50 Years Later: Sister Cities and the Makings of Contemporary Urban South Korea and Vietnam

Abstract:

Nestled in Itaewon (Yongsan district) at the heart of Seoul lies Vietnam Quy Nhơn Street. Further west, in the metropolitan city of Incheon, stands a neighbourhood of red-brick, two-storey houses collectively known as Vietnam Village. Both Yongsan and Incheon in fact share a Vietnamese sister city: Quy Nhơn. Yet, while one epitomises contemporary socioeconomic and diplomatic dynamics, the other is haunted by the anti-Communist Cold War ties in the Vietnam War fifty years ago. Both nevertheless shed light on how local sites emerge as agentic interlocutors of transnational politics.

This study traces the evolving politics of inter-Asian sister city relations by examining​ urban spaces (re)configured under these partnerships. Findings reveal how sister cities evolved from a 1990s 'political fashion' and a device for historical reconciliation into a geoeconomic tool for booming inter-Asian investment since the mid-2010s and most recently, a strategic survival mechanism amid demographic decline. Nonetheless, sister cities remain embedded within, and arguably further complicate, the vexed afterlife of postwar memory politics. Tracing the proliferation of sister cities within Asia reimagines urban theorisation beyond global cities and the West through the ‘worlding’ of small cities in the global South; notwithstanding, it raises concerns regarding uneven hierarchies of capital and power, and the engendering of neocolonialism.

Biography:

Dr My Hang Thi Bui is a research fellow at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. She is a geographer by training, working on migration, cities, and development, with a particular focus on Asian and inter-Asian contexts. My Hang holds a BEd in Geography from Hanoi National University of Education and an MA and PhD in Geography from Seoul National University. Before joining Cambridge, she held fellowships at the Seoul National University Asia Center and at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University.

    This talk is part of the Ra Forum in Korean Studies which is made possible by the Ra Jong-Yil Lecture Fund.