By drawing from my ethnographic field research on a transnational social movement network in the Korean diaspora traversing South Korea and the US, I argue for the reconceptualization of freedom as the capacity for imagining the collective self as the protagonist for peace-building and transformative social change and building communal capacity to pursue them. This process of freedom necessitates not only critical understandings of social violence but also memories of ancestors’ moral agency who imagined a different world resisting violence. These memories, often hidden from popular consciousness and silenced by the politics of memory, help us stay grounded in ethical dignity, countering cultural humiliation and hegemonic social myths that restrict Asian American social belongings in liberal democracy. This reconceptualization of freedom enables us to pursue democracy, foregrounding the collective power of the marginalized as a center.
This transnational social movement network traces its roots to the South Korean democracy movement in 1980, particularly the May 18th People’s Uprising, which refers to the citizen’s uprising for democracy following 10 days of brutal state massacre. Missionaries and Christian activists utilized their transnational denominational network to smuggle a prominent activist, Yoon Han Bong, to the U.S., who soon organized the Korean diaspora in the U.S. Yoon, wanted by the Korean government, and his colleagues started to organize communities across the United States, which has grown to become one of the largest Korean and Asian American-led progressive networks for social change with a distinctive emphasis on cross-racial and transnational solidarity building within and outside the U.S. Border. This organization, the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium—guided by its principles “live right, know your roots, live strong, live together”—is exerting its efforts in legal advocacy and community education in response to the current president’s executive orders on immigrants. The first-generation activists not only transmitted their skills and resources for building a movement but also cultivated spirituality through cultural activism, transmitting the memory of democratic uprising and generating new embodied memories of solidarities. This transnational tradition for democracy, while it remains in the realm of “memory” rather than official history, challenges the typical notion of freedom as inherently individualistic, which promotes meritocracy and discourages interdependence and systematic approaches in liberal democracy.
Culling from their 40 years of transnational and cross-generational tradition, my paper focuses on how collective memories and spirituality facilitate alternative collective identity for the network and expand cross-cultural solidarities in resistance to what Emilie Townes calls “fantastic hegemonic imagination,” oppressive social ideologies that we internalize (Townes 2008). The anti-communist ideology during the Cold War (Kim 2022), in combination with the model minority myth and orientalism, restricts Asian American social belonging on the condition of fidelity to America as a nation and of their demonstration of merit. These ideologies have formulated the popular narrative script for migration stories and one’s identity (Park 2008, Park 2011). Resisting this oppressive popular consciousness, the memories of the pro-democracy movement and the following political massacre were alternative stories for the Korean and Korean American communities to develop critical consciousness. Moreover, this consciousness, rooted in the collective agency of the oppressed, became the source for listening to the memories of other communities of color in diasporas—Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanic communities— whom they began to call “siblings.” Their emphasis on cross-cultural solidarities based on the counter-memory even secured their community center a distinctive place during and after the 1992 LA uprising. In my paper, I analyze how religion and spiritual practices help these activists engage the unique collective memories of the Korean democracy movement in a way that they continue to expand their social belonging and freedom in the U.S.
The transnational social movement network in the Korean diaspora, in solidarity with other communities of color in diverse diasporas traversing the U.S., demonstrates the limit of narrowly defined freedom. The dominant myth positions freedom as individual liberty protected by natural law with an emphasis on individual rights, ownership of property, meritocracy, and independence from the state (Zakaras 2008). While historians and ethicists have analyzed how the concept of freedom has evolved across different political eras (Zakaras 2008, Dochuk 2010), I find Kelly Brown Douglas’ analysis of the relationship between freedom and American exceptionalism generative. Douglas has shown how freedom was rooted in Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism and carried by the Pilgrims and the Puritans, who believed their race to be a bearer of natural rights given by God in their mission of building an Anglo-Saxon Christian nation (Douglas 2015). Thus, enslaved Black people were excluded from freedom, whose descendants would continue to challenge the myth of America as a guardian of freedom (Douglas 2015). Thus, the notion of freedom as private liberty and rights has a negative impact on people of color and those who are excluded from American exceptionalism. By educating community members about their rights upon ICE interrogation under the current administration, NAKASEC shows the importance of cultivating conditions as a prerequisite for the exercise of individual rights. By organizing public rallies where community members can express themselves, they show the necessity of advocating for conditions to be heard rather than freedom of speech. By building solidarities with other communities of color, they embody the freedom of living together for democracy. By analyzing their stories, I provide a more expansive conceptualization of freedom in the context of marginalized people in the Asian diaspora.
These collective memories of the Korean American diaspora are part of my dissertation project on the ethics of collective memories for emancipatory democracy. My methodology combines intersectional qualitative research with critical theological ethics, particularly womanist and Asian and Asian American feminist theologies. With IRB approval, I have conducted research in Gwangju, South Korea, and with activists and community organizations in different cities in the U.S., weaving memories from different regions together. Through my presentation, I hope to facilitate conversation on how diasporic memories, often embedded in trauma and violence, can unveil the limit of the popular myth of American freedom and how spirituality and religion can facilitate ethical and more expansionary practices of freedom for democracy.
This paper argues for a reconceptualization of freedom by drawing from my ethnographic field research on a transnational social movement network in the Korean diaspora in the U.S. that originated from the 1980 South Korean pro-democracy movement. The story of this intergenerational movement network, which has built solidarity with other communities of color, demonstrates the limits of narrowly defined freedom as individual liberty and disrupts the hegemony that restricts Asian American social belongings based on meritocracy. By analyzing their stories, I provide an expansive conceptualization of freedom in the context of marginalized people—as the capacity for imagining the collective self as the protagonist for freedom-building and transformative social change and building communal capacity to pursue them. These memories of our ancestors’ collective moral agency restore ethical dignity and radical hope in the process of freedom-building. This freedom enables us to pursue democracy by re-membering the marginalized as a center.