Abstract

This article theorizes characteristics of the Korean diaspora through comparative analyses of Min Jin Lee’s Korean diasporic novels, Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko. While existing studies have examined Korean Americans and zainichi as distinct groups, they often lack a comparative perspective that integrates these communities, particularly in the context of a shared colonial and postcolonial history. Furthermore, no research has yet analyzed Min Jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko to explore how these novels address interconnected dimensions of Korean American and zainichi experiences. Through our textual analysis of Korean American and zainichi characters in her work, we explain spiritual, private, and public dimensions of conflict among members of the Korean diaspora. We discuss this conflict in two ways: first, as a reflection of generational gaps among members of the Korean diaspora, and second, as a survival mechanism for the Korean diaspora in the racially discriminatory context of the United States and the ethnically discriminatory context of Japan. Based on these analyses, we derive the concept of the Korean Pacific. This concept refers to the unique characteristics of members of the Korean diaspora who migrated and settled down when Japan and the United States ruled Korea as a colony and a postcolonial state, respectively, in the name of modernization.