South Korea as a “Racial Retreat”: Recalibrating Korean Masculinity in Transnational Intimacy

Abstract

The heightened appeal of South Korea, particularly Korean men’s desirability among White Western women, is often credited to Hallyu (the Korean Wave). This article argues that local dynamics, what I term a “racial retreat,” enable these couplings and recalibrate rather than reverse racial hierarchies. Based on ethnographic research in Korea (2014–2023), I suggest that Korea’s racialized context, marked by Whiteness and Korean male hegemony, shapes such pairings. Scholarship celebrates pan–East Asian soft masculinity but overlooks how racial and gender hierarchies rooted in Western dominance shape desirability. These relationships are cast as post-racial yet remain organized by Orientalist and White supremacist logics. Korean masculinity’s appeal is uneven and context-dependent, constrained by these hierarchies. What looks like progress is understood as a recalibration rather than a reversal. In turn, proximity to Whiteness functions as status capital, producing conditional inclusion in transnational intimacy and underscoring the need for intersectional feminist and racial justice critique.