(544) New wave of Chinese migrants

By Andrei Lankov

Until recently most Koreans would confidently tell you that in their country there were no ethnic minorities. But this was untrue: there was one ethnic minority in Korea. The ethnic Chinese or huaqiao began to arrive in Korea from the 1880s and their numbers peaked at some 85,000 in the early 1940s, but in the years 1945-50 many of them left Korea.

Throughout almost 50 years the Chinese remained the only ethnic minority in South Korea. All other groups were very small in number ― until the beginning of the English teaching boom around 1980, the Western community consisted of few hundred expats and missionaries, and no other foreigners were present at all.

The presence of the Chinese was felt with some unease. When talking to older Koreans, I sometimes came across the idea that back in the 1950s and 1960s the Seoul governments were afraid that Chinese, if their influence was left unchecked, would somehow acquire leading positions in the Korean economy ― a bit like the situation in many countries of Southeast Asia with large Chinese minorities.

Perhaps we should not blame the government alone: such fears might have been common among the Korean public in general. South Korea founded in the 1940s was passionately nationalist and ethnocentric. The only model its early leaders knew was that of Imperial Japan, so we should not be surprised that ideas of “racial unity” played such a role in their thinking.

Hence, from the late 1940s the local Chinese community faced considerable discrimination. The ROK has never had permanent residence certificates (akin to the American “green cards”), so the local Chinese were seen as foreign visitors on the Korean territory.

As such, they could not be employed as officials, they could not receive certificates of lawyers or medical doctors. Most large companies avoided hiring “foreigners” even though most of them were born in Korea and were virtually indistinguishable from “authentic” Koreans.

Technically, the Korean huaqiao were citizens of Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan), although nearly all of them came from Shandong Province and other areas of northeastern China.

It was impossible for them to choose the citizenship of “Red China,” and their contacts with their land of origin remained frozen for decades. At the same time, Taiwan was very active in supporting the local community, including its education programs.

In the early 1960s their situation changed for the worse. In September 1961 the new military government passed a law on “foreign-owned land” which limited “foreigners” rights to own property in Korea. The law targeted ethnic Chinese, since no other foreigners lived in the country permanently.

According to the 1961 law and its later revised versions, the Chinese were not allowed to own more than 660 square meters of land. They could not own arable land, and could have only one house (this regulation made real estate investment impossible). The maximum size of their shops and offices was limited to 165 square meters.

As aliens, Chinese had to apply for residence visas every two or, later, three years (only in 1998 the period was extended to five years).

This meant that huaqiao could only run small-scale businesses ― this seems to be the exact point of the law. For all practical purposes, the sole area of business activity open to them was the restaurant business.

It was not easy to avoid discrimination by becoming ROK citizens, as opportunities to naturalize remained rare. Those who wanted to accept ROK citizenship had to present recommendations from high-level officials, and the final decision had to be approved by the minister of justice.

In a mixed marriage, children whose father was Chinese could not choose ROK citizenship. In Korea until the late 1990s a child’s citizenship was automatically decided according to that of their father.

Until the 1970s Chinese had no choice but to adjust to this pressure. They could not leave Korea because their supposed “mother country” of Taiwan was in even worse shape, and no Western country was ready to accept non-whites in those racist days.

However, around 1970 things changed, and a slow-motion exodus of the Chinese huaqiao began. Some of them moved to Taiwan (such was a usual fate of academically more successful youngsters who went to the colleges of that island state and never came back), but many more moved to the U.S.

The younger generation often used every opportunity to naturalize since for them Korea was their country and they did not see why they should associate themselves with some distant island. In the early 1970s, there were some 35,000 Chinese in Korea.

Now the figure has dropped to 21,000 (this is the number of permanent settlers, since recent arrivals from China are far more numerous).

In the late 1990s old restrictions were either lifted or relaxed. From 1999 the Chinese and other foreigners could own land and real estate, the path to naturalization became much easier, and now visas are issued once every five years. But it is perhaps too late. The old Chinese community is dying.

Nonetheless, this does not mean the end of the Chinese presence in Korea. On the contrary, ethnic Chinese now reside in Korea on a scale that is hitherto unprecedented. From the early 1990s a new wave of Chinese migrants has been coming to Korean shores. But they are very different from their predecessors.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.