Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

Recent studies on development are increasingly focusing on analyzing development discourse and deconstructing its institutionalization process in the nation-state. By pushing up the limit of the research on development, these studies particularly emphasize how development is articulated with the nation-state, its governmentality, and various representations. These studies overall consider development a powerful discourse, which invents under-development, mobilizes resources for changing particular space, and institutionalizes modern systems of socio-spatial control at a local scale. In this sense, it is particularly interesting to look at how the nation-state, faced with the deterritorialization of labor and capital, reterritorializes overseas resources and networks for the purpose of development. By problematizing the Overseas Koreans Foundation as a transnational state apparatus, this paper interrogates the way in which its institutionalized practices conjure up the national imagination, ethnic solidarity, and collective allegiance to the homeland in diaspora communities. This paper conclusively reports that the state apparatus circulates the discourse of transnational nationalism in Korean diaspora so as to appropriate their resources and networks for securing foreign currencies and investment in the homeland.