Bloomsbury Korean Digital Diaspora: Transnational Social Movements and Diaspora Identity (Korean Communities across the World)

This book looks deeply into how members of the Korean diaspora use digital media to build relationships, organize collective action, and redefine their identities across borders. Utilizing a multi-site, three-year ethnographic study—including interviews, participant observation, and fieldwork in New York City and Philadelphia—Hojeong Lee traces the emergence of a digital diaspora, in which online platforms extend and transform traditional diasporic ties. Lee situates this phenomenon within broader theoretical frameworks on digital media and social movements before grounding it in the historical trajectories of Korean migration and the long-standing importance of ethnic media as a cultural lifeline. The book then explores how digital tools sustain connections to the homeland while enabling new forms of belonging in host societies. A central case study of post-2014 diaspora activism illustrates how online networks facilitate transnational social movements, while subsequent chapters analyze how these practices contribute to the ongoing reconstruction of diaspora identity as more fluid, global, and self-conscious. Lee demonstrates that digital media does more than connect dispersed populations—it actively changes the meaning of diaspora itself, making understanding digital communities necessary for grasping how identity, activism, and community are being redefined in an increasingly networked world.