Global Cities and COVID-19: Stories of Resilience and Fragility in Los Angeles

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global cities. In particular, the paper revisits and updates the academic literature on global cities and focuses on the discussion of the resilience and fragility of global cities in light of an unprecedented global pandemic. By severely testing the strength and durability of the international flow of goods and people, the sweeping scale and intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic directly called into question the thick and complicated network of global cities that serve as modes for international trade and travel. The paper then draws on the impact of COVID-19 on Los Angeles to examine how the pandemic impacted the city’s health, economy, and social fabric. The findings suggest that the international connections of Los Angeles became a source of initial vulnerability but eventual strength as the city managed the health and the economic impacts of the pandemic. However, more complicated stories emerge from immigrant and ethnic communities in Los Angeles. For this “Ethnic Los Angeles,” COVID-19 came to the United States at a time of intense political polarization and severe economic inequality. This polarization and inequality have contributed to Ethnic Los Angeles bearing an unfair share of the burden from the pandemic

A Divergent Path: Korean American Politics in an Age of Globalization

In a globalizing world, Korean Americans political participation is being increasingly shaped not only by their demand for empowerment in the United States―the nation of their citizenship―but also by their desire to manage their increasingly transnational lives and to fully maximize economic opportunities on the other side of the Pacific. While finding meaningful political power in the diverse and contentious American society has been a slow process, Korean Americans have found much more success in the interstitial political space of globalization and transnationalism. Within the past two decades, Korean Americans have been wooed by the South Korean government and the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce for various political and policy objectives. More specifically, this paper examines three specific laws and policies that demonstrate this transpacific turn in Korean American politics: 1) Overseas Korean Act (1999); 2) Visa Waiver Program (2008); and 3) Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (2012). This shift in the political orientation of Korean Americans signals the increasing importance of transnational dynamics in ethnic political incorporation

Global Religion and Local Faith: Korean Churches in Beijing and Tokyo

Korea Christian churches and missionaries have a prominent presence around the world. In cities such as Yanji and Los Angeles, Korean churches are an essential part of century-old Korean ethnic communities that trace their origins to Japanese colonization that began in the late-1800s. More recently, the economic success of South Korean corporations has resulted in Korean churches and missionaries in global metropoles such as Beijing, London, and Singapore that serve thriving Korean communities anchored by corporate transnationals, entrepreneurs, and international students. This same economic growth has financed Korean missionaries from Africa to Central Asia to undertake projects ranging from health care to education. While all Korean churches and missionaries have comfortably imbued the global religion of Christianity with their national and ethnic identity, the differences in national and local contexts shape their individual beliefs and practices. Given the dramatic changes in both Korean and its diasporic histories, each Korean church selects from rich and complex vocabularies of religion, nation, ethnicity, and community to negotiate and articulate its mission and identity. Within this context, this article focuses on two Korean churches-one from Beijing and another from Tokyo-as emblematic case studies of global religion and local faith

Spintronic properties of one-dimensional electron gas in graphene armchair ribbons

We have investigated, using effective mass approach (EMA), magnetic properties of a one-dimensional electron gas in graphene armchair ribbons when the electrons of occupy only the lowest conduction subband. We find that magnetic properties of the one-dimensional electron gas may depend sensitively on the width of the ribbon. For ribbon widths $L_x=3Ma_0$, a critical point separates ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states while for $L_x=(3M+1)a_0$ paramagnetic state is stable ($M$ is an integer and $a_{0}$ is the length of the unit cell). These width-dependent properties are a consequence of eigenstates that have a subtle width-dependent mixture of $\mathbf{K}$ and $\mathbf{K'}$ states, and can be understood by examining the wavefunction overlap that appears in the expression for the many-body exchange self-energy. Ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states may be used for spintronic purposes.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure