Talk
The Future, Lived Early: Stories of Afghan Refugees in Ulsan
| Date | 5.18. (Sun) 14:00 |
|---|---|
| Venue | Incheon Art Platform Incheon Living Culture Center (A) |
| Host | LEE Jong-chan (Independent Researcher) |
| Panel | KIM Younghwa (Journalist), KOH Yee Na (Writer) |
In 2021, as U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the country rapidly fell under the control of the Taliban, an Islamic militant group. This turn of events raised urgent concerns over the safety of Afghan locals who had assisted Korean personnel involved in reconstruction efforts. In a critical moment, the South Korean government decided to evacuate 391 Afghan collaborators under the status of “special contributors.” Among them, 157 resettled in the city of Ulsan in February 2022.
For its 13th edition, the Diaspora Film Festival seeks to highlight the stories of Afghan refugees in Ulsan. This rare case presents a narrative distinct from the 2018 Yemeni refugee situation in Jeju and the ongoing conflict surrounding the Islamic mosque in Daegu since 2021. In Ulsan, a truly unprecedented development is unfolding ㅡ where native residents and migrants are forging a shared narrative in a way that Korea has never experienced before. In this sense, Ulsan may be the first to live the future.
Joined by two special guests, the program will explore the past, present, and future of South Korea as a “multicultural” society. (LEE Jong-chan)
LEE Jong-chan
(Critical) Essayist. He studied literary criticism and cultural theory in the Department of English Literature at university, and was an active member of the critical cultural studies group Center for Cultural Society. Fascinated by the social ontology of literature and art that emerge from reflections on the notion of boundaries. His representative works include “Diaspora and Death” (Littor, Issue 46; 2024), and he co-authored Re-reading Suh Kyung-sik (Yeonrip Seoga, 2022), among others.
KIM Younghwa
Since 2018, she has worked as a journalist for the weekly news magazine SISA IN. She has covered the turbulent landscape of democracy in Asia ㅡ from Hong Kong to Thailand and Myanmar ㅡ while also reporting on migrants within South Korean society. Through years of field reporting, she came to realize that cross-border migration would become one of the defining issues for Korea's future. She seeks to tell the distinct and personal narratives of individuals, rather than reducing them to singular categories such as nation or ethnicity. She is the author of We Lived the Future First: A Year in Ulsan with Afghan Refugees (2023), and co-author of It's So Hard to Die (2021).
KOH Yee Na
She was born in 2001 in a small rural village in Jangheung, Jeollanam-do. She was born to a Filipino mother and a Korean father who met through an international marriage, and has two younger sisters. The name “Yee Na” was given by her mother so that her maternal relatives could pronounce it more easily.
She has written the article “Our Village Runs on the Labor of Multinational Aunties”, as well as the memoir We Are Always Anywhere Else (2024), which captures the reflections of young people with migrant backgrounds.
