Migration and Religion in East Asia ― North Korean Migrants' Evangelical Encounters

Since the mid-1990s when North Korea was gripped by a devastating famine, increasing numbers of North Korean migrants have been crossing the Sino-North Korean border en route to Seoul, South Korea, in search of a better life. Based on fieldwork conducted in Seoul and Northeast China, Migration and Religion in East Asia sheds light on North Korean migrants' Christian encounters and conversions throughout the process of migration and settlement. Focusing on churches as primary contact zones, it highlights the ways in which the migrants and their evangelical counterparts both draw on and contest each others' envisioning of a reunified Christianized nation-state. Analysing the intersections between religious and political conversion and physical migration, it scrutinises cultural understandings of identity politics, religio-political aspirations, competing discourses on humanitarianism, and freedom in both religious and national terms in the context of late-Cold War Korea.

Jin-Heon Jung received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States, and is currently a Research Fellow and the Seoul Project coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. His publications include Building Noah's Ark for Refugees, Migrants, and Religious Communities (co-edited, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Multiculturalism in Korea: A Critical Review (co-authored, 2007, in Korean), and My Friends from North Korea (co-authored, 2002, in Korean).