residents. Subsequently, the residents set up a task force to interrupt the construction process, by guarding the construction site, distributing anti-Islamic leaflets, and hanging banners and placards throughout the neighbourhood and the city. This paper focuses on the emergence of ‘regular people’ who engage in racism instead of a state body or specific individuals to analyze 93 pieces of writings extracted from the banners and placards. These banners and placards may appear as if residents are rightfully protesting a construction project in their neighbourhood, a common form of protest observed in other parts of the country, and not an act of racism. The paper uses the concept of ‘racism in disguise’ to show how a racially motivated conflict takes the appearance of other preexisting social conflicts. Moreover, this paper starts from the perspective that Islamophobia is inherently multi-scalar in investigating the Daruleeman Mosque conflicts, paying keen attention to dynamics at global, national and local scales. Through this case study, the paper shows that Islamophobia in South Korea is not just ‘imported’ from the West but re-reinvented through an ethnic Korean-based, exclusive notion of citizenship-making and materialized according to the local context.

The US military announced its retreat from Afghanistan after two decades despite having emphasized the war with Afghans being “a fight for the rights and dignity of women”. The Taliban, which seemed to have disappeared into history, immediately seized Kabul, and the Afghan government was turned over at an astonishing speed. With the news of the Taliban occupation, an international society is concerned for the women of Afghanistan. The scars have been unveiled again in 20 years, as the closed and oppressed images of Muslim women symbolized by the burqa. Then, in terms of the rights of Muslim women, in what ways do parts of the Islam society go against the basic norms of women's human rights held by international society? Also, what is at the center of the feminism debate within the Islam cultural sphere? This study seeks to examine the discussions around Islam and feminist theories and to introduce “Islamicite Feminism” as a new alternative. Through cases of Afghanistan and Iran, this study will investigate the conflicting points with the international norms of women’s human rights focusing on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Thus, this study will cast a light on the problem of women in the Islamic world as well as introduce subjective voices of Muslim women up against dispute, violence, and discrimination.