Multicultural families need stronger networking

By Kwon Mee-yoo

Staff reporter

The mere thinking of hardship married immigrants here encounter in their daily lives leaves Hideko Yamaguchi's eyes welling with tears.

Yamaguchi, the president of Seoul Marriage Immigrants Network (SMIN), a group of married immigrants organized by the Seoul Immigration Office, has devoted herself to bolstering cultural understanding among multicultural families and cultivate friendship among married immigrants here.

"Every woman comes to Korea with a dream," Yamaguchi said in an interview with The Korea Times. "Some of them have conflicts with their new family in Korea due to the difference in culture. Korea still has somewhat conservative, male-dominated culture especially toward women from other countries."

As a means to help them overcome such difficulties, Yamaguchi says community service centers build a stronger network.

"There are many married immigrants just staying at home because they don't know what's going on," she said. "So the community center can give information on living in Korea and invite married immigrants to the center once a month to have a meeting."

She also wants more opportunities for married immigrants to participate in community life, ultimately to provide better circumstance for them to enter society.

"We have a regular meeting once a month and have classes on immigration issues and living information in Korea. We invite all multicultural family members and Koreans who also have to understand married immigrants," she said.

Yamaguchi came to Korea in 1988, married a Korean man and now is the mother of three children ― a university junior, third grader in high school and sixth grader in elementary school.

She says multicultural family members can play key roles in leading women's associations in apartment or local communities.

"I think the government should consider hiring specialized employees and the best choice would be married immigrants," she said.

"Married immigrants have special skills ― there are people with doctor's or teacher's licenses from their home country. They can be retrained here to use what they have learned."

She emphasized that married immigrants need some independence in their life, not totally relying on their spouses.

"There are gaps among multicultural families, just like other Korean families. So it is a misconception to 'help' multicultural families because they are poor," she said. "Married immigrants can lead a happy family life but they need the social environment to support it. They need chances to achieve self-fulfillment."

Yamaguchi said interracial marriage is a natural flow in the process of the world becoming a global village and is a good way to become interested and understand other countries and cultures.

"I was not much interested in Korea when I was in Japan. There were no Korean dramas and I didn't even know the Korean greeting 'annyeonghaseyo,'" she said. "When I came to Korea, I was amazed at how developed and fascinating Korea is. Korean culture was totally new to me, too."

She made her official debut as a poet last year. Her poems on human mentality and the North-South relationships are written in both Korean and Japanese and were published in the 2009 summer issue of the Korea Literature & Arts magazine after winning a literary contest.

"I studied movies and plays when I was in university and have been writing poems for several years, participating in illustrated poem exhibitions and recitals," she said. "I want to liberate people's mind through art."