Focusing on new women immigrants/migrants from Korea to Japan in recent years, this article explores the form of transmigratory practice of U-turnees, who have past experiences of having lived in Japan or been born there prior to the end of Japan's colonial rule in 1945 and returned to Japan around the year 1989 when the South Korean government lifted the restriction of overseas travel for its citizens. I suggest through mini life histories of five women that their lives can best be understood in terms of ongoing engagement with more than one nation-state as home. On this basis, I argue that what might look like a chaotic swirl of new immigrants/migrants is in fact not based on the discovery of a brave new world, but firmly based on family history and configurated by state-to-state relations.
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