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In 2018, roughly five-hundred Yemenis flew on cheap flights from Kuala Lumpur to the southwest resort island of Jeju Island in South Korea. In search of safety and livelihood, these migrants sought asylum under the aegis of South Korean refugee law. Within days of arrival, this relatively small group of foreigners encountered a massive, highly organized anti-asylum movement nationwide. This lecture explores the religious origins of the anti-asylum movement through the figural Christian refugee fleeing persecution from communism. Drawing further from fieldwork among activists and asylum-seekers, it examines the Protestant conservative view of international refugee rights through the lens of minority rights and anti-discrimination politics at home. Ultimately, it elaborates on how North-South border politics, as well as the ongoing state of Cold War division more broadly, revitalizes an anti-communist framework for Protestant right-wing nationalism.
Dr. Angie Heo is POSCO Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center (December 2022-January 2023) and Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago in the Divinity School. After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, she taught at Barnard College and held research fellow positions at Emory University and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Her first book is The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt (University of California Press 2018). She is currently working on her next book project on Protestant anti-communism and the Cold War in the Korean Peninsula.
The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions
In 2018, roughly five-hundred Yemenis flew on cheap flights from Kuala Lumpur to the southwest resort island of Jeju Island in South Korea. In search of safety and livelihood, these migrants sought asylum under the aegis of South Korean refugee law. Within days of arrival, this relatively small group of foreigners encountered a massive, highly organized anti-asylum movement nationwide. This lecture explores the religious origins of the anti-asylum movement through the figural Christian refugee fleeing persecution from communism. Drawing further from fieldwork among activists and asylum-seekers, it examines the Protestant conservative view of international refugee rights through the lens of minority rights and anti-discrimination politics at home. Ultimately, it elaborates on how North-South border politics, as well as the ongoing state of Cold War division more broadly, revitalizes an anti-communist framework for Protestant right-wing nationalism.
Dr. Angie Heo is POSCO Visiting Fellow at the East-West Center (December 2022-January 2023) and Assistant Professor of the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago in the Divinity School. After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, she taught at Barnard College and held research fellow positions at Emory University and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Her first book is The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt (University of California Press 2018). She is currently working on her next book project on Protestant anti-communism and the Cold War in the Korean Peninsula.
The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions
