{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101038"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101038","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"\"Serving to secure \"\"Global Korea\"\": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants\"","abstract":"This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sŏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sŏbisŭ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project. More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (Helchosŏn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige. Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendants’ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryŏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.","abstract_html":"This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sŏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sŏbisŭ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project. More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (Helchosŏn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige. Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendants’ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryŏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Lee, Alexander J."],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Anthropology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Moodie, Ellen","Lugo, Alejandro","Rana, Junaid","Martin, Jeffrey T.","Kwon, J.B."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2018,"date_issued":"2018-09-04T20:27:22Z","date_published":"2018-09-04T20:27:22Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:38Z","subjects":["South Korea, Labor Migration"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2018 Alex Jong-Seok Lee"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101038","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Moodie, Ellen","Lugo, Alejandro","Rana, Junaid","Martin, Jeffrey T.","Kwon, J.B."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Lee, Alexander J."]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2018-09-04T20:27:22Z","2023-08-23T05:00:00Z","2018-04-20","2018-05"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Anthropology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["South Korea, Labor Migration"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2018 Alex Jong-Seok Lee"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101038"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sŏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sŏbisŭ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project. More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (Helchosŏn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige. Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendants’ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryŏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2018-08-31 without embargo terms","The student, Alexander Lee, accepted the attached license on 2018-04-20 at 13:57.","The student, Alexander Lee, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2018-04-20 at 14:13.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2018-04-20 at 15:28.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12406 on 2018-08-31 at 17:14:02","Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-04T20:27:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 LEE-DISSERTATION-2018.pdf: 3109609 bytes, checksum: 58a5938158c78896d9f6e4281b825046 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4210 bytes, checksum: 5a3c0122cc94a8376f8771b2e0668ea5 (MD5) PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt: 4556 bytes, checksum: 06e49592308152b5815ce359ae4c73ca (MD5) Reprint Permission.docx: 25011 bytes, checksum: 3221d3ebe3122304c1b1bdaf44ccba1f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-20","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2019-11-05T22:44:31Z with date 2021-11-05 by fschaef2@illinois.edu.","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2019-11-05T22:44:33Z with date 2021-11-05 by fschaef2@illinois.edu.","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2021-08-23T15:59:19Z with date 2023-08-23 by bran3@illinois.edu.","Author submitted a 2-year U of I restriction extension request.","U of I Only"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["\"Serving to secure \"\"Global Korea\"\": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants\""]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Moodie, Ellen","Lugo, Alejandro","Rana, Junaid","Martin, Jeffrey T.","Kwon, J.B."],"dc:creator":["Lee, Alexander J."],"dc:date":["2018-09-04T20:27:22Z","2023-08-23T05:00:00Z","2018-04-20","2018-05"],"dc:description":["This dissertation is an ethnography of mobility and modernity in contemporary South Korea (the Republic of Korea) following neoliberal restructuring precipitated by the Asian Financial Crisis (1997). It focuses on how comparative “service,” “security,” and “safety” fashioned “Global Korea”: an ongoing state-sponsored project aimed at promoting the economic, political, and cultural maturation of South Korea from a once notoriously inhospitable, “backward” country (hujin’guk) to a now welcoming, “advanced country” (sŏnjin’guk). Through physical embodiments of the culturally-specific idiom of “superior” service (sŏbisŭ), I argue that aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants have driven the production and maintenance of this national project. More broadly, as a driver of this national project, this occupation has emerged out of the country’s own aspirational flights from an earlier history of authoritarian rule, labor violence, and xenophobia. Against the backdrop of the Korean state’s aggressive neoliberal restructuring, globalization efforts, and current “Hell Chosun” (Helchosŏn) economy, a group of largely academically and/or class disadvantaged young women have been able secure individualized modes of pleasure, self-fulfillment, and class advancement via what I deem “service mobilities.” Service mobilities refers to the participation of mostly women in a traditionally devalued but growing sector of the global labor market, the “pink collar” economy centered around “feminine” care labor. Korean female flight attendants share labor skills resembling those of other foreign labor migrants (chiefly from the “Global South”), who perform care work deemed less desirable. Yet, Korean female flight attendants elude the stigmatizing, classed, and racialized category of “labor migrant.” Moreover, within the context of South Korea’s unique history of rapid modernization, the flight attendant occupation also commands considerable social prestige. Based on ethnographic and archival research on aspiring, current, and former Korean flight attendants, this dissertation asks how these unique care laborers negotiate a metaphorical and literal series of sustained border crossings and inspections between Korean flight attendants’ contingent status as lowly care-laboring migrants, on the one hand, and ostensibly glamorous, globetrotting elites, on the other. This study contends the following: first, the flight attendant occupation in South Korea represents new politics of pleasure and pain in contemporary East Asia. Second, Korean female flight attendants’ enactments of soft, sanitized, and glamorous (hwaryŏhada) service help to purify South Korea’s less savory past. In so doing, Korean flight attendants reconstitute the historical role of female laborers as burden bearers and caretakers of the Korean state.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2018-08-31 without embargo terms","The student, Alexander Lee, accepted the attached license on 2018-04-20 at 13:57.","The student, Alexander Lee, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2018-04-20 at 14:13.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2018-04-20 at 15:28.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12406 on 2018-08-31 at 17:14:02","Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-04T20:27:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 LEE-DISSERTATION-2018.pdf: 3109609 bytes, checksum: 58a5938158c78896d9f6e4281b825046 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4210 bytes, checksum: 5a3c0122cc94a8376f8771b2e0668ea5 (MD5) PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt: 4556 bytes, checksum: 06e49592308152b5815ce359ae4c73ca (MD5) Reprint Permission.docx: 25011 bytes, checksum: 3221d3ebe3122304c1b1bdaf44ccba1f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-20","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2019-11-05T22:44:31Z with date 2021-11-05 by fschaef2@illinois.edu.","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2019-11-05T22:44:33Z with date 2021-11-05 by fschaef2@illinois.edu.","U of I Only Restriction set for Item 107120 on 2021-08-23T15:59:19Z with date 2023-08-23 by bran3@illinois.edu.","Author submitted a 2-year U of I restriction extension request.","U of I Only"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101038"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2018 Alex Jong-Seok Lee"],"dc:subject":["South Korea, Labor Migration"],"dc:title":["\"Serving to secure \"\"Global Korea\"\": Gender, mobility, and flight attendant labor migrants\""],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Anthropology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:38Z"}