근대 이후 한국의 노동이주와 동아시아

초록

In this paper, I examine the changes in Korean labor migration since modernization in three time zones, namely, the colonial period, the Cold War period and the post-Cold War/global period. In doing so, I try to understand how the changes in labor migration are linked with those in East Asia as a region and how they have affected each other. After World War Ⅰ, as entering and settling in the receiving countries became increasingly difficult, labor migration through short-term contracts emerged as a major phenomenon. However, short-term labor contracts often led to prolonged stay or settlement, depending on the needs and desires of the migrants or those of the receiving countries. This was where the dilemma of labor migration lay, much the same as today’s many problems stemming from global migration. Labor migration during the colonial period consisted mainly of forced mobilization of individual laborers into the original country and the mass migration of family units into Machuria as a colonization policy. But later, during the Cold War period, labor migration largely took the form of offshore migration of individual laborers to Germany and the Middle East region. This change signalled a transition into a postcolonial and developmentalist model of labor migration. It also meant that the grand division of the East Asian region was fundamentally restricting inshore labor migration. On the other hand, since the collapse of the Cold War and sweeping globalization, offshore migration has been decreasing while inshore migration has been on the rise, and the East Asian region is finding itself more and more on the receiving end of migration. These are clear signs of the post-Cold War and global era that we are in. Nevertheless, the oversees dispatch of North Korean laborers continues to grow, as does the migration of ethnic Koreans in China into Korea, lending a prognosis of the diasporic changes to come out of North Korea’s social transformation. It can therefore be said that the North Korean defectors into South Korea are carrying out the role of a litmus test of diasporic labor migration.

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