“Since When Does an Individual Choose His Nation?” : Diaspora, Precarity of Bond Slavery and Stateless Voices in Kim Young-ha’s Black Flower

Abstract

The dominant narratives of history have often failed to acknowledge countless instances of human suffering, pain, and adversity across different times and spaces. One such forgotten corner of history consists of the Korean diaspora in Mexico which started with the perilous journey of 1,033 Koreans who migrated to Mexico in 1905 as indentured labourers. This paper draws on Kim Young-ha’s historical fiction titled Black Flower (2003/2013), to analyse the long-neglected history of the marginalized Korean labourers who were deceived into being bond slaves and were subjected to exploitation, hunger, wounds and illness in Mexican haciendas under autocratic landowners. Kim uses the mode of fiction to challenge the absence of archival documentation on this part of the Korean diaspora. This research argues that the migrant labourers turned into victims of extreme precarious conditions, both physically and psychologically, as a result of losing access to both national belonging and individual autonomy. Through the critical lens of diaspora and vulnerability studies, this paper attempts to make visible those lives that have been treated as losable and ‘ungrievable’ by the mainstream historiography. Finally, by a close reading of Black Flower, the paper also analyses the unflinching resilience of the stateless Korean immigrants and their attempts to establish a New Korea, free from the precarities of class, culture and race.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.66496/LCAP.9788168710108.2026.212-230