61st Multicultural Korea needs new legal framework

Attempt at diversity could result in inevitable reshaping of national identity, experts say

By Kim Tong-hyung

A beautiful blonde woman dressed up in a pink and yellow hanbok (traditional Korean garb) strolls up the stairs of a wooden pagoda with a platter of broiled beef. She is greeted by a middle-aged Korean woman, who has a lavishly-prepared table in front of her, but seems only interested in where the meat was from.

``Why eomeoni” (mother), the blonde replies in her best Korean.

``Of course, its hanwu” (prime Korean beef).

Her mother-in-law couldn’t be happier.

``My my! you are now almost a Korean,’’ she gushes.

This recently-aired commercial was among a growing number of television advertisements portraying foreigners getting along perfectly with black-haired locals, promoting a positive image of a country that continues to feel the impact of globalization through the increase in interracial marriages and an influx of migrant workers.

And perhaps the exchange between the two women at the pagoda, scripted to boost hanwu sales obviously, inadvertently explains the country’s approach in pursuing a multicultural society and hints at how it’s getting in its own way.

So far, the debate about immigration here has been focused almost exclusively on economic benefits but tiptoed around its effect on society and culture. Multiculturalism may prove to be a difficult challenge to the average Korean, who has been indoctrinated from a young age that all Koreans descend from a single bloodline and their national strength is based on this ethnic homogeneity.

The attempts at building a multicultural society in Korea have clearly been less about allowing people of different cultures to settle into society than about demanding them to respect and assimilate into the Korean way of life.

Multiculturalism is a complex term that could be defined in a variety of ways, but in Korea it has meant not much more than teaching foreign wives to speak the language and offer them kimchi (a Korean staple side-dish of picked cabbage).

Critics are now calling for a more serious commitment toward embracing a diverse range of cultures and identities, and if this requires a continuous remaking of national identity, then so be it.

``It’s telling that the government policies on multiculturalism and immigration are predominantly focused on foreign wives married to Korean men, who are thought of as more willing to commit to traditional family values. There needs to be dramatic changes in the way Koreans think about the foreigners living here and adjustments must also be made to legal and administrative systems,’’ said So Ran-hui, a lawyer from Gonggam, an activist group of legal experts.

``Despite all the speechifying about multiculturalism, the Korean approach is still about promoting a certain type of lifestyle to newcomers who are coming from different cultures, views and faiths. It all starts with Korean legal, administrative and educational systems that define the nation as constituted by people of a single race.’’

For Korea, the case for multiculturalism is clear-cut. Interracial families and biracial children have been increasing here due to the dramatic growth in the number of rural and low-income Korean men marrying foreign women. And it seems certain that the country’s low birthrate will eventually require it to import more migrant labor.

However, Korea’s journey toward multicultural cohesion so far has been, to put it kindly, uninspiring. Migrant workers, most of them with low-paid jobs in labor-intensive industries, often grapple with poor working conditions and discrimination. Many foreign wives, called ``marriage migrants’’ by government officials, struggle with the heightened stress created by poverty, cultural differences and even domestic violence.

With race continuing to affect how people live, how much they are paid and how they are treated, multicultural families are often met with double-takes, while their children often face the challenge of navigating questions about their identity.

For Korea to have a shot at creating a multicultural society that works, it would be important for average Koreans to shake off the ignorance and fear that made it acceptable to treat people of different cultures and skin colors as inferior or outsiders.

However, it’s also obvious that the country must have a legal and institutional framework to force changes to people’s behavior and protect the rights of foreign residents.

The pursuit of deeper and more systematic changes, while unavoidable, could be the tipping point where Korea’s efforts to integrate its immigrant population touches off a nationalistic backlash from the rest of the public, which may take it as a crisis of national and social identity.

After all, it’s none other than the country’s Constitution that stresses a ``firm solidarity of a nation’’ and requires of its people a commitment toward ``creating and promoting national culture.’’

``The provisions of the constitution clearly advocate a nation based on ethnic homogeneity and there are needs to change these passages to reflect the effort toward achieving a multicultural society,’’ said Wie Eun-jin, a lawyer from Seoul-based law firm, Cheongdam.

``Currently, Korean law and its institutional system provide only limited protection for human rights of foreign residents, and even then, the gap between legal principles and reality continue to erode the rights that are supposed to be protected … The mainstream interpretation of the Constitution, as represented in the decisions by the Constitutional Court, is that the protection of the social basic rights of citizens doesn’t naturally extend to foreign residents. It’s time that we include written provisions in the Constitution regarding the protection of foreigners’ rights.’’

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Beyond just border control

There is criticism that the country doesn’t provide any meaningful immigration policy aside of border control.

The influx of migrant workers and number of interracial marriages have been increasing steadily since the early 1990s, but the government had been indifferent about introducing polices to culturally integrate its growing immigrant population.

The awareness on multicultural cohesion improved dramatically after Hines Ward, the Korean-American wide receiver for National Football League (NFL) powerhouse Pittsburgh Steelers, visited Korea in 2006, shortly after being named MVP for that year’s Super Bowl championship game.

The following year, the Roh Moo-hyun government introduced the ``Basic Act for Improving Treatment of Foreign Residents’’ and complemented it with a multi-year plan aimed at setting an essential framework for foreigners policy.

The first phase of the plan is effective through 2012 and up for renewal every five years. The scheme is helpful in that it fits the need for streamlining the different immigration and multicultural policies that have been pursued by different government agencies such as the Justice Department, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

However, critics say that the content of the plan exposes the difficult quandary policymakers are facing between embracing the differences of culture and aligning different communities under a single dominant identity.

Although the plan stresses commitment toward improving national competitiveness through acceptance of ``quality’’ migrant workers, it also justifies privileging foreigners with ethnic Korean heritage as a way to ``strengthen the ability of the Korean nation.’’

The provisions state clearly that the government won’t be encouraging low-skilled workers to settle once their visas and contracts are up. ``Effective’’ border control is also emphasized, showing that the country has no intention to change its policy of tracking down and tossing out illegal immigrants.

``Managing unregistered foreigners shouldn’t automatically mean sniffing them out and jetting them away. Korea is a rare country that chooses to chase around unregistered foreigners like a hunter’s prey,’’ said Jun Jae-ku, a municipal official of Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, who directs the city’s Migrant Community Service Center.

``These people who have come to our country to work because there was demand for their labor, so there is no need to treat them like that. One shouldn’t forget that ethnic Koreans account for the largest population among unregistered foreigners in Japan and you see a lot of Koreans in the United States living there for a long time without attaining permanent residency.’’