I am a sociocultural anthropologist broadly interested in how states and civil society institutions map religious and political meaning onto the experience of displacement. My current research project, situated in alternative schools for North Korean background youth, asks what it means to be folded into a nation’s future while being excluded from its present. My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Foundation.

I am a member of the North Korean diaspora based in New York City, NY, and conduct my research in Seoul, South Korea.

PUBLICATIONS

Um-lo, N. & Jang, e. (2025). Slipping through the Cracks in South Korea: The Uncertain Futures for the Children of North Korean Defectors. Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute.

Um, n. (2020). “Biopower, mediascapes, and the politics of fear in the age of covid-19.” City & Society 32 (2): ciso.12311.

SELECT and upcoming presentations

2025. “Precarity and Possibility: Migrant Youth, Transnational Schooling, and the Politics of Belonging” (PANEL). American Anthropological Association (AAA), Annual Meeting (Nov. 22-24).

2025. “Invited to lunch with the president: selective visibility and the politics of recognition among North Korean displaced youth in South Korea.” Teachers college, fifth biennial conference on anthropology and education (oct. 10-11).

2025. “Divine selection: the sacred and secular politics of Korean unification.” Society for anthropology of religion, biennial conference (jun. 21-23).

2024. “Micro-unification in the shadow of nuclear war: north korean escapee youth and south korean resettlement schooling.” American anthropological Association (AAA), Annual meeting (Nov. 20-23).

2021. “Legacies of minjok and neo-confucianism in the early DPRK apparatus.” Oxford university, Faculty of oriental studies: international history of east asia (dec. 1).

2020. “Holding each other up: building civic carework ecologies through youth participatory action.” COlumbia university, Department of anthropology: Anthroposium (jul. 13).