The Search For South-South Solidarities Between Contemporary (South) Korea and Mexico 公开
Lopez, Kimberly (Spring 2025)
Abstract
My thesis explores the interconnections between South Korea and Mexico as it appears in three cultural materials with the purpose of examining possible instances of South-South solidarities in the context of shifting asymmetrical political and economic relationships. This context is characterized, on one part, by having into account the long Mexican history of Anti-Asian sentiment demonstrated by the Porfirian exploitation of Asian migrants and post-Revolution racial project and the other by the rise of South Korea as a cultural and economic power. I analyzed the South Korean novel Black Flower (2003) by Young-ha Kim and the YouTube videos of two South Korean influencers based in Mexico: Chingu Amiga and Coreano Vlogs. The common thread of this project revolves around forms of exchange (language and translation), labor, and economic production (agriculture, industrial, and attention) to examine the cacophonies and contradictions that appear in the process of establishing trans-pacific solidarities between different populations. For example, in chapter one, I analyze how the author portrays an “unsettling” relationship between Mayan and Korean indentured workers in the context of Mexican henequen plantations. In a similar manner, in chapter two, I examine the relationship of solidarities that South Korean YouTubers attempt to construct with their Mexican audiences and the simultaneous (lack of) relationships with the existing populations of Mexicans of Korean descent. I examine these dynamics within the logic of “clickbait” that characterizes the era of attention economy. I utilize Juyoung Verónica Kim’s idea of “Asia-Latin America as method” as well as draw from Quynh Nhu Le’s term “unsettled solidarity” to emphasize instances of “struggle and dissensus" that surge from the process of studying regions and cultures that normally are not associated with each other and are overdetermined by the mediation of the West.
Table of Contents
Historical Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1
Methodology and Cultural Materials……………………………………………...............7
Notes on Terminology…………………………………………………………………….9
Chapter 1: Black Flower: An Analysis of History, Translation, and Labor……………………..10
The Translation of Black Flower………………………………………………………...10
Prior Analysis of Black Flower………………………………………………………….14
Conceptualizing Contemporary Relations with Black Flower…………………………..15
Narrative Analysis……………………………………………………………………….21
Chapter 2: South Koreans in Mexico?..........................................................................................31
Shifting to the Twenty-First Century……………………………………………………32
Who Are Chingu Amiga and Coreano Vlogs?.................................................................37
Language and Translation:...…………………..………………………………………..38
(Un)equal Exchanges:…………………………………………………………………..41
Labor:…………………………………………………………………………………...48
Food:……………………………………………………………………………..……..50
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..52
Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….54
About this Honors Thesis
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