PEREMPUAN DALAM DIASPORA KOREA SELATAN DI INDONESIA 1973–1998: STRUKTUR GENDER, AGENSI KOLEKTIF, DAN REPRODUKSI BUDAYA

Abstract

The early South Korean diaspora in Indonesia emerged through a corporate-state migration pathway that began in the early 1970s, marked by the entry of South Korean construction and manufacturing companies into Indonesia within the framework of New Order bilateral investment policy. Existing literature has generally analyzed this community from the perspective of economic integration and community institution-building, while the gendered dimension of diaspora formation has received little attention. This article examines the role of Korean women, who came to Indonesia primarily as corporate expatriate accompanying spouses, in building and sustaining the sociocultural infrastructure of the Korean diaspora community in Indonesia between 1973 and 1998. Using a qualitative historical method combining institutional records with personal audiovisual narratives, the findings show that the corporate-state pathway carried a structural gender bias, in which men were filtered through as labor migrants while women entered as dependents. From this subordinate structural position, however, Korean women developed an active agency operating across three levels, cultural reproduction, transnational solidarity, and local integration. In doing so, women became the primary architects of the sociocultural infrastructure that enabled the Korean diaspora community to maintain its cultural autonomy. This article argues that the entry pathway of a diaspora determines not only its economic character, but also the gendered structure that shapes its continuity.