By Shubha Gokhale
Having lived in many countries, I have had the opportunity to see racism in many shapes and forms. I don’t really consider the racism I encountered in Korea to be very different from that in other countries.
However, one difference, I notice, is the lack of urgency in the need to create more public awareness of the negative effects of racism.
As noted in the roundtable, Korean mainstream media doesn’t seem to consider it to be an issue of importance. There is no real push for an institutional change to combat racism. Despite repeated calls from the U.N. and international NGOs, there is little legal protection for foreigners when a decision is made that harms a person simply because his skin or hair or culture was considered undesirable.
I frequently hear people talk about ‘Hell Joseon.’ They worry about the economy, and the coming demographic change. When the young talented generation talk about moving to another country, they talk glowingly about the ability to integrate and move up in society, even if they may not initially speak the native language.
Indeed, China seems all too happy to accept talented Koreans at high salaries, inducing worries of
potential brain drain. Yet all these issues are interconnected with racism.
The world has always been an oyster for global talent and it tends to flock to places that are known to welcome it with open arms.
Many years ago, Abdul Fattah Jandali, a Syrian immigrant moved to the US and passed his love of computers to his son. Steve Jobs went on to cofound Apple. A Russian immigrant’s son, Sergei Brin co-founded Google.
Demis Hassabis, a British born child of Greek and Singaporean heritage, co-founded a company, DeepMind Technologies, which he later sold to Google for 500 million dollars. Google DeepMind’s recent Alphago match created history and caused the Korean government to commit 860 million dollars to AI research. Need I talk about Elon Musk? Imagine if Korea could attract global talent and the resulting economic boom to the country!
I find it strange when some explain that Korean culture is quite insular and resistant to change. The first thing that anyone who has visited Korea over the years, notices, is that it has undergone tremendous change in the past fifty years. Korea is in the enviable position of not having the burden of an unwieldy high population, while having one of the world’s fastest internet infrastructure, access to global cutting edge information and a highly educated and hard working population. In a way, it has the ability to peer into the future and make changes faster and better than others. We already see some countries, like Singapore, follow this path to success.
Right now, Korea’s continued use of the Internet Explorer has made it the number one source of DDOS attacks in the world. Yet the remedy is quite easy to see. Similarly, I believe that it is easy to see that increasing legal protection against racism will help everyone. For that to happen, there needs to be greater public awareness of the negative consequences of racism to ensure a more welcoming and vibrant Korean future.
Shubha Gokhale is an assistant professor in international trade at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Contact her at sgokhal@gmail.com.