Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.
Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far
and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
"The Old Poets of China" by Mary Oliver

I Am a Half Retiree, But Soon to be Pure: Korean Retirees in the Philippines | A Public Lecture

Details

The Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman will host a public lecture, “I Am a Half Retiree, But Soon to be Pure: Korean Retirees in the Philippines” on Monday, 23 March 2015, 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Japan Hall, GT-Toyota Asian Cultural Center, Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman. The lecture is free and open to the public. 

In this lecture, Dohye Kim examines the meanings of "retirement" and "migration" by exploring Korean retirees, most of whom left their jobs in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. She focuses on financially insecure and relatively young retirees who move to the Philippines and start small businesses; they hope to gain enough wealth so that they can stop working and become what they call “pure retirees.” 

Kim also shows how the notions of retirement and labor are changing given the shifts in the neoliberal labor market, and in the process, how the Philippines is constructed as a "hopeful" site for retirement. Looking at the lack of welfare programs in late-industrialised Korea and the Philippine government’s promotion of the country as a retirement haven, Kim explores the paradoxes of flexible labor: encouraging retiree migration but rendering it a difficult, almost unattainable goal. 

Dohye Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She worked in an NGO for youth with migrant backgrounds including Korean refugees and children of migrant laborers in Korea. At present, she is a Visiting Fellow at the College of Mass Communications, University of the Philippines Diliman and is conducting her ethnographic field research on Korean retirees in the Philippines.  

The lecture is organized as part of an Asian Center's graduate course, “Culture and Society in Korea” (AS 237.3), handled this semester by Kyung Min Bae, a Senior Lecturer from the Department of Linguistics, University of the Philippines Diliman. 

Seats are limited and are available only on a first-come, first-served basis. Please inform the organisers of your wish to attend via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Photo: Promotional poster of public lecture. Click to enlarge.

The Asian Center offers M.A. degrees in Asian Studies with four fields of specialization: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West Asia. The Center also has an M.A. program in Philippine Studies that allows students to major in Philippine society and culture, Philippine foreign relations, or Philippine development studies. The Center offers a Ph.D. program in Philippine Studies in conjunction with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy.