Remapping the 38th Parallel in the Global South: Korean Immigration in Southern Spaces

The American South has long been characterized by a white-black racial binary; however, the region’s more globalized economy and contemporary immigration patterns complicate this binary. This essay will utilize Korean immigration as a critical lens to examine the effects of globalization on the contemporary American South and the ambiguities and ambivalence surrounding Asian and Asian American identity. Korean Americans represent just one of the growing populations who force us to reconsider the ways in which we envision and map southern spaces. The first half of my essay examines the ways in which the growing visibility of Korean Americans transforms the city of Annandale, Virginia from a small southern suburb into a “Koreatown.” The second half of my essay focuses on how Korean identity and place function in two novels set in the American South: Patti Kim’s A Cab Called Reliable and Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student. Feeling simultaneously away from and at home, Korean Americans often struggle to understand where exactly their place is in southern communities. But their presence and the region’s increasingly diverse population force us to reconsider traditional notions of place in a more global American South.