Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Ho Kong Chong, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Hanoi has been under construction over the past two decades with many new high-rise residential and mixed-use building complexes. Several Korean development projects have led the race of building the tallest complexes in Hanoi and Vietnam. This seminar presents an ongoing research project of the two tallest high-rise developments (72 story and 65 story buildings) in Hanoi. These two buildings are used as hotel residence (serviced apartments) and promoted as Vietnamese or Korean versions of gated community residences for global professionals. Despite their original visions of residences for global professionals, the complexes are occupied almost fully by Korean professional expatriate families.

Why and how are such high-rise hotel residences developed in Hanoi? How do residents make sense of their home, neighborhood and community? What implications do they have for our understanding of gated communities, high-rise urban developments, and expatriate communities in globalizing cities of the developing world?

In-depth interviews and informal observations are used for data collection. Interviews with residents are conducted at the family level on their choice of residence, senses of home, neighborhood and community. Additional interviews with developers, real estate agents, and managers of hotel residences have also been conducted.

At the seminar, I will show that these new urban developments have been initiated to match the housing as well as socio-cultural and familial needs of the high-income Korean expatriate professionals in the contexts that Vietnamese government has been trying to develop the country economically and the capital city as a global city by attracting foreign direct investment from Korea. I will further argue that this type of high-rise development pushes us to rethink our understanding and definitions of gated community, expatriate community and neighborhood. It also has a potential to be replicated in other globalizing cities in developing country with certain conditions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jeehun Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Studies Education at Inha University, Korea. His research focus is at the intersections of urban, migration and educational sociologies, investigating privileged, less privileged, and under-privileged Asians who aspire for social and geographic mobility across Asia and beyond. Two of his current projects are on professional and semi-skilled mobilities of Koreans and on the Korean community in Singapore funded by the National Research Foundation (2018-21) and the Academy of Korean Studies (2016-19). He is also interested in bi-ethnic (Korean and Southeast Asian) blended families in Korea and Korean educational migrant families in Southeast Asia.

He has earned his BA in Sociology from Korea University, MSocSci (Sociology) from National University of Singapore. He has received both his MSc from School of Geography and the Environment and DPhil in Sociology from University of Oxford. He was a visiting student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and University of Pennsylvania. Before coming to Inha, he was an Assistant Professor at Sogang University, Korea and held Visiting Scholar positions at New York University, Columbia University, Stockholm University and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta).

REGISTRATION

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