Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
0016-7185/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Center and margin on the margin: A study of the multilayered (Korean)
Chinese Migrant Neighborhood in Daerim-dong, South Korea
Tae-Sik Kim 1
Department of Media Studies and Journalism, Masaryk University Located in Brno, Czech Republic
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords:
Urban landscapes
Diasporic space
Migrant neighborhood
Chinese migrants
Korean Chinese
Spatial semiotics
A B S T R A C T
This study analyzes visual-material resources, spatial organization, and human activities taking place in a large
(Korean) Chinese migrant neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. Grounded in walking fieldwork, this study
identifies how dominant and marginal values are imposed in commercial streets and their surroundings of the
neighborhood. The main commercial area plays a central role in the neighborhood, appropriating commodified
Chinese cultures. A large local market commodifies Chinese culture in promoting the market as a multicultural
place, while many Chinese restaurants highlight Chineseness, attracting both migrant and local consumers. On
the other hand, the stigma of precarity is inscribed in every corner of the long-time low-income area: signs of
otherness and unstable lives in the commercial landscape signify marginalization. The values expressed by the
migrant neighborhood subtly suggest how migrants have been both included and excluded in South Korean
society.
1. Introduction
During an international summer session held in South Korea in 2019,
I prepared a field trip to the (Korean) Chinese migrant neighborhood in
Daerim-dong for students mostly from the West, including Germany,
Italy, and the United States. Just a week before the trip to Daerim-dong,
the international students explored the Chinatown located in Incheon.
The Incheon Chinatown, which can be traced back to the early years of
the port’s opening in the late 19th century, has recently been given a
new look, that of a typical touristic Chinatown. While we visited, the
official Chinatown, fully decorated with visual components of Chinese
culture, was full of Korean visitors queueing at famous Chinese restaurants.
In contrast, the main commercial area in Daerim-dong was visually
very diverse: Chinese restaurants, typical Korean entertainment
businesses, migrant-service businesses, and a traditional market. This
long-time low-income neighborhood located in the Southwestern part of
Seoul is still mixed, with residential areas and businesses streets making
up a multifaced vernacular landscape. After completing the whole fieldtrip
program, a couple of students casually reflected on the differences in
the two places associated with China. “Daerim-dong is more Chinese
than the Chinatown in Incheon… .… The one in Incheon is just like a
typical Chinatown even in my country, but the one in Daerim-dong looks
more authentic Chinese,” said a student.
Despite the lack of specified demographic data, it is widely known
that Korean Chinese migrants, commonly called Joseon-jok (meaning the
“ethnic group from Joseon,” the last dynasty before modern Korea),
make up the majority of migrants in the neighborhood. Unlike the one in
Incheon, the neighborhood in Daerim-dong has no official name. As
suggested by various names used by other South Korean publics, such as
Daerim Chinatown, Korean Chinese town, and Yanbian street (named
after the Korean Autonomous Prefecture), the Daerim-dong neighborhood
is a multilayered place both in terms of demography and spatial
function. This multiplicity led me to conduct walking fieldwork, aiming
to see how the neighborhood is made up of visual, spatial, and human
interactions (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Diasporic urban landscapes have
been studied in academia by adopting various analytic concepts such as
vernacular landscape (Krase and Shortell, 2011), linguistic landscape
(Landry & Bourhis, 1997), and semiotic landscape (Jaworski and
Thurlow, 2010). Those studies commonly explore the implied translocal
dynamic surrounding migrants, local residents, global markets, and
bridging cities.
By analyzing various visual materials, including human actors and
their placement styles, this study aims to demonstrate how the visual
representations in the migrants’ everyday spaces hint at the values
circulating in the neighborhood. Grounded in an understanding of the
complicatedly interwoven social contexts surrounding the migrant
E-mail address: beinkid@mail.muni.cz.
1
Address: Media Studies and Journalism, Faculty of Social Studies, Jostova 10, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.027
Received 31 July 2020; Received in revised form 19 January 2021; Accepted 29 January 2021
Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
166
population, the location of Daerim-dong, and the political-economic
status of the neighborhood, this study analyzes visual materials as
daily representations, the built environment of the neighborhood as
visual-material performance mediating everyday practices (Aiello,
2011), and people’s social actions as hinting at the sociocultural status
of the place. This explorative study, aiming to identify different layers of
the diasporic neighborhood, gives special attention to the question, How
are the layers made up of semiotic components? By extensively walking
around the neighborhood, I attempted to identify different values
revealed in the diasporic space, which informs not only the multiple
layers of the neighborhood but also the hegemonic relations imposed in
the neighborhood.
2. (Korean) Chinese Migrants and Daerim-dong
In the very early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, the biosocial
disaster was still known to remain regional in China and was widely
called Wuhan Pneumonia in South Korea. The first person who tested
positive for COVID-19 in South Korea was a Chinese visitor. At that time,
a South Korean news media outlet published a reportage-type news story
on the migrant neighborhood in Daerim-dong, Seoul, highlighting the
unhygienic food businesses and accusing migrants of hoarding face
masks.2
In this news story, the common image of Daerim-dong as the
neighborhood with a high proportion of migrant residents from China
was bluntly associated with a probable reason for the pandemic, which
was Chinese unhygienic practices. Earlier, in 2017, the neighborhood
drew public attention due to a movie portraying it as the stage of fictitious
crimes involving Korean Chinese migrants. The Korean Chinese
community in South Korea promptly reacted to the movie, accusing it of
defaming Korean Chinese migrants and their community.3
It is possible
that the negative view of Korean Chinese migrants reflects a complex
transnational dynamic among China as their geographical origin, Korea
as their ethnic origin, and their socioeconomic status in South Korea. On
the other hand, the commercial area of the neighborhood has gradually
been recognized as a unique place to experience Chinese culture.4
Featuring famous entertainers, major network television shows have
introduced the culinary culture by referencing the authenticity of Chinese
foods. Chineseness is often celebrated to diversify South Korean
society, which has rapidly become involved in global capitalism.
Since the early 1990s, the continuous rapid growth of the South
Korean economy and its opening to the global (labor) market have
attracted migrants who have sought new economic opportunities. The
largest share of this population consists of Chinese migrants. The majority
of Chinese migrants are actually Korean Chinese who have formed
large ethnic communities in many cities, including the Yanbian Korean
Autonomous Prefecture, since the 19th century. Their migration to
South Korea started with the normalization of diplomatic relationship
between South Korea and China in 1992 (Lu & Shin, 2013). Taking
advantage of their kinship ties in South Korea and their language and
cultural skills, Korean Chinese found their migratory destination in their
ethnic origin (Kwon, 2015).
Many of them were employed by Korean small and midsize business
that had suffered a labor shortage mainly due to higher wages for domestic
workers (Jang & Kang, 2017). Their legal status as residents in
South Korea was stabilized when the South Korean government revised
the Overseas Korean Act, recognizing ethnic Korean Chinese as people of
Korean descent (Jang & Kang, 2017; Jo & Cha, 2019). Along with the
Act, other visa policies, including a working-visit visa (H2) and the
overseas Korean visa (F4), have contributed to the increase of Korean
Chinese migrants in South Korea. Since the industrial cities along the
west coast of Seoul are filled predominantly with small and midsize
manufacturers, Korean Chinese have formed ethnic clusters in many
districts of these cities, including Seoul (Lu & Shin, 2013).
Daerim-dong has long been known as one of the low-income residential
areas in Seoul. This part of Seoul has been densely populated
since the establishment of the Guro Industrial Complex, the first industrial
complex that included a great number of export-driven, laborintensive
manufacturers, in the late 1960s (Park, 2017). Daerim-dong,
as a legal neighborhood divided into three administrative neighborhoods
(Daerim-1, -2, and -3 dong), belongs to Yeoungdeungpo-gu (district),
which was the center of the South Korean textile industry during
the early wave of industrialization. The historic and socioeconomic
context of Daerim-dong accounts for a large number of small, multihousehold
dwellings, a type of dwelling which has typically been
regarded as a low-income family housing style in South Korea (Yang,
2015).
Daerim-dong is situated next to Garibong-dong, which has been
known for a large doss-house village (buljip-chon in Korean) that was
once occupied by low-income domestic workers (Cho, 2020). Starting in
the early 1990s, migrant workers, including Chinese and Korean Chinese,
rapidly replaced domestic residents. While the rapid growth of the
Korean Chinese population resulted in the expansion of their residential
areas to neighboring towns, including Daerim-dong in the 2000s, they
were forced to explore new places to establish their economic activities
because of the decline in commercial areas in Garibong-dong, which was
mainly caused by the crackdown on undocumented migrant workers in
the early 2000s (Park & Kang, 2016). Also, the urban redevelopment
plans aiming at Garibong-dong pushed them out to Daerim-dong (Suh,
2012).
Daerim-dong was a prime location for those who looked for new
economic opportunities because of (1) convenient transportation options
with a transfer subway station connecting two lines, (2) established
commercial areas, and (3) various cheap housing options (Suh, 2012).
Despite the lack of census data specifying the number of foreign nationals
classified by their countries of origin, the large number of people
without South Korean citizenship living in Yeoungdeungpo-gu (more
than 49,000) implies the size of the (Korean) Chinese migrant neighborhood
in Daerim-dong (KOSIS, 2018). This study’s site, the main
Chinese commercial area and its vicinity, is located in Daerim-2 dong, in
which the most common types of businesses are restaurants and grocery
stores. In addition, other migrant-service businesses, including local
branches of a Chinese bank, are located there, making the neighborhood
a de facto center of the (Korean) Chinese migrant community (Park &
Kang, 2016).
3. Theoretical Background
Although human migration is generally described as a movement
from one country to another country, “transnational migration is a
preeminently urban phenomenon” (Friedmann, 2002, p. 41), accelerating
“the denationalizing of urban space” (Sassen, 1996, p. 50). While
global corporate capitalism has led rapid transnationalization from the
top in recent decades, migrants have created transnational social spaces
from below by maintaining their transnational kinship networks, circuits
of exchange, and communities in global urban centers (Faist,
2000). The site of this study, Daerim-dong, is a typical transnational
social space built from below in the course of organizing diverse transnational
migrant practices of migrants mainly from China (Seol, 2010a).
Like other transnational urban spaces across the world, the migrants in
Daerim-dong also interplay with the local context. The intercontextual
dynamic between the local and global contexts reflexively makes up the
transnational social space (Kraidy, 2002). The contextualized space is
not merely a physical space; it is also a relational space as “the product of
power-filled social relations” (Massey, 1999, p. 21). This study also takes
account of the hegemonic relations intersecting the global-local political
2
http://news.heraldcorp.com/view.php?ud=20200129000156
3
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?
aid=3065326
4
https://sbsfune.sbs.co.kr/news/news_content.jsp?
article_id=E10009371267
T.-S. Kim
Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
167
economy, which infiltrate the migrant neighborhood.
3.1. Spatial Semiotics and Urban Landscapes
This study is grounded in an understanding of space as social space
(Lefebvre, 1991). A “socially produced space” (Soja, 1989) is not
demarcated by a physical boundary but produced through a dialectic
interplay among conceived, perceived, and lived spaces (Lefebvre,
1991). Unlike natural space, “the form of social space is encounter, assembly,
simultaneity,” conceptualized space actually lived by inhabitants
who perceive the space in their various spatial practices of
everyday life (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 101). A space is operated by countless
everyday practices, while everyday life is enacted in a space constituted
by various public and parochial relations (De Certeau, 1984; Lofland,
1998). The study site in Daerim-dong is called various names, such as
Daerim Chinatown, Korean Chinese town, and Yanbian street. Each
name reflects only a one-dimensional aspect of the neighborhood rather
than the translocal dynamics shaping the diasporic social space.
As Lefebvre reckons with the importance of a semiotic understanding
of social space that implies a process of signification, scholars have paid
extensive attention to semiotic aggregates that are formed through the
dialectic production of a space (Lefebvre, 1991; Scollon & Scollon,
2003). Understanding that everyday culture is complicatedly interwoven
into a web of significance (Geertz, 1973), the semiotic approach
to urban studies sheds light on the social value and ideology imposed by
various resources in urban spaces (Barthes, 1972). Urban studies of semiotic
landscapes focus on “the interplay between language, visual
discourse, and the spatial practices” (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010, p. 1).
As social semiotics emphasizes, semiotic resources in a place are made
up of “social actions, context, and use” (Hodge & Kress, 1988, p. 5).
Multiple modes of communication are taken into account to reveal the
discursively constructed meanings of a place (Van Leeuwen, 2005).
The semiotic understanding of space falls under a further discursive
gaze when discursively integrated with the concept of landscape as a
‘visual ideology’ (Berger, 1972; Cosgrove, 1998; Jaworski and Thurlow,
2010).
Landscape constitutes a discourse through which identifiable social
groups historically have framed themselves, and their relations with
both the land and other human groups, and that this discourse is
closely related epistemically and technically to ways of seeing.
(Cosgrove, 1998, p. xiv)
Thus, landscapes are no longer touristic sceneries, but discursively
layered planes. As Papen (2015) states, “discourses are expressed
through writing and visual images;” analyzing various visual materials
placed in the landscape of a place would give a sense of “how a place is
perceived and talked about” (p. 3). A contextual analysis of a place
should be fulfilled to interpret the complicatedly interwoven symbolic
meanings of a place, on one hand (Geertz, 1973), and on the other,
discourses that shape values and perspectives of users and viewers of the
place need to be critically reviewed to account for the ideologically
constructed landscape of a place (Cosgrove, 1998).
Many studies have focused on linguistic texts represented in urban
spaces that have been heterogenized in the context of transnational
cities (e.g., Chun, 2014; Leeman & Modan, 2009; Vandenbroucke,
2015). Semiotic studies on urban spaces have also focused on the
continuous changes in transnational urban areas where old spatial
practices have been replaced in the course of population changes.
Mitchell (2010) demonstrates how the changing semiotic landscapes in
an area of Pittsburgh are represented by local media. Also, studies delve
into geopolitical dynamics in the reshaping of urban semiotic landscapes
(e.g., Gendelman & Aiello, 2010). The rapid commodification of urban
areas is also studied as a main driving force of the changes in urban
landscapes (e.g., Zukin, 1998).
Papen (2015) pays particular attention to commercial signs and
activities in a place that has undergone socioeconomic changes, such as
gentrification. Aestheticized and commodified urban places filled with
commercial signs and activities connote the changing composition of
social class (Papen, 2015). Daerim-dong is not likely to be regarded as a
gentrified or aestheticized place. Nevertheless, the abundant commercial
activities practiced by both migrants and local residents both
implicitly and explicitly reflect the socioeconomic conditions of the
neighborhood. Unlike the designated Chinatown in Incheon, Daerimdong
is not a planned, touristic Chinatown. Yet, it is one of the most
well-known transnational places where migrants from China have
formed a large commercial area. While the main commercial strip in the
neighborhood is packed with Chinese restaurants displaying cultural
authenticity, many other streets mix local Korean businesses and other
migrant-service businesses such as employment agencies and moneyexchange
offices. Thus, visual analysis of this commercial area, based
on an understanding of the spatial composition and the built environment
of the neighborhood, would inform how the diasporic space reflects
the socioeconomic context of the neighborhood.
Like Papen’s study, this study is guided by several studies on urban
diasporic landscapes. Krase and Shortell (2011) provide an insightful
analytic approach to understanding the vernacular landscapes of
continuously transnationalized urban spaces. Their study on the
vernacular landscape of a marginalized diasporic community suggests
how to interpret various visual representations implied in the daily
practices of migrants in global urban spaces. A recent study conducted in
Chengdu, China, also demonstrates the multilayered vernacular landscapes
around a Tibetan ethnic enclave (Brox, 2019). Finlay’s study
shows how migration, commodification, and tourism have dynamically
produced a diasporic space in Granada, Spain (Finlay, 2019). A recent
study analyzing the Chinatown in Incheon, South Korea, explains how
the semiotic landscape of the touristic Chinatown hints at the recreated
history and space of Chinese migrants (Lee & Lou, 2019).
3.2. Geosemiotics
The analytic notion of geosemiotics as “the study of the social meaning
of the material placement of signs and discourses and of our actions in
the material world” is often employed to view semiotic landscapes
(Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 2). Various signs, including visual installations,
languages, human interactions, and spatial structures,
signify certain meanings only when they are situated in certain places
(Scollon & Scollon, 2003). They suggest that geosemiotics is an integrative
semiotic system that forms meanings of a place and that takes
into account (1) people’s social actions in the place (interaction order),
(2) visible materials and placements in the place (visual semiotics), and
(3) spatial organizations of the place (place semiotics). Lou has conducted
a series of studies on linguistic landscapes by applying the geosemiotics
framework in analyzing urban places (e.g., Lee & Lou, 2019;
Lou, 2007, 2017). Along with Lou’s, several studies focusing on diasporic
spaces have found an advantage to combining the linguistic
landscape and geosemiotics (e.g., Tran, 2019). Also, a recent study
adopts the geosemiotics framework in analyzing the vernacular landscape
of an American neighborhood undergoing neoliberalization
(Gutsche and Shumow, 2017). As presented by these studies, geosemiotics
is suitable for analyzing social space produced by spatialhuman-material
interactions.
Following the analytic guidelines of geosemiotics, this study explains
the hierarchically composed space by performing an analysis of the
dialectic interplay among visual materials, the built environment, and
people’s social actions in the main Chinese commercial area and its vicinity
in Daerim-dong. Spatial semiotic studies have inquired into
border-making practices in urban spaces (e.g., Aiello, 2011; Gutsche and
Shumow, 2017). Although the site of this study lacks an official
boundary, unlike a touristic Chinatown, this study identifies the layers
of the neighborhood subtly drawn by dominant and marginal values
imposed on multiple landscapes.
T.-S. Kim
Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
168
This study is grounded in my walking fieldwork, which consisted of
eight field observations, including one field trip with my students, from
2016 to 2020 around the migrant neighborhood in Daerim-dong. The
fieldwork was designed to facilitate walking and photographic surveys
(Krase and Shortell, 2011). As an elementary form of experiencing the
city, walking is a means to read urban texts (de Certeau, 1984). Thus,
walking as a first-hand experience of urban spaces is necessarily
employed to conduct a visual analysis (Krase and Shortell, 2011). Many
studies exploring discursive landscapes in urban areas have been
directed by ethnographic walking (e.g., Brox, 2019; Gutsche and Shumow,
2017). Informed by walks through the study sites, these studies
commonly demonstrate the discursive meanings subtly imposed in the
landscapes reflecting the global and local dynamics. Photographic survey
has also been adopted usefully in many urban-landscape studies for
analyzing visual materials such as shop signs (e.g., Lee & Lou, 2019). As
Hall (2009) expalins, a photographic survey allows researchers to
“capture and compare details” of the landscape (p. 456). Instead of using
preexisting photographs, the ethnographic studies on urban landscapes
collect images by taking photographs during walking field observations,
which avoids sampling bias (Krase and Shortell, 2011).
While my first field observation and a field trip with students focused
on the main commercial strip and the transfer-station areas, other field
observations covered a wider area of the neighborhood to explore every
single alley surrounding the neighborhood. The final field observation
was conducted in 2020 to confirm my field notes taken throughout the
previous field observations and to take more photographs suitable for
this essay. In describing the main Chinese commercial area, I often
reflect on the field trip with my international students in 2019 because it
may properly demonstrate a general impression of the area, which is
possibly shared by many visitors to the neighborhood. However, the
detailed analysis is based mainly on my own fieldwork.
4. Daerim-dong: Chinatown or Yanbian Street
The Daerim subway station is the main gateway to the (Korean)
Chinese neighborhood in the given context of the subway-centric transit
network of Seoul. The transfer station crossing subway lines 2 and 7 has
a total of 14 exits leading to different parts of the town. While subway
line 2, called a circle line, is the world second-longest line, line 7 connects
a couple of towns with large (Korean) Chinese populations, such as
Namguro and Kondae Ipgu. The main commercial area of the migrant
neighborhood in Daerim-dong is usually reached from exits 8 and 12. All
of my fieldwork in the neighborhood started from one of these two exits
(see Fig. 1). The main road, Dorim-ro, which intersects the elevated
subway line 2, hosts many Chinese restaurants with Chinese signs,
which are likely to catch visitors’ eyes. Although Korean signs come into
view, Chinese signs play crucial roles as visual markers in defining the
place as a migrant neighborhood geographically originating in China.
Although both sides of Dorim-ro are commercially active, the south
side is busier and denser in terms of the number of shops and pedestrians.
While Chinese-food businesses are intensively located on the
south side, the composition of businesses on the north side is more
heterogeneous. Unlike a designated Chinatown that is typically delimited
with visual markers such as an archway called paifang, this migrant
neighborhood has no visual or literal sign indicating the boundary of the
place. Dorim-ro 38-gil (Dorim38) on the south side of Dorim-ro is
generally regarded as the main Chinese commercial strip in the neighborhood
because of the density of both Chinese restaurants and other
businesses. Dorim38, which is called different names like Chinese street,
Korean Chinese street, or Yanbian street, is also connected with Daerim
Central Market, which makes this part of the neighborhood a main
Chinese commercial area. A maze of residential alleys and smaller
commercial streets is linked to Dorim38 and the market. The market
leads to another commercial street, Digital-ro 53-gil (Digital53), where
the largest medical center in town, Myungji St. Mary Hospital, and
Daedong Elementary School are situated. Unlike Dorim38, which is
dominated by Chinese-food businesses, Digital53 has more diverse types
of businesses that are common on the outskirts of regional traditional
markets in South Korea. Many businesses with Korean signs on Digital53
indicate the boundary of the main Chinese commercial area.
On the north side of Dorim-ro, commercial streets and residential
alleys are complicatedly interwoven. Although there are still many
businesses with Chinese signs on this side of town, the number of Chinese
restaurants is far fewer than on the south side. Instead, service
businesses such as employment agencies, travel agencies, and courier
services are mixed with Korean neighborhood shops. In particular, many
employment agencies are clustered in the alley along the elevated railroad
of subway line 2. Although the division between the main Chinese
commercial area and its vicinity is visible by the spatial composition,
this study further analyzes how spatial hierarchy is created through
daily practices and visual representations across the town.
4.1. Commodified Chinese Culture
In summer 2019, I prepared a field trip to Daerim-dong for my international
students in an international summer school. As a part of a
course focusing on transnational urban spaces in South Korea, the trip
was made after two other field trips to a postindustrial area in Seoul and
the Chinatown in Incheon. Like many of my own field observations, the
trip started from subway exit 8. After a quick stroll through both sides of
Dorim-ro, we joined a guide from the Korean Chinese community in
Daerim-dong at his office located between Daedong Elementary School
and Daerim Central Market. The guide, an opinion leader in his community,
began the trip with a general introduction about the migrant
neighborhood. While concisely introducing the diasporic history of the
neighborhood, he stressed the aestheticization of the area a couple of
times. He referred to “Chinese practices” that were not welcomed by
local South Korean residents and public authorities by pointing out
people sitting together on the sidewalk to play cards or Chinese chess
games and people dumping garbage at undesignated places, violating
the strict waste-management rules of South Korea (see Fig. 2). According
to him, those visible practices had been reduced by collective “civilizing”
efforts. Highlighting the fact that migrant residents outnumber
local residents in the neighborhood, he emphasized the leading role of
migrant residents in improving the neighborhood. Mainly due to the
introduction, the guided trip was framed to present the visually
improved commercial area.
4.1.1. Daerim Central Market: Promoting Chinese Culture
We first stopped by Daerim Central Market, which welcomed customers
with a large visual signboard. The name of the market subtitled
with Chinese characters was embellished with several images of both
Korean and Chinese traditional foods and touristic attractions. A subpanel
was also filled with the illustrated mascot images of a tiger and a
panda, symbolizing South Korea and China respectively. By juxtaposing
the symbolic images of the two countries, the signboard indicated the
meaning of the place as a multicultural marketplace specializing in
Chinese culture. As some studies demonstrate (e.g., Finlay, 2017), diasporic
commercial activities have often been appropriated to revitalize
declining urban places. This typical regional traditional market promoted
Chinese culture as its unique feature by installing typical symbolic
images of China (see Fig 3). In the course of promoting the market,
the diverse migrant populations, including Korean Chinese as the majority
of the neighborhood, were simply reduced to the cultural image of
China. The commodification of China was also confirmed by the official
blog of the market, introducing it as “China in Seoul” and displaying
several images clearly signifying Chinese culture.5
Commodification,
which was grounded in the material context of global capitalism (Gendelman
& Aiello, 2010), was adopted to increase the symbolic capital of
5
http://blog.naver.com/PostList.nhn?blogId=daerimmk
T.-S. Kim
Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
169
the traditional market. The brand of Chinese culture used by the traditional
market in the migrant neighborhood represented the image of a
globalized marketplace rather than the origin of migrant residents.
Daerim Central Market was visually improved to be compatible with
other modernized traditional markets across the country. Along with the
visual signboard explained above, individual shops were aligned in
straight rows, and their shingles were standardized. Contrary to the
main signboard and the promotional blog, which emphasized Chineseness,
the majority of the shops in the market carried ordinary Korean
foods and daily goods. Several shops titled with Chinese geographical
names mostly served ethnic Korean Chinese foods uncommon in other
ordinary traditional markets in South Korea. The ethnic foods coupled
with shingles written in Chinese characters indicated the presence of
migrant sellers in the market. Although the migrant shops reflected the
translocal dynamic surrounding the ethnic and geographical background
of the migrants and the location of the market, the dynamic was
not properly represented in the visual promotion of the market, which
exclusively commodified Chinese culture. The image of China was
extracted from the geographical origin of (Korean) Chinese migrants,
but the migrants’ daily practices were left behind in the commercial
promotion of the traditional market.
4.1.2. Dorim38: The Main “Chinese” Commercial Strip
Stepping into the main commercial strip, Dorim38, we came across
more diverse types of business with Chinese signs (see Fig. 4). Whereas
various Chinese restaurants and grocery stores were more visible than
other businesses, migrant-service businesses, including money exchangers,
visa brokers, and mobile providers with Chinese banners,
were seen rather sporadically. As Yang (2015) points out, the commercial
strip has been a translocal center in which Korean Chinese migrants
have often identified their cultural origin with foods served by
restaurants branded with the name of their hometown in China. It is also
known that Korean Chinese migrants have community gatherings at
various entertainment parlors like karaoke bars and fulfill daily affairs at
such places as money-exchange offices and travel agencies. Nevertheless,
Chinese restaurants, grocery stores, and street food vendors
dominantly expressed the cultural distinctiveness by displaying foods,
Fig. 1. (Korean) Chinese migrant neighborhood in Daerim-dong. ©2019 Google Maps. Image captured and modified by the author.
Fig. 2. People playing a card game on the sidewalk (Photos taken by the author
in August 2019).
T.-S. Kim
Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
170
Chinese signs, and prominently visible red colors, forming a unique
vernacular landscape. The visual Chineseness was strengthened by
apparently Chinese font styles uncommon in South Korea, illustrated
brand characters on the signboard, and promotional food photos on the
windows. Also, many restaurants sold foods in front of their shops displaying
exotic foods and signs in Chinese. These active commercial activities
mingled with the Chineseness signified by various image
components particularly shaped a vernacular commercial landscape
(Brox, 2019).
The field trip with my students ended up with a little fuss as a middleaged
man, who seemed tipsy and spoke with a native South Korean
accent, suddenly interrupted us at the entry of the commercial strip,
curiously asking questions of me: “What are you doing here with foreigners?,
Do they speak Korean?, and What do they want to see here?”
Noticing that he was South Korean, a student asked me about South
Korean people around the area. Although relatively old Koreans were
more visible, I had often seen young Koreans, generally known to be
active cultural consumers, on the commercial strip during my multiple
field observations. Chinese and ethnic Korean Chinese foods, such as
hotpot, malatang, and lamb skewer, have surged in popularity among
Fig. 3. Daerim Central Market (Photos taken by the author in January 2020).
Fig. 4. Chinese restaurants on the main Chinese commercial strip (Photos taken by the author in July 2020).
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Korean people in recent years. Although it is now easy to find restaurants
that serve those foods in many commercial areas in Korea, Dorim38 in
Daerim-dong is commonly known as one of the largest food streets
specializing in popular Chinese foods. The frequent visibility of young
Korean consumers who came in and out of hotpot and malatang places
infused the Chinese commercial landscape with a cultural touristic atmosphere.
Although the street was not designed to be a touristic
Chinatown like the one in Incheon, young people eating and taking
pictures of the foods displayed outside restaurants made up an important
social activity that strengthened the commercial landscape. In other
words, the young Korean consumers interacting with the visually
dominant Chinese restaurants and the displayed exotic street foods
played a key role as one of the “decisive marker(s) of a particular
bounded social space,” the main Chinese commercial strip (Krase and
Shortell, 2011, p. 393). The field trip finished around 9p.m. Many Koreans
milling around restaurants with illuminated Chinese signs and
street vendors with lighting created a touristic landscape at the entry of
the commercial strip.
Similar to the Moroccan commercial space in Granada, Spain (Finlay,
2019), the main Chinese commercial area in Daerim-dong aimed to meet
the demand of cultural experiences by emphasizing Chineseness while
claiming the migrant group’s commercial power (Krase and Shortell,
2011). There were noteworthy semiotic compositions that suggested
how commodifying Chinese culture expressed the dominant value promoted
in the neighborhood: (1) the regional traditional market appropriated
Chinese culture in its commercial promotion by extracting
stereotypical cultural images from the geographical origin of migrant
residents; (2) the status of Dorim38 as the main commercial strip
interplayed with the visual Chineseness of the dominant Chinese restaurants
to place commodified Chinese culture at the center of the
neighborhood; (3) cultural consumption by young Koreans on the main
Chinese commercial strip confirmed not only the locational centrality of
the strip but also the value of the commodifying practices in the
neighborhood. The main Chinese commercial area was not a designated
touristic area. However, the symbolic profitability of Chinese cultural
images was actively adopted in the main Chinese commercial area and
distinguished this area from other layers of the neighborhood described
in the next section (Aiello, 2011).
4.2. Margin of the Migrant Neighborhood
Whereas Chinese characters, street foods, and food photos visually
dominated the commercial strip, negative and unordinary images
signifying “the stigma of otherness” or “the stigma of poverty” were
suppressed in the vernacular commercial landscape (Krase and Shortell,
2011, p. 373). The field trip with students focused mainly on the main
commercial area, but the analysis of the marginal social space of the
neighborhood is entirely based on my own multiple field observations.
As centrality was defined not only by the spatial organization of the
neighborhood but also the semiotic meanings of visual materials and
their placement, marginality could also be defined in both ways. Various
visual representations and social actions signified marginalized values
within the main Chinese commercial area, on the one hand. The outskirt
streets set a wide physical margin around the main Chinese commercial
area. On the other hand, this study identified two main ways of representing
the marginality imposed in the neighborhood. First, the signs of
migrants’ daily life, placed in visually secondary locations, subtly
signified marginality. Second, the temporariness of unstable migrants’
life was represented in the marginalized places of the neighborhood.
4.2.1. Marginality within the Center
In one field observation, I came across “apartment for sale” flyers
attached to the signpost of subway exit 12 at the entry of Dorim38.
Highlighting the significantly cheap prices of apartments for sale, the
flyers also promoted house mortgages for foreigners (see Fig. 5). While
the small size and plain look, without any visual components but letters,
suggested their informality, the flyers were placed on an official signpost
of the Seoul metro system. On another side of the signpost, there was a
public sign prohibiting illegal garbage disposal. The location of the
public warning sign implied that unlawful dumping seemed common in
the town, even though it was difficult to spot a pile of garbage, at least in
the commercial area. These small and inconspicuous signs placed on the
official signpost of the station were starkly contrasted with the brand
logos of giant mobile providers and the large signs of Chinese restaurants.
The mobile brand logos and modern-look Chinese signs produced
“visual coherence of contemporary consumption spaces” (Zukin, 2010,
p. 834). Conversely, the flyers and warning signs that hinted at the
economic and cultural capital of the neighborhood were visually
marginalized by their temporary usage and the informal locations.
One common type of business on the commercial strip was the
Fig. 5. Exit 12 signpost and flyers (Photos taken by the author in January 2020).
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Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
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mobile phone shop titled with the brand logos of major mobile providers.
It was common to see small signs written in Chinese attached to
the window under the main signboard displaying the brand logo. Along
with various signs promoting cheap plans and devices, small homemade
paper signs on the window provided information like “the mobile shop
for Chinese” and “Consultation in Chinese Available” (see Fig. 6) Those
small signs were often displayed together with promotional flyers for
prepaid plans that connoted unstable living conditions in Korea; prepaid
plans are often regarded as being for people excluded from the mainstream
market mainly due to their bad credit history or unstable legal
status. Thus, the size and location of signs and the implied precarity
were combined to strengthen the marginality of migrants’ daily lives.
Unlike Chinese characters on the large signboards of Chinese restaurants,
the Chinese characters on the paper signs were visually suppressed.
Moreover, the small, temporary signs often signified the
stigmas of otherness and unstableness. The visual dynamic among the
brand logos of mobile shops, the well-designed Chinese signs of restaurants,
and homemade paper signs for migrant customers demonstrated
the “hegemonic patterned uses of visual-material resources”
(Adami, 2020, p. 89).
During field observations, I came across a couple of noteworthy
human activities, especially in the tiny alleys stemming from the main
commercial strip, Dorim38. Although those tiny and short alleys were
named other than Dorim38, they were still made up of the visually
secondary layer of the commercial strip. I often spotted middle-aged
men and women squatting on the pavement. Seemingly on a break,
they were chatting with others, smoking alone, or talking on their mobile
phones. Those scenes were contrasted with fast-walking pedestrians
and busy commercial activities in Dorim38. Unlike on the main strip,
there were both formal and informal warning signs prohibiting illegal
garbage disposal and informal signs on the walls of private residences
prohibiting smoking and littering butts (see Fig. 7). The semiotic
aggregate composed of the spatial organization of the alleys and the
main strip, the visual-material placement of informal warnings, and
people’s social actions showed how the signs of noncommercial practices
were marginalized within the main Chinese commercial area.
4.2.2. Marginality on the Verge of the Commercial Area
As the main Chinese commercial area was defined by the visual
dominance of commodified Chinese culture, the marginalized area was
delimited by its diminishing dominance, which was replaced by other
contesting visual representations and social actions. As explained
earlier, the main Chinese commercial area was first blurred by Dorim-ro
dividing the north and south sides of the Chinese-speaking neighborhood.
On the south side, the main commercial area was again distinguished
from a maze of small alleys surrounding it. On the north side,
residential and commercial areas were not as clearly compartmentalized
as they were on the south side.
On the south side, another commercial street, Digital53, which
linked with Daerim Central Market, worked as the rim of the main
Chinese commercial area. While commercially very active, Digital53
hosted more diverse types of businesses than the main Chinese commercial
strip, Dorim38, did. Many different types of businesses, mainly
with Korean signs, were blended with Chinese food businesses. Above
all, it was noteworthy that many shoe and clothing stores, mostly with
Korean signs, were located on Digital53. Many of them carried working
clothes and shoes for apparently cheap prices. A store displayed brandnew
work pants in the storefront with a handwritten flyer informing
shoppers of the price, less than five dollars for two pieces. A general
store carrying miscellaneous items piled work-related items such as
working gloves, work shoes, and paint brushes by the window outside
the store (see Fig. 8). There were more than six hair shops with oldfashioned
exterior designs and cheap clothing shops for women and
children on the street. While these types of businesses are commonly
visible on the outskirts of any traditional market in Korean urban spaces,
the typical look of a local working-class commercial area was contrasted
with the main commercial strip, Dorim38. Whereas the visual representations
of commodified Chinese culture claimed visual hegemony on
the main commercial strip, the visual representations of migrants’ and
local residents’ practices were pushed out to the verge of the main
commercial area, forming a vernacular landscape.
On the north side, Daerim-ro 29 gil (Daerim29) was the busiest
street, having a long line of various businesses with Korean and Chinese
signs. Linking with many residential alleys, Daerim29 hosted many
everyday businesses common on regional commercial streets in Korean
urban spaces, such as grocery stores, hair shops, small hardware stores,
and realtors’ offices, as well as many Korean and Chinese bistros (see
Fig. 9). Despite multiple Chinese restaurants, a compatible number of
Korean restaurants and everyday businesses with Korean signs diluted
the Chineseness in this area. Instead, Korean businesses implied that this
area was a local, everyday space for migrants. There were several
Korean restaurants that had added supplemental Chinese signs next to
the main signs in Korean. Chinese language on the signs of Korean restaurants
aimed not to highlight Chineseness in the neighborhood but to
attract migrant customers. Together with service businesses, such as
travel agencies selling tickets to China and realtors’ offices posting
cheap-apartment flyers in Chinese, the supplemental Chinese signs on
Korean restaurants defined the area as a migrants’ everyday space
instead of a touristic cultural space.
A small alley named Dorim-ro 31-gil (Dorim31) under the escalated
Daerim station of subway line 2 linked Daerim29 to the station. Dorim31
was a visually ambivalent alley, mainly because of its location. Many
signs posted by employment agencies and other businesses in the alley
were visible even from the subway platform. However, the alley could
Fig. 6. A mobile shop and a Chinese restaurant at the entry of the main commercial strip (Photos taken by the author in July 2020).
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Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
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easily be overlooked by those who came to visit the main commercial
strip. The entry of the alley was packed with an employment agency and
other administrative service businesses, which generally aimed at
migrant workers. On the alley, stretching along the elevated railroad,
more than eight employment agencies were visually dominant, despite a
couple of Chinese restaurants and other businesses. The visual dominance
was mainly created by several standing boards posting classified
jobs, as well as people loitering around the job boards and the offices.
The location of the alley was critical to shape the scene. Located right
next to exit 8, the alley was a convenient transiting place for those who
sought daily, temporary work. Throughout multiple field observations, I
frequently encountered job seekers pacing around the office and the
street job boards. Classified jobs such as housekeeper, janitor, farm
worker, and other simple laborer connoted the marginalized socioeconomic
status of people in the place. The precarity was further fortified by
the signified temporariness of the job boards. The boards temporarily
placed in the street posted temporary job positions written on temporary
paper signs. The temporariness that reflected the unstable living conditions
of people in the place defined the marginality of this neighborhood.
Importantly, the alley was an ethnically diverse place. I often
Fig. 7. People and informal signs in alleys (Photos taken by the author in August 2019 and January 2020).
Fig. 8. Cheap clothes and a pile of work-related items (Photos taken by the author in January 2020).
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Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
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encountered people supposedly from countries other than Korea and
China in the alley. Often grouping with a couple of other people
(seemingly) of the same ethnicity, they also paced around the job
boards. The Chineseness faded away in the precarious margin of the
neighborhood. Coupled with the large Korean signs of the employment
agencies, the job postings mainly in Korean clearly signified the socioeconomic
condition of people in the alley compared to other Korean
people. The alley, distanced from the main Chinese commercial area,
was visually defined mainly by temporary signs and people, ethnic diversity,
and Korean signs connoting the lower socioeconomic bracket of
people. Unlike the commercial strip highlighting commodified Chinese
culture and vibrant commercial activities, the peripheral alley was filled
with a semiotic aggregate composed of migrant laborers, local simple
labor jobs, temporarily placed visual materials, and local brokers
bridging translocal economic activities. In other words, unlike the signs
of migrants’ commercial power, the stigma of precarity was squeezed
out to the margins of the main Chinese commercial area.
5. Concluding Remarks
Widely known as a Korean Chinese neighborhood, yet often called
Daerim Chinatown, the migrant neighborhood was a multilayered diasporic
space. Despite the demographic dominance of Korean Chinese
migrants, the main commercial area was represented by commodified
Chinese culture. The main Chinese commercial area has recently been
recognized by South Korean consumers who are active in cultural consumption.
While discriminated against often as a dirty, dangerous, and
unstable migrants’ neighborhood, the commercial area has also been
spotlighted as an exotic cultural space by media, featuring celebrities.
This study identified the central and the marginal values imposed in
the vernacular commercial landscape and the vernacular landscape of
the neighborhood by analyzing the spatial organization, various visual
materials and their placement styles, and human activities. Commodified
Chinese culture placed in the center of the neighborhood and its
visual representations, together with the aesthetic improvement of the
neighborhood, were promoted to appeal to local South Korean consumers,
as well as fellow migrants. Located at a margin of the cosmopolitan
city, the diasporic commercial area prioritized commodified
culture to meet the general standard of a consumeristic society. Meanwhile,
diasporic daily practices, including labor, were even marginalized
in this marginal area of the city. The traces of migrants’ precarious
and unstable lives were subtly as well as bluntly suppressed in the
commercial center. The geosemiotics approach of this study was useful
to elaborate the contrast between the commercial landscape around the
main commercial area and the vernacular landscape of the surrounding
areas. In the course of revealing the multilayered landscapes in the same
neighborhood, this study demonstrates how to see and what to see in
understanding the value-driven landscapes. Previous studies in the
tradition of cultural landscape study have often limited their focus to the
changes in urban landscapes in response to changing transnational
urban contexts. However, this study captures both the central and
marginal landscapes of the neighborhood. The central, commercial
landscapes, which correspond with the dominant social values,
contribute to shaping further marginalized landscapes across the
neighborhood. The findings may expand the theoretical perspectives of
semiotic landscapes, not only by presenting a visual representation of a
diasporic neighborhood but also by highlighting the transnational political
economy responsible for the diverged landscapes.
The Chineseness promoted in the main commercial area of the
migrant neighborhood is likely to be ambivalent for South Korean
people. It may often be appropriated to confirm the stigma of otherness,
as seen in news reports amid the COVID-19 outbreak in China. On the
other hand, the Chineseness may also be welcomed by South Korean
people who have learned that opportunistic multiculturalism is one of
the main strategies of the country’s global competitiveness (Seol,
2010b). The negative sentiment toward China and Chinese people has
recently surged in South Korea for many reasons, such as political
conflicts over an American defense system deployed in South Korea,
economic disputes related political conflicts, an environmental issue
spanning the two countries, and the recent pandemic (Kasulis, 2020).
Meanwhile, Chinese cultural products including foods and tourists have
become an important part of the national economy of South Korea. As
reviewed above, the migrant neighborhood in Daerim-dong is not a
homogeneous ethnic enclave but a multifaceted migrant community.
However, multiple, nonconsensual connotations of China, Chinese
people, Korean Chinese people, migrant populations, and migrant
Fig. 9. People and job boards in the alley (Photos taken by the author in January 2020).
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Geoforum 120 (2021) 165–175
175
communities have been selectively appropriated in South Korean society.
When the cultural-economic role of China and Chinese people works
in favor of diverse stakeholders in South Korea, Chinese culture is
commodified opportunistically, as seen in the main Chinese commercial
area of Daerim-dong. When members of the geographically relocated
population are classified as outsiders in South Korea, the ethnic background
of Korean Chinese migrants is ignored drily. In the meantime,
the stigma of precarity stamped on migrants is inscribed in every marginal
corner of the long-time low-income neighborhood, which is
stealthily excluded from “mainstream” society.
This study analyzes the visually represented landscapes in Daerimdong.
Although the geosemiotics analysis was conducted with fieldwork
involving multiple walks and a large amount of photographic
survey, it is still limited to know about people perceiving how their
everyday practices shape the landscapes of the neighborhood. Various
human agents are supposedly responsible for the spatial composition of
the neighborhood and a variety of visual materials placed in different
locations in the neighborhood. In future research, a series of in-depth
interviews with public administrators of the district, shop owners, and
regular customers could provide empirical support for the analyses this
study presented.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Tae-Sik Kim: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis,
Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration,
Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
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