Multiculturalism in South Korea: examining government aspirations through the second basic plan for immigration

Who is welcome? South Korean public opinion on North Koreans and other refugees

“…Japanese colonization, followed by Cold War dynamics and nationalism under military rule produced an exclusive form of nationalism and identity (Yoon et al, 2008), one emphasized more than a secularized republican nationalism (Watson, 2010). For many, national identity continues to be defined on ethnic terms, with discriminatory treatment of non-Koreans prevalent (Ghazarian, 2018). Furthermore, unification as a policy imperative continues to emphasize the Korean people as a single ethnic family from time immemorial (Son, 2016), with majorities still supportive of reunification at least in the abstract (e.g., Macris, 2012;Cha 2014;Kim et al, 2015).…”

“…Such erosion of broad ethnic identity appeals may be due to several factors, from generational shifts as fewer South Koreans have direct connections to North Korea or remember the war and its immediate aftermath, to changing conceptions of the nation as a result of South Korea's democratization. Moreover, national curriculum changes in 2007 removed the emphasis on danil-minjok (single-blooded ethnicity) from history textbooks (Ghazarian, 2018), again suggesting a weakening of ethnic nationalism.…”

Becoming Multicultural: Kinship Development of Korean Adolescents With Asian Cross-Border Marriage Migrant Stepmothers

“…The term damunhwa (다문화) or “multicultural” has been used by the government and the media to refer to this new ethnic diversity in Korea and to the families formed by cross-border marriages. While the rhetoric of damunhwa (multiculturalism) signals inclusion and acceptance, scholars have argued that media accounts and governmental policies tend to portray multicultural families as comprised of marginal, at-risk individuals in need of assimilation (Ghazarian, 2018; Kim et al, 2018). In fact, multicultural families in Korea—40.9% of multicultural marriages in 2018 were between Korean men who were at least 10 years older than their immigrant wives 1 from developing nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Cambodia (Jones & Shen, 2008; Yeoh et al, 2014)—have faced discrimination and marginalization even as the government has sought to establish a large network of after-school programs and family support centers to meet their needs (G.…”