"Unsettling Korean Migration." Transnational Agency and Fluidity of Identity

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Song Jiyoung

2 h  · 

Cheehyung Harrison Kim

tSpoin3tsohreod  · 

Excited to post this interview with

Sun Hee Koo

and

Jihye Kim

about their Special Section "Unsettling Korean Migration." The 2021 KOREAN STUDIES volume comes out in May.

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KOREAN STUDIES 2021 Special Section Preview

Unsettling Korean Migration

Transnational Agency and Fluidity of Identity

A conversation with guest editors Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim on the forthcoming Korean Studies Special Section “Unsettling Korean Migration”

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/.../news-korean-studies.../...

The forthcoming 2021 volume of Korean Studies has the Special Section “Unsettling Korean Migration: Multiple Trajectories and Experiences,” guest-edited by Sunhee Koo and Jihye Kim. The journal editor Cheehyung Harrison Kim spoke with them about their ethnographic project on Korean migration, which is once again a topic of critical public dialogue in light of the recent racist violence against Asians in the United States.

• Sunhee Koo, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and
• Jihye Kim, Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Central Lancashire,

shared their thoughts on how the project came to be and what migration research further teaches us about identity formation and human agency.

Thank you both for speaking with me. Professor Koo: what compelled you two to put together a journal project on migration and diasporic practices?

We wanted to bring attention to the plurality and complexity found in the migration waves the Koreans have ridden on, which produced a myriad of experiences and ideas related to “Koreanness.” The range of social and cultural negotiations performed by Korean migrants manifests into not only who they are and what they want to become but also-and more importantly-individual agencies that constitute what “Koreanness” is today. Creating an interdisciplinary collection on migration related to Korea and Koreans was challenging, since the only thread that brought us together is “migration.” This Special Section might be perceived as missing some uniformity. However, we hope that the discursiveness of these articles points to the diversity that we need to recognize as Koreanists .

Professor Kim: What do you mean by “unsettling” migration? Are there existing notions you are trying to dismantle or move beyond from?

We are approaching migration as an endless act and an in-process journey, regardless of how long-ago migration may have taken place. Exploring the negotiations in the construction of diasporic identities, “Unsettling Korean Migration” showcases the emergent plurality of Korean identity manifested and embodied in individual migrants and each migrant group. In this sense, the very title picks up on two important characteristics of migration-fluidity and flexibility. These characteristics are also crucial in identity formation, which can never be separate from the journey of migration as the journey constantly prompts people to think about their being and belonging. At the same time, “Unsettling Korean Migration” shows how the lives of Korean migrants are marked by malleability and creativity in the process of movement, crossing borders, and settling.

Professor Koo: Your piece is on Koreans living in Japan. What are some key takeaways for the readers?

One key notion in my article is transnational agency, which enables the migrants to form a bridge between home and diaspora by embedding themselves in both national and transnational socio-cultural fields of their choice-as Zainichi Korean artists have done by associating themselves with South Korean national cultures. While their adaptation and transplantation of South Korea’s IICP (Important Intangible Cultural Properties) system in Japan reflect the Zainichi Korean communities’ grappling with postcolonial anxiety and diasporic identity, I intend to point out how Korean national culture is just as much transnational as it is historical and social. It has become individually re-signified and reinterpreted through transnationalism and globalization, even if its transnational aspects remain nuanced, especially back home, and are often overshadowed by nationalist discourses.

Professor Kim: You write about Koreans in Argentina. Could you tell us about their diasporic experience?

Korean migration to Argentina began in the 1960s as a part of South Korea’s migration wave to Western countries in the second half of the twentieth century. This migration may have been motivated by a longing for the West, equated with modernity and industrial advancement, and its promise of social and cultural mobility. Much more economically advanced and developed than South Korea back then, Argentina was one of the favorable destinations for Korean migrants, like many European migrants; and the Korean community in Argentina grew and became stable until the turn of the millennium. The socioeconomic environment of the host society, particularly the economic decline in the last few decades, has had a critical influence on the more recent movement and settlement of Korean Argentines, to the extent that many of them have strengthened their links with Korean communities in the United States and with the home country, as many have re-migrated either to the United States or South Korea. In these social and historical contexts, Korean Argentines have established and reestablished their identities and lives-and played a part in the Korean diaspora-by embedding themselves in and connecting with their home and host countries.

Professor Koo: Why do you think migration continues to be an important topic of research?

We are living in the “age of diasporas,” as Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out. The migrant experience with tension and dynamics related to separation and connection, leaving and returning, and loss and longing will endlessly compel us to reconfigure our being and belonging in the coming decades. The outbreak of COVID-19 last year has shown us how our transnational communities has faced sudden difficulties of disconnection and uncertainty of moving and returning. Today’s transnational migration is often thought to be without the problems of previous diasporas thanks to technological advancements, but the challenges the migrants face presently with geopolitical borders and border crossing are perhaps more intense than ever before. The age of diasporas continues to present us with endless topics and issues that we need to address in the coming decades, in order to understand who we are and how we live at local and global levels.

Professor Kim: What effects do you think global Korean migration have on South Korea and North Korea?

Since the 1990s, growing international mobility and transnational connectivity have brought about significant changes in South Korea, creating a culturally and ethnically more diverse and plural environment, with hybrid identities, mindsets, and lifestyles. Korean migration has made these changes even more active, as it fosters a variety of identities and agencies among those who live in, and between, multiple homes and residency statuses. Korean migration also reveals social and experiential plurality, both at home and in the diaspora, which mutually reinforces the ethnic complexity of Koreans. In the case of North Korea, although changes have been slower than South Korea, North Korean migrants, too, have certainly maintained connections between home and diaspora. In fact, North Korean migrants have played a crucial role in linking North Korea with the countries they have transited through or settled down, contributing to a better understanding of North Korea and a better communication for North Korea with the outside world.

The Spring 2021 volume of Korean Studies is to be published in May.

Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia: Remoulding Gendered Selves in Suburban Community - Kindle edition by Hamano, Takeshi. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia: Remoulding Gendered Selves in Suburban Community - Kindle edition by Hamano, Takeshi. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com

Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia: Remoulding Gendered Selves in Suburban Community 1st ed. 2019 Edition, Kindle Edition

by Takeshi Hamano (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

This book investigates the experience of Japanese women who have immigrated to Australia through marriage to a local partner. Based on long-term participant observations gathered with a Japanese ethnic association in Sydney, and on in-depth interviews with the association’s members, it examines the ways in which the women remould themselves in Australia by constructing gendered selves that reflect their unique migratory circumstances through cross-border marriage.

In turn, the book argues that the women tend to embrace expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is due to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream Australian society. Re-molding the self through conventional Japanese notions of gender ironically provides them with a convincing identity: that of minority migrant women. Nevertheless, by analyzing these women’s engagement with a Japanese ethnic association in a suburb of Sydney, the book also reveals a nuanced sense of ambivalence; a tension between the women’s Japanese community and their lives in Australia.

Accordingly, the book provides a fresh perspective on interdisciplinary issues of gender and migration in a globalized world, and engages with a wide range of academic disciplines including: sociology of migration; sociology of culture; cultural anthropology; cultural studies; Japanese studies; Asian studies; gender studies; family studies; migration studies and qualitative methodologies.

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From the Back Cover

This book investigates the experience of Japanese women who have immigrated to Australia through marriage to a local partner. Based on long-term participant observations gathered with a Japanese ethnic association in Sydney, and on in-depth interviews with the association’s members, it examines the ways in which the women remould themselves in Australia by constructing gendered selves that reflect their unique migratory circumstances through cross-border marriage.

In turn, the book argues that the women tend to embrace expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is due to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream Australian society. 

Re-molding the self through conventional Japanese notions of gender ironically provides them with a convincing identity: that of minority migrant women. Nevertheless, by analyzing these women’s engagement with a Japanese ethnic association in a suburb of Sydney, the book also reveals a nuanced sense of ambivalence; a tension between the women’s Japanese community and their lives in Australia.

Accordingly, the book provides a fresh perspective on interdisciplinary issues of gender and migration in a globalized world, and engages with a wide range of academic disciplines including: sociology of migration; sociology of culture; cultural anthropology; cultural studies; Japanese studies; Asian studies; gender studies; family studies; migration studies and qualitative methodologies.

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Dr Takeshi Hamano is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Kitakyushu, Japan. Since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Western Sydney, he has worked as a Research Fellow at the Global Center of Excellence for Reconstruction of the Intimate and Public Sphere in 21st Century Asia, Kyoto University and as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies of the University of Michigan. A specialist in Sociology and Cultural Studies, Dr Hamano’s research focuses on the transforming perception of the family in Japan, specifically issues concerning marriage (including cross-border marriage), divorce and parenting in the process of globalization. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN : B07SLJ5TQ8

Publisher : Springer; 1st ed. 2019 edition (May 30, 2019)

Publication date : May 30, 2019

Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots - Kindle edition by ABELMANN, Nancy, Lie, John. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots - Kindle edition by ABELMANN, Nancy, Lie, John. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=Blue+Dreams%3A+Korean+Americans+And+The+Los+Angeles+Riots&sin=&and[]=lending___status%3A%22is_lendable%22

No one will soon forget the image, blazed across the airwaves, of armed Korean Americans taking to the rooftops as their businesses went up in flames during the Los Angeles riots. Why Korean Americans? What stoked the wrath the riots unleashed against them? Blue Dreams is the first book to make sense of these questions, to show how Korean Americans, variously depicted as immigrant seekers after the American dream or as racist merchants exploiting African Americans, emerged at the crossroads of conflicting social reflections in the aftermath of the 1992 riots.

The situation of Los Angeles's Korean Americans touches on some of the most vexing issues facing American society today: ethnic conflict, urban poverty, immigration, multiculturalism, and ideological polarization. Combining interviews and deft socio-historical analysis, Blue Dreams gives these problems a human face and at the same time clarifies the historical, political, and economic factors that render them so complex. In the lives and voices of Korean Americans, the authors locate a profound challenge to cherished assumptions about the United States and its minorities.

Why did Koreans come to the United States? Why did they set up shop in poor inner-city neighborhoods? Are they in conflict with African Americans? These are among the many difficult questions the authors answer as they probe the transnational roots and diversity of Los Angeles's Korean Americans. Their work finally shows us in sharp relief and moving detail a community that, despite the blinding media focus brought to bear during the riots, has nonetheless remained largely silent and effectively invisible. An important corrective to the formulaic accounts that have pitted Korean Americans against African Americans, Blue Dreams places the Korean American story squarely at the center of national debates over race, class, culture, and community.

Table of Contents:
Preface

1. The Los Angeles Riots, the Korean American Story
2. Reckoning via the Riots
3. Diaspora Formation: Modernity and Mobility
4. Mapping the Korean Diaspora in Los Angeles
5. Korean American Entrepreneurship
6. American Ideologies on Trial
7. Conclusion

Notes
References
Index
----------------
Reviews of this book:
Blue Dreams--a poetic allusion to the clear blue sky that Koreans see as a symbol of freedom--is a welcome exploration by outsiders into the vexing and largely invisible Korean-American predicament in Los Angeles and the nation. [Abelmann and Lie 's] colorful interview subjects offer sharp observations.
--K.W. Lee, Los Angeles Times

Reviews of this book:
An informed and thoughtful examination of Korean immigration to the United States since 1970...[Abelmann and Lie] show that even in a period as short as twenty-five years, there have been successive waves of differently motivated, differently resourced Korean immigrants, and their experiences and reactions have differed accordingly.
--Michael Tonry, Times Literary Supplement

Reviews of this book:
[The authors'] transnational perspective is particularly effective for explicating Korean immigrants' behaviors, activities, and feelings...Interesting and readable.
--Pyong Gap Min, American Journal of Sociology

Reviews of this book:
Beginning with a poetic book title, the authors recount in depth as to how the 'Blue Dreams' of the Korean-American merchants in East Los Angeles had shattered in the midst of [the] 1992 riot that turned out to be 'elusive dreams' in America...The book not only portrays the L.A. riot surrounding the Korean merchants, but also characterizes diaspora of the Koreans in America. The authors have also examined with scholarly insights the more complex socioeconomic and political underplay the Koreans encountered in their 'Promised New Land'.
--Eugene C. Kim, International Migration Review

Dan rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: history, social-science

Although I do not agree with some of its conclusions, this book still offers an interesting perspective of the L.A. Riots, as well as an informative overview of Korean immigration to the U.S. (appealing to me on a personal level due to my heritage). Despite its subject matter, I have to say this book is not as engrossing a read as Lie's excellent Multiethnic Japan. 

Atlanta Shootings Highlight Wealth Gap Among Asians in the U.S. - The New York Times

Atlanta Shootings Highlight Wealth Gap Among Asians in the U.S. - The New York Times



2 Immigrant Paths: One Led to Wealth, the Other Ended in Death in Atlanta

Owners and employees at the spas attacked last week were immigrants with similar dreams, but were separated by a vast gap in money and power.

166




Gold Spa, one of the three Atlanta-area massage businesses where a gunman last week killed eight people and wounded another.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times


By Corina Knoll, Michael Forsythe, Frances Robles and Linda Qiu
March 24, 2021


Sue-ling Wang prided himself on being a self-made businessman.

The son of a farmer in Taiwan, he attended a vocational school that trained students at a factory producing zippers and ballpoint pens. But he made his ascent after arriving in America on a scholarship and obtaining a Ph.D., then starting his own company in the Atlanta area three decades ago.

He appeared at civic events, donated to Republican candidates and ensconced himself in an exclusive country club community northeast of Atlanta where he bought two stately homes, each valued at about $1 million.

Later this year, he will assume the role of head of the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce. It is a prestigious post: Taiwan’s government recently produced a 14-minute video of him discussing his life that included a photo of him with the island democracy’s president, Tsai Ing-wen.

“When we go abroad, we are not afraid of hardship, because we must raise our children, we want to glorify our ancestors,” Mr. Wang, himself a father, said in the video.


In telling his immigrant success story, Mr. Wang, 68, did not mention his tie to a business whose employees had little opportunity to follow his path: Gold Spa, one of the three Atlanta-area massage parlors where a gunman last week killed eight people and wounded another.

Six victims were of Korean or Chinese descent, fueling outrage and despair about the surge of anti-Asian violence, particularly against women, in the United States.




Image
Sue-ling Wang, chief executive of one of the companies that operates Gold Spa, in a screenshot from a video produced by Taiwan’s government.

But as details about the employees emerged, so too did another narrative: the story of the wealth divide among people of Asian descent in America — a community often viewed by outsiders as monolithic and whose economic disparities have long been misunderstood.

The income gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is, in fact, greatest among Asians, who are considered the most economically divided group in the country, according to the Pew Research Center.




That chasm exists on a grand scale, where the rise and affluence of some Asian-Americans have painted a false history that hides the trials of their own blue-collar communities. But it can also play out in the universe of a single business, where those at the top prosper, far removed from those doing the day-to-day work.

In addition to Mr. Wang — who is the chief executive of Gold Hotlanta, one of the companies that operates Gold Spa — there are others with financial ties to two of the spas, as landlords or operators.

Mr. Wang, who did not respond to multiple efforts to contact him for comment, was not present on Friday when a reporter tried to reach him at Color Imaging, his printing toner business at an industrial park in Norcross, Ga.

However, his business partner, Wan Sih, was there. Listed on corporate documents as the point of contact for Gold Hotlanta until this year, Mr. Sih, 49, said he had simply prepared the documents registering the company and was not familiar with Gold Spa or its employees.

“Look, what happened was a tragedy,” he said, “but I don’t know anything.”
Dreams of Opportunity




ImageA mourner at Gold Spa. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


They were immigrants who had arrived, as so many do, with dreams of what could be.

Suncha Kim had left South Korea around 1980, landing in a country whose language she would never master. Still, she found odd jobs over the years, sometimes holding down more than one at a time, and did not complain about washing dishes for a restaurant or the late hours cleaning offices to pick up extra cash, according to a community advocate supporting the family. Ms. Kim, 69, and married for more than 50 years, believed the trail would improve for her two children. “When you’re happy, I’m happy,” she liked to say.

She worked at Gold Spa alongside Soon Chung Park, who at 74 was the housekeeper and cook, making meals for her co-workers. Ms. Park was a widow with five children when she arrived in America. She spent time in New Jersey and New York and sold jewelry before moving to Georgia a decade ago. She began working at Gold Spa in 2018, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., said her new husband, Gwangho Lee.


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Mr. Lee, who recently began driving for Lyft, said that together they made about $30,000 last year when he was painting houses. He said his wife looked forward to retiring soon. She had made plans to move to New Jersey to be near family once her apartment lease expired.

The stories of the victims reflect much of the Asian-American experience, where first-generation immigrants enter unknown worlds in which they strive not for themselves, but for the upward mobility of their children. Their limited English and lack of American educations often lead to low-wage labor.

Yong Ae Yue, 63, left South Korea in 1979, having met her American husband, Mac Peterson, while he was serving in the Army. They settled in Fort Benning, Ga., and Ms. Yue worked as a cashier at a grocery store while raising two sons, one of whom would go on to attend Morehouse College. “She preached education, she preached hard work, she preached opportunity,” said her son Elliott Peterson, 42. After the couple divorced in the early 1980s, Ms. Yue worked several jobs, sometimes seven days a week, according to one of her close friends. Two decades later, she managed to buy a townhome for $138,000 in an Atlanta suburb. She had been grateful to find work during the pandemic.




Image
Top row: Yong Ae Yue, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim and Xiaojie Tan. Bottom row: Soon Chung Park, Delaina Ashley Yaun and Paul Andre Michels.


None of the three spas targeted in last week’s shootings were large operations. Nearby business owners familiar with the facilities counted only a handful of employees entering each one. It was not clear how much they were paid. While several spas in the area advertised rates of $60 for an hourlong massage, for example, the masseuses would get only a cut of that. “A secret of the trade,” said an employee at Top V Massage in Norcross, an Atlanta suburb, when asked what one could expect to earn.

A taxi driver who knew four of the victims said that they called him to shuttle them between home and work, and that their job locations changed over the years. Sometimes they would bring him water and roasted sweet potatoes. He said the women tended to go by English names at work, and would refer to one another as imonim, which, in Korean, is a respectful term for an aunt or an older woman.

Among them was Hyun Jung Grant, a 51-year-old single mother whose long hours working were intended to help pay her children’s college tuition, although she found ways to treat them to designer sneakers.


Ms. Grant preferred to tell people she had a job at a makeup counter and often spent the night at work; when she was home, she would nap from exhaustion. “I just think it’s enough that she cared for us,” said her son Randy Park, 22, who works at a Korean bakery and said he never resented his mother’s absence.

Ms. Grant told her sons she had been a teacher in South Korea before arriving in Washington, where she found work as a waitress. She and her children relocated to Atlanta more than a decade ago. They had recently moved from an apartment to a modest rental townhouse, one step closer to becoming the homeowner that Ms. Grant had envisioned.

The only thing she ever said about her job was that she hoped to one day do something else. “She never had time to pursue much of her passions or figure out what she wanted to do in her life,” Mr. Park said.




Image
Jami Webb, with her fiancé, Kevin Chen, mourning her mother, Xiaojie Tan, the owner of Young’s Asian Massage.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


It was Xiaojie Tan, the owner of Young’s Asian Massage, who had a clear idea of what she hoped to achieve.

The daughter of a bicycle mechanic, she left China intent on mastering a trade. Working first as a manicurist, she eventually opened two spas, including Young’s. Ms. Tan, 49, worked 12-hour days, a memory that her college-educated daughter would proudly recount.

Among Ms. Tan’s employees was Daoyou Feng, 44, who appeared to have worked at the spa for only a few months and has no known U.S. address. A spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry said that the Chinese Embassy in the United States was “providing assistance to family members of the deceased.” Ms. Feng is the only victim for whom no one has come forward to say that she, too, was loved. Her life has since remained in the shadows.


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Young’s is in a shopping center known as Cherokee Village in Acworth, about 28 miles northwest of Atlanta. Business owners in the plaza recall employees arriving in taxis and taking breaks in the parking lot, where they talked on the phone or listened to music. On occasion, someone would be spotted bringing in groceries or clean clothes.

“They’re just trying to do good by their families and make a good living,” said a business owner who knew some of the employees and asked not to be named.

It was at Young’s spa where last week’s massacre started, where Ms. Tan and Ms. Feng were shot and killed, along with two other people. Robert Aaron Long, 21, who police said described himself as a sex addict and claimed he was trying to remove temptation, has been charged in the deaths.


What to Know About Gun Laws and Shootings in the U.S.

In the last five years, there have been at least 29 shootings in the United States with four or more fatalities, according to data compiled by the Violence Project. The number of overall injuries from firearms reached a 50-year high in 2017, with nearly 40,000 people killed.
Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. Research shows that 31 percent of mass shootings worldwide from 1966 to 2012 were committed by Americans.
The Times examined how weapons were obtained in 19 shootings from 2009 to 2018. Many of the guns used in mass shootings are bought legally and with a federal background check.
At the state level, there is a checkerboard of gun laws that align with the partisan tilt of each state. While 13 Democratic-controlled states have restricted gun access in recent years, 14 Republican states have loosened their gun laws.


Mr. Long’s roommate said the gunman had told him he frequented massage parlors for sex, and while the authorities in Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs have made prostitution-related cases in recent years against workers at massage businesses, there is no independent evidence that he received sex at the spas he targeted in his rampage.

Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, a Waffle House server who bought eggs and grits for the homeless, had been visiting the spa for the first time, along with her husband, when she was killed. Another victim, Paul Andre Michels, 54, was a handyman for the spa, according to the owner of a neighboring business. He was an electrician, an Army veteran, a workaholic, his brother said. A passer-by, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30 — the only person shot who survived — is a father and a mechanic who sends money home to family in Guatemala.

Three more people would be killed less than an hour later at Gold Spa. Then, the gunman would cross the street to Aromatherapy Spa and take one more life before fleeing.

Aromatherapy, like the other two massage businesses, has since been closed. From the front, it is a drab building trimmed with neon lights and garish signs.


Down the sloping drive to the back and beyond the gravel are terra cotta pots, tomato cages and gardening tools. A small patch of earth has been tended, where okra grows alongside red leaf lettuce and perilla leaves — ggaenip in Korean. Nearby, five white buckets that once held laundry detergent are filled with water, a hose dangling from one.

It seemed that there had been community, there had been resourcefulness, there had been hope.




Image
Vegetables grow in a garden behind Aromatherapy and a neighboring spa, St. James.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Layers of Control

Mr. Wang, whose companies are affiliated with Gold Spa, has long been a public figure in Atlanta and active within the local Taiwanese community.

He has been photographed at gatherings sponsored by the Taiwan government’s office in Atlanta, including a whiskey tasting with a former Georgia Republican Party chairman and a banquet where the guest of honor was Tom Price, the briefly tenured health and human services secretary under President Donald J. Trump.

In 2003, Mr. Wang was appointed by Sonny Perdue, then the governor, to the Asian-American Commission for a New Georgia. Since 2004, he has given more than $32,000 to federal candidates and parties, overwhelmingly to Republicans. He donated to Trump-affiliated campaign committees in both 2016 and 2020, including multiple small-dollar donations in the run-up to the November election, Federal Election Commission records show. Amid the pandemic last year, one of his companies running the spa received a $50,500 loan under the federal Paycheck Protection Program to aid small businesses.

A chemical engineer, he has a history of entrepreneurship, from synthetic leather coatings to fast food franchises before starting his toner business, which had more than 100 employees at one point.

In 2013, Mr. Wang ventured into a new line of business when he became chief executive of Gold Hotlanta, which along with Golden Limited Enterprises runs the 24-hour Gold Spa. The same year, company records show, Mr. Wang and an associate opened Gangnam Sauna in Norcross, Ga. That spa was on the former site of a similar business where a quadruple murder had taken place in 2012.


Mr. Wang did not respond to multiple requests for comment. When a reporter visited one of the country club homes he owns, a woman, speaking Mandarin, said he did not live there, then called private security who alerted the police.

The building that houses Gold Spa is owned by Ashly Jennifer Smith, a 34-year-old veterinarian in Virginia who purchased it for $850,000 in 2012, according to Fulton County property records. Ms. Smith, who did not respond to requests for comment, wanted to change the lease and took Golden Limited Enterprises to court. Two employees, one of whom was Suncha Kim, were caught in the conflict and named in a suit compelling them to vacate the building. The case was settled, though, and Ms. Kim continued to work there until her death last week.

Gold Spa had some history of trouble. In 2012, a security guard there was shot and killed when he went behind the building to investigate a suspicious person.

Atlanta police records show 11 prostitution arrests there between 2011 and 2013. Some of those arrested gave the spa as their home address. The vice squad that had conducted raids was disbanded in 2015 so that more resources could go toward addressing violent crime, the Atlanta Police said. The Georgia Department of Public Health said it does not inspect or regulate massage parlors, a job that falls to the Georgia Secretary of State. But that state office said it licenses individual massage therapists — not the businesses.

Mr. Long, the gunman, told investigators he had previously visited the Gold and Aromatherapy spas, according to the police.

Aromatherapy is affiliated with Galt & Roark, a company that appears to take its name from characters in novels by Ayn Rand, the author whose work has been embraced by libertarians and the American right.

The spa’s ownership is not clear. Aromatherapy’s landlord is the real estate firm of William Meyers, 85, who owns a sprawling $1.5 million lakeside home in Buford, 40 miles northeast of Atlanta, according to public records.

In a brief phone interview, Mr. Meyers said he had heard about the shootings but would not answer whether he knew anything about the spa itself.

“I probably shouldn’t say,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Susan C. Beachy, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Richard Fausset, Jack Healy, Inyoung Kang, Juliana Kim, Sarah Mervosh, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Rick Rojas, Edgar Sandoval and John Yoon.



Corina Knoll is a Metro reporter who focuses on narrative storytelling. She previously spent more than a decade with the Los Angeles Times where she contributed to two Pulitzer Prizes and helped investigate how a county sheriff’s secret list of problem officers obstructed justice. @corinaknoll


Michael Forsythe is a reporter on the investigations team. He was previously a correspondent in Hong Kong, covering the intersection of money and politics in China. He has also worked at Bloomberg News and is a United States Navy veteran. @PekingMike


Frances Robles is a Florida-based correspondent who also covers Puerto Rico and Central America. Her investigation of a Brooklyn homicide detective led to more than a dozen murder convictions being overturned and won a George Polk award. @FrancesRobles • Facebook


Linda Qiu is a fact-check reporter, based in Washington. She came to The Times in 2017 from the fact-checking service PolitiFact. @ylindaqiu
A version of this article appears in print on March 25, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Georgia Victims Faced Gulf in Money and Power. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Opinion | The Atlanta Shootings and a Religious Toxicity - The New York Times

Opinion | The Atlanta Shootings and a Religious Toxicity - The New York Times:

Opinion

I’m a Scholar of Religion. Here’s What I See in the Atlanta Shootings.

Did racism or theology or gender motivate the shootings in Georgia? All of the above.

By Mihee Kim-Kort

Ms. Kim-Kort is a Presbyterian minister and a doctoral candidate in religious studies.

March 24, 2021

Credit...Jo Zixuan Zhou

When news about the Atlanta killings broke, I saw in Korean sources first that six of the dead were Asian women, four of Korean descent. I didn’t yet know their names; I mourned them as Daughter, Big Sister, Mother, Aunt.

In Korean, we don’t often call each other by given names. As I’m the eldest child in the family, for as long as I can remember, my mother and father have called each other “mi-omma” (“Mihee’s mother”) and “mi-appa” (“Mihee’s father”). As a child I asked my parents why we did this. They explained that who we are is inseparable from who loves us and whom we love.

But the world demands more of us: Who are you? Where are you from? What do you believe? To move through this world as an Asian who is American is to exist under the gaze of white supremacy. In other words, we have to constantly give an accounting of ourselves to justify and explain why we are here.

So we learned early on the name of the alleged murderer. We learned that he is white. We learned that he is a Southern Baptist, but not his motivation. Was it racism? Was it deep-rooted misogyny? Was it a fetishization of Asian women in particular? Was it toxic theology — an extreme fear of God and an equally extreme self-loathing?

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As a Korean-born woman, a Presbyterian minister, a scholar of religion and a child of both church culture and American culture, I have asked the same questions and can only conclude: It is all of the above. Race, gender, religion and culture are all implicated.

The Asian who is American is an accessory — the one you want for your group projects, or the one who makes your farms yield more. And the Asian woman who is American is simultaneously translucent, a mirror and a looking glass; she is a ghost, invisible, unknowable, stripped of her identity, making her both desirable and expendable. How else to explain how easily she is attacked?

The days after the shooting, I walked through the world in a kind of haze of anger and despair. All the moments I’d kept hidden for years suddenly rushed to the surface: the attacks, the looks, the vandalism, the endless stream of questions: Who are you? Where are you from? What do you believe? Why are you here?

The long history of anti-Asian racism is rooted in the history of U.S. American expansionism amid wide-ranging legal, cultural and military projects across the Pacific. These colonial projects hypersexualized Asian women, through forced sex and sex work, casting them as docile creatures that brought comfort. They also shaped Asian men as submissive and feminine, objects to be conquered, dominated and consumed. Even the humanitarian interventions and the religious outreach that helped to shape much of white imagination about Asian women’s bodies overseas were then continuously reproduced here in America.

I grew up in the Korean diaspora, where the immigrant church became a safe place to land. Here, “Have you eaten?” is the only question we’re asked before we sit down. It was a place for my parents to breathe; to be seen, heard and understood easily. To know what it means to be children of God, bearers of the divine and hope embodied.

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But churches are imperfect, man-made institutions, burdened by ego and fears, too. Toxic theologies about sex and views on gender and sexuality were also present in the Korean church, mixed with Confucianist traditions that delineated gender roles and white Christian communities’ views about sex. My parents’ generation loved Billy Graham, the telegenic American evangelist who would chart direct lines between homosexuality, extramarital sex and Christian morality. I grew up never seeing a woman preach from the pulpit.

Later I discovered stories that centered on people on the margins — Black, queer, women and others. These theologies radicalized my faith; I saw myriad possibilities of God in the world. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the divine in myself and in the faces of those around me. This changed everything. The God of grace I proclaim from the pulpit lives in us, loves every single one of us, and this was liberation.

But fear is not so easily uprooted, and shame is not limited to one culture or religion. The fear of temptation the killer is reported to have had was born decades before his birth. Absolute moral ideals of virginity or marital sex have long been linked to conservative white Christian attempts at what is sometimes called “sexual containment” or more popularly known as purity culture. This contributed to a theology that taught the salvific power of marital sex (as well as a critique of extramarital sex). Though more and more people of faith have questioned the psychological impact of purity culture, shame around sex persists. The Asian women murdered in Atlanta were an explicit threat to the purported ideal; their perceived entanglement with sex work justified this violence.

According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that has been tracking anti-Asian hate crimes, there have been at least 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian violence since March 2020. Still I hear over and over: “I just don’t see you as Asian.” Proximity to whiteness is seen as our saving grace, but we are still dying.

Remembering is one way to resist erasure. Even if it feels otherwise, we have the power to see and we have the voice to speak, even if we struggle with the words. There are other ways we show our love, and that’s by our names. Those we lost: Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Hyun-Jung Grant, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim. All our names. Sister, daughter, mother, cousin, aunt, grandmother, child of God.

Mihee Kim-Kort (@Miheekimkort) is a co-minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Annapolis in Maryland and a doctoral candidate in religious studies at Indiana University.

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Young Adelaide worker blacklisted online after speaking out against her former employer | Industrial relations | The Guardian

Young Adelaide worker blacklisted online after speaking out against her former employer | Industrial relations | The Guardian



Young Adelaide worker blacklisted online after speaking out against her former employer


The ex-bubble tea bar employee is among four people whose names, photos, social media accounts and chat logs were posted on website


An anonymous user has posted details identifying a young worker who spoke out out about her former employer as well as two activists who organised a protest against wage theft in Adelaide’s Chinatown. Photograph: Kelly Barnes/AAP


Royce Kurmelovs
@RoyceRk2
Fri 19 Mar 2021 03.30 AEDT

A young female victim of an alleged assault that took place in an Adelaide bubble tea bar has been blacklisted by an anonymous user after speaking out about her former employer.

The woman, who does not wish to be named, was among four people who were “doxxed” with their name, photo, social media accounts and chat logs included in a list posted by an anonymous user to AdelaideBBS.com.

The website serves as a Chinese-language version of Gumtree for the community in South Australia.

The first post by user “apple123321” appeared in late February calling on Chinese employers not to hire those named on the list.


Coalition abandons crackdown on wage theft as Senate passes gutted industrial relations bill

Read more

“I suggest that all the Chinese bosses unite together and create a blacklist group to report all these trouble making international students, so they won’t be hired for the rest of their lives,” the post said.

It posted details identifying the FairGo SA campaigner Say Leng Kapsis and the SA Labour Info Hub activist Jackie Chen, who in February organised a protest against wage theft in the centre of Adelaide’s Chinatown.

Subsequent posts named two others, with the most recent post from Tuesday publishing details identifying one of the young women who confronted her employer at the Fun Tea bubble tea shop in Adelaide over claims she was owed unpaid wages before being allegedly assaulted by another man.

The Working Women’s Centre, which is acting as the legal representative of the woman in her claim against her employer, declined to comment on the incident as it was yet to receive instructions from its client.
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Kapsis told the Guardian the move was part of a campaign being run against those calling out alleged illegality and raising awareness about the issue.

She said that while it had targeted individuals, it extended to friends and associates, with one member of her organisation resigning from the board of FairGo SA after coming under pressure at their job.

“I know they’re watching us. I’ve cursed them,” Kapsis said. “For the young woman, this is very gendered discrimination. This is what happens to us now, those who speak out, the revenge. We’ve been targeted.”

She called the person responsible a coward. “They only dare to do it anonymously because the internet provides all the convenience.”

Chen said he wasn’t concerned about being targeted himself, but was worried about attempts to punish people for speaking out.

“We will not stop. We’re not scared,” Chen said.

A spokesperson for the Fair Work Ombudsman said they could not comment on the specific situation as there was an active investigation underway into underpayment allegations at Fun Tea.

Speaking generally, the spokesperson did say protections were available for workers in the event they experienced “adverse actions” by employers where a complaint had been made and an investigation was active. There is no suggestion by Guardian Australia that the employer in the Fun Tea case had any involvement in the anonymous posts or blacklisting.

The Fair Work spokesperson encouraged anyone within South Australia who was being underpaid to contact the state’s Fair Work Ombudsman and make a complaint. Complaints can be made anonymously in 16 languages.

In Australia, the Fair Work Commission sets the minimum wage. As of 1 July 2020 the absolute minimum wage was $19.84, or $753.80 a week, though the exact minimums change depending on industry and how a worker is classified.


'It's everywhere': the foreign students exposing Australia's wage theft epidemic

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The South Australian state treasurer, Rob Lucas, would not comment on the specifics of the incident but said the state government “strongly condemns” any employer that underpays their workers or “threatens an employee who speaks up about alleged underpayment”.

“I would strongly encourage any complaints about alleged wage theft, including any alleged discriminatory action against employees who are seeking to be paid their lawful wages and entitlements, to be referred to the [federal] Fair Work Ombudsman for investigation,” Lucas said in a statement.
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Ed Cavanough from the McKell Institute said: “The Morrison government’s weak wage theft measures were always just a cynical political tactic – measures incorporated into the IR bill to win over the crossbench, not to help vulnerable workers.”

“Their decision to abandon their own wage theft legislation [on Thursday] proves how little they care about the issue,” he said.

“If we want to end wage theft, the states must act. Every state must follow Victoria and Queensland’s lead and criminalise intentional underpayment at a state level.”

The owner of the Fun Tea bar previously admitted to paying his workers $10 an hour in a bizarre series of interviews with a prominent Sydney YouTuber.

The man alleged to have assaulted the woman at the venue has since been charged and will face court on 7 May.



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Atlanta massage parlor shootings leave eight dead including six Asian women | Atlanta | The Guardian

Atlanta massage parlor shootings leave eight dead including six Asian women | Atlanta | The Guardian

Atlanta massage parlor shootings leave eight dead including six Asian women

Man taken into custody after shootings at three locations, amid rising number of attacks on Asian Americans in the US

• Atlanta massage parlor shootings: what we know so far

01:17

Suspect arrested after shootings at three Atlanta massage parlors leave eight dead – video

Oliver Laughland, Peter Beaumont and agencies

Wed 17 Mar 2021 23.20 AEDT

523

A series of shootings at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area have left eight people dead, the majority of them women of Asian descent, leading to fears the killer had a racial motive.

A 21-year-old man, Robert Aaron Long, is a suspect in the shootings, and was taken into custody in south-west Georgia about 150 miles (240km) from the city after his car was intercepted by police after a manhunt.

The killings occurred amid a rising number of attacks on Asian Americans across the US since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Six of those killed were Asian while two were white.

“It appears that they may be Asian,” Atlanta’s police chief, Rodney Bryant, said, with South Korea’s foreign ministry adding in statement on Wednesday that its diplomats in Atlanta had confirmed from police that four of the victims who died were women of Korean descent.

The shootings – all believed to have been carried out by a single gunman – began at about 5pm, when five people were shot at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor in a strip mall near a rural area in Acworth, Cherokee County, about 30 miles (50km) north of Atlanta. According to the local county sheriff’s office spokesman, Jay Baker, two people died at the scene and three were transported to a hospital, where two of them also died.

The next shooting took place at 5.50pm when police in the Buckhead neighbourhood of Atlanta, responding to a call of a robbery, found three women dead from apparent gunshot wounds at Gold Spa.

While they were at that scene, they learned of a call reporting shots fired at another spa across the street, Aromatherapy Spa, and found a woman who appeared to have been shot dead inside.

The suspect’s car was caught on camera in the Acworth shooting, seen pulling up to the business at about 4.50pm, minutes before the attack. Baker said the suspect was taken into custody in Crisp County.

Police said video footage also showed the suspect’s vehicle in the area of the Atlanta spas at about the time of those attacks as well. That, as well as other video evidence, “suggests it is extremely likely our suspect is the same as Cherokee County’s, who is in custody”, Atlanta police said in a statement.

The FBI spokesperson Kevin Rowson said the agency was assisting Atlanta and Cherokee County authorities in the investigation.

Robert Aaron Long, 21, was taken into custody ‘without incident’. Photograph: Crisp County Sheriff’S Office/Reuters

Long was arrested after state troopers performed a pursuit intervention technique, a move “which caused the vehicle to spin out of control”, Hancock said. Long was then taken into custody “without incident”.

“Our entire family is praying for the victims of these horrific acts of violence,” Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said on Tuesday evening on Twitter. “Once again we see that hate is deadly,” Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia tweeted.

The Stop AAPI Hate group issued a statement saying that many in the Asian American community had felt targeted over the past year.

“The reported shootings of multiple Asian American women today in Atlanta is an unspeakable tragedy – for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the Asian American community, which has been reeling from high levels of racist attacks over the course of the past year,” it said.

“This latest attack will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian American community continues to endure.”

On Tuesday evening, Long’s Facebook page appeared to have been removed from the site. A Facebook video, first reported by the Daily Beast, featuring Long at his local church, the Crabapple First Baptist church, had also been removed.

According to the Daily Beast, the 2018 video showed Long talking about his journey towards baptism. “As many of you may remember, when I was eight years old I thought I was becoming a Christian, and got baptized during that time. And I remember a lot of the reason for that is a lot of my friends in my Sunday school class were doing that,” Long is quoted as saying.

On Tuesday evening police released a booking photo of Long dressed in an anti-suicide smock.