Student Corner My childhood experiences in a multicultural society

By Jineui Hahm

As a person having spent my childhood years in America, I believe that the country came to achieve the world’s largest economy partly because people there take diversity for granted.

The America I experienced for 13 years was like a “melting pot” or “salad bowl” with many different colored people living together in harmony.

But of course, these different people with different colors of skin, religion and culture living together did cause some chaos and social conflict.

This social conflict in America can look very unstable and hectic to many people who do not know much about the country.

However, it has its own order and regulations.

If someone asks me how America became the most influential country in the present world, with its short history, I can confidently say that the country’s racial and cultural diversity is the reason for its strong power.

Many of my friends in America had different colored eyes, hair and skin, which seemed very natural and normal.

However, my friends in Korea all have same colored eyes, hair and skin. This was very unusual to me, being raised and educated in America.

Also, I never encountered the words “racial homogeny” or “monoculture” in American schools, but in Korean schools, I can easily find these words in social studies and history books. Recently, however, the word, “diversity” can easily be encountered on Korean television or Internet related multicultural societies.

During this past “Chuseok”, or Korean Thanksgiving, I visited my relatives in a rural village and was able to see some friends having a multicultural background.

These friends were different from me but were very similar to the friends that I played with in schools in America.

This visit to a rural village gave me the opportunity to think about multicultural societies that I had forgotten about since my return back to Korea.

I looked the word up in the dictionary and it defined multiculturalism as “the state of allowing the permission of the many forms of diverse culture, including femininity, minority culture, and non-Western cultures as part of the institution.” But, for me who has had the experience of living with friends of different colors for 13 years in America, I don’t think the problem of multiculturalism can be solved with laws or regulations. Since I have lived with friends of many different cultures from a very young age, I do not have any hostility or prejudice toward different races or cultures. But, most people in Korea do not have the chance to be familiar or to know others with different appearances and principles. I think this naturally makes people prejudiced and hostile to different cultures and diversity. Accordingly, for Korea, the answer to deal with multiculturalism is not through laws or mandatory regulations, but making an educational environment where we can easily mingle and live with diverse cultures from an early age.

Jineui Hahm is a 3rd grade student of Seoil Middle School in Seoul, Korea.