The purpose of this research is to clarify the present everyday lives
of the people of Xinghuo Village, North-East region of China. In undertaking
this research, the writer spent a total of nine months in the field on
five separate visits between July 1992 and September 1994.
There are currently approximately two million Korean-Chinese living
in China. However, not withstanding the Japanese occupation of
the Korean peninsula and the North-East regions of China, there has
been little anthropological research by foreigners on this group. As is
common knowledge, cultural anthropologists have long searched out distant
ethnic groups, especially those isolated from modern civilization,
looking for their own romantic/ideal past, as though primitive civilization
had continued among them. For this reason, those minority groups
which have not been seen as so distanced from "civilization", such as the
Korean-Chinese, have often been avoided in research. Due to this anthropological
tradition, not only foreign researchers but also Chinese
folk scholars and sociologists are comparatively behind in their research
of the Korean-Chinese in comparison to that of other ethnic groups.
From 1940 until 1950, with Chinese foreign and civil wars, and from
1960 through 1970, with the complicated political climate in China, there
was a long difficult period for foreign scholars conducting research.
However, from the beginning of 1980, with Yunnan province as the focal
point, research on various ethnic minorities of the southern regions
of China and Tibet has prospered. In this new climate, one wonders
why research on a people with a population of two million has not progressed.
Amongst the fifty-six ethnic groups in China, Koreans enjoy
the highest rate of literacy and education. It is as though because
Koreans possess clearly different qualities from "primitive people",
research on Koreans has not been that attractive. In addition it is as
though the interest shown by many Korean researchers in such Korean
traditions as ancestor festivals and the Yangban culture has tacitly been
taken to include all Koreans, even though no surveys have been conducted
on Korean society in China. In any case, from now on Korean
society in China should be an object of sociological and anthropological
survey and research.
Based on the current state of research on Koreans indicated above,
this study examines the various social changes and adaptions inland
Korean-Chinese have experienced as an immigrant minority that has mixed
with a variety of ethnic groups, such as the Chinese among others.
中国朝鮮族にみる村の生活 : 吉林省星火村の調査報告
KH_021_3_002.pdf
(4.08MB)
