This article seeks to examine the characteristics of Korean- Japanese students' understanding of unification through their written works that received prizes in a student writing contest, which has been conducted for more than forty years as part of ethnonational education of Korean students in Japan. In this study, middle and high school students’ works (from 1978 to 2016) were selected as its subjects. Of the 1,485 works, 209 (14 percent) are related to unification issues, and these 209 works were in turn classified into seven categories according to the subject. By focusing on the trends and changes in the times that emerge from the students' understanding of unification, this study found that division and unification must be considered when students problematize their existence amid the continuing colonialist policies in Japan and the division structure. In addition, despite the strengthening of the framework for recognizing North and South Korea as separate nations within Japan's consciousness of the Korean Peninsula, the Korean students in Japan appear to have always looked forward to a unified Korea. This may be because the need for unification has been regarded as a matter of self-reliance by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan and within ethnonational education spaces, in which bodies have always engaged in and forwarded unification movements despite opposition from extremely conservative forces that seek to maintain the status quo.

This article brings a transnational approach to the concept of diasporic nationalism, often narrowly conceptualized through the paradoxical link between displaced nation and territory. Based on a one-year ethnographical account of the Korean Christian community in Jerusalem, the article aims to challenge the already troubled concept of diasporic nationalism through the prism of a religious supranational “homecoming” to the Holy Land that might both enhance the national identity and transcend the very significance of nation and nationalism. Rather than viewing diasporic individuals as brokers, educators, and even as “exemplary citizens” or ambassadors of their historical homelands, I suggest moving away from a “hypernationalist” framing of diaspora as an extended nation toward a nuanced understanding of diasporic action and agency. By juxtaposing national and religious nostalgia for “imagined homelands,” I argue that while national identity makes Korean community members outsiders in an unwelcoming Israeli society, their status as Christians brings them back to their religious origins through what I call an “academic pilgrimage.” I ask how the Korean Christian community, modeled on the concept of nation-within-nation, negotiates its multiple identities and porous national and religious boundaries that can reinforce, overlap, or contradict one another both inwardly and outwardly.

After the division of Korea into two states, there appeared a significant difference in the folk dance performing styles between the North and the South. At the beginning the traditional culture and art of the Soviet Koreans was under the influence of North Korea. It was explained by the diplomatic relations, economic cooperation and cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and the DPRK only, excluding the Republic of Korea. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the South seized the initiative in the issue of promoting ties between the post-Soviet Koreans and their ethnic homeland, even though their ancestors, in the overwhelming majority, came from the northern provinces of the Korean Peninsula. This article is one of the first steps in studying the Korean folk dances in the USSR and CIS influenced by northern and southern styles from historical point of view. The article deals with the old folk dances (minsok muyong), excluding court dances (kungjung muyong), “new” dances (shin muyong) developed in the 1920s, and modern dances (kundae muyong). Based on varied original sources and long personal observations, the article analyzes the folk dances of the divided Korea represented in the repertoires of professional, semiprofessional, and amateur Korean dance groups in Central Asia.