Korea ready to embrace multicultural society

By Eun Jae-ho

It is evident that Korea is a dynamic society. The country has institutionalized the democratic system and achieved a higher level of industrialization in the five decades after liberation from Japanese colonial rule. The country has shown outstanding achievements, ranking fourth in the 2002 World Cup finals. As an OECD member country, it joined the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to shift its position from ``aided'' to ``aiding'' status in 2009. Korea ranked fifth in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and will host the G-20 Summit in November and the second Nuclear Security Summit in 2012.

However, these achievements alone do not fully explain the dynamism of the country. Korean's enthusiasm for education is unprecedented in the world ― the illiteracy rate is nearly zero here. The proportion of people with a college education rose from 20 percent in the 1970s to 80 percent in 2010. However, there are dark sides to this astonishing advancement. Light and shadow are always back-to-back, and Korean society is no exception.

One of them is a dramatic change in the population structure. The birthrate was over 4.5 in the early 1970s but dropped to the world's lowest level of 1.1 in 2010. This is about half the natural replacement rate of 2.1, and if this continues the Korean population could drop by 50 percent in 100 years, accelerating the aging of the society. Aging is a social issue in most OECD member countries and many other developing countries, however, the trend is even more pronounced with a faster rate and greater scale in Korea.

According to a Statistics Korea (then the National Statistical Office) survey in 2001, it took 115 years for France to see the proportion of the elderly moving from 7 percent to 14 percent, and 41 years from 14 percent to 20 percent. For the United States it was 71 years from 7 percent to 14 percent, and 15 years from 14 percent to 20 percent. For Japan, the periods were 24 years and 12 years respectively. However, the speed of demographic aging in Korea is even faster ― it has taken 19 years and 7 years.

An aging society is accompanied by an increase in the number of people that require social assistance, in particular with regard to income maintenance and health care. The number of pension beneficiaries will rise substantially, adding a burden to the National Pension Fund. Medical services for ever-increasing elderly people will worsen the financial condition of the National Health Insurance. People demand medical services with better quality, and the government will be pressed to strengthen social services for the elderly. The combination of a low birthrate and the aging population could be lethal, possibly upsetting the very foundation of the country.

Until the early 1980s, Korea was among a few countries that successfully implemented a birth control policy. The central government was effective in practicing the U.N. birth control advisories. It is ironic that nowadays the Korean government has been aggressive in promoting childbirth. The increasing difficulty in finding childcare and the cost of education are the two primary causes for Korean couples to avoid having children. If the aforementioned passion for college education has contributed significantly to achieving an illiteracy rate of zero, highly-educated women's economic activity has also become a negative incentive to having a child.

The low birthrate and aging population have become a major social concern. Since 2006, the government has taken bolder measures to slow the ever-lowering birthrate and increasing aging of the population. Under the slogan ``Childbirth is a Practice of Patriotism,'' the government has sought a variety of programs in every social area, ranging from housing supply to tax incentives for childcare.

It adopted plans to subsidize childbirth and childcare, and to provide benefits in medical services. The second-phase plan to cope with the low birthrate and the aging of the population from 2011 to 2015 includes government intervention in labor, welfare, childcare and education. The budget for childbirth promotion accounted for 0.4 percent of GDP in 2009 and will increase substantially. The government plans to take innovative steps in expanding public childcare facilities and strengthening the educational system. The second-stage plan also includes expanded marriage support to encourage people to get married at a younger age. It will implement strategies to improve the working environment and further promote gender equality.

This is to say ― in other words ― that in Korea, pre-war and post-war generations coexist, as well as poor and wealthy generations. The degree of poverty was dire in the post-war era as the whole nation was devastated by 1950-53 Korean War. The gap between generations can be observed in the changing average height of Koreans. It was 165cm in 1900, 167cm in 1925 and 166cm in 1950. In 1979, the average height was 167.4cm for men and 155.4cm for women, but by 2004, it grew to 173.2cm for men and 160cm for women. The growth spurt in the last 25 years has been much greater than it was for the much longer period in the past, and can be attributed to a Westernized diet that has brought about greater consumption of meat and more balanced nutrition.

Two generations with the same lineage but strikingly different life experiences and values are living together in Korean society. People from the past generation with patriarchal ideas grew up in poverty, and believe it virtuous to sacrifice their lives for their children and show respect to elderly people.

They were shy about the romantic relations and courtship. At the same time, streets abound with overweight children, young women in miniskirts and skinny jeans. Clubs in the southern district in Seoul, look as if they are transported from New York or London. On the other side of the town, there is Insa-dong that showcases the archaic culture from the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), with the sound of Pansori spilling out to the streets.

The pre-war generation is familiar with Chinese characters, which are foreign to the new generation christened with Western culture. Those fluent in Chinese and in English reside in one city. Tradition and modernity coexist, which creates a unique culture, a culture of inter-generational divide and unity. In a meeting, superiors and junior employees accuse one another of lacking in understanding, but after work, they sit around at a dining table to share mixed drink shots.

Growing number of immigrants

In line with the dramatic structural change of the population, both divisions and unity are found to create a vertically multicultural structure. The growing number of immigrants and multicultural couples has expanded the horizontal axis of an international society. The number of foreign residents in Korea exceeded one million in 2007, a 17.2 percent increase from 910,000 the previous year.

By purpose of stay, foreign workers, including ``industrial trainees'' (unskilled workers), accounted for 47.1 percent or 502,080 people; immigrants by marriage for 10.4 percent or 110,362 people; and students, including language program participants, for 5.7 percent or 61,029 people.

By 2009, the number increased another 50 percent, reaching 1.5 million, and the number of naturalized people is steadily rising. Most of them are Korean-Chinese. Since 2000, some 2,000 people have acquired Korean citizenship annually. The ratio of interracial marriages is now over 10 percent. As of 2009, foreign residents in Korea were over 1.1 million people. A report estimates that by 2050, one out of every 10 people in Korea will be a foreign resident. Korea used to be the ``Land of the Morning Calm,'' but it is not a land of hermits anymore.

Now multi-ethnic family constitutes a sizable portion of Korean families.

The trend is still geographically concentrated in agricultural villages, showing that the horizontal expansion of the multicultural structure can be mainly explained by economic reasons. Among all the interracial marriages, some 40 percent took place in the countryside. As agricultural villages went through rapid industrialization, young men in the areas had difficulty finding brides, and turned their eyes to spouses from n nearby countries. Korea is no longer a racially homogeneous state. The constitution of multiethnic families can accelerate the multi-culturalization of Korean society because it is far different in its effect from the immigration of workers who hope to return one day to their home country.

As the multiethnic family emerged as a common form of Korean family, the government established the Committee to Support Multicultural Families under the supervision of the prime minister. Eleven government ministries participate in the committee, including the prime minister and the minister for health and welfare, and experts from the private sector also joined. In the past, support for multicultural families was scattered among several ministries. With the launching of the committee, it is expected to improve budget efficiency and ensure effective the promulgation of systematic and strategic policies.

The Korean government has been quick in coping with the onrush of foreign expatriates, increasing the number of multicultural family centers across the country to support their needs and human rights. Multicultural family centers have been operated mostly at provincial governments nationwide.

Diversification of religious beliefs

Religious bodies have been actively joining hands to support them based on the spirit of mutual respect and understanding. A poll in 2008 showed 77.6 percent of Seoul citizens said accepting various ethnicity, religions and cultures helps upgrade the national image and strengthen national power. Whether for economic necessity or cultural needs, Korea has opened its gate wide to foreigners and their cultures.

When vertical and horizontal axes of multiple cultures cross, one of the notable outcomes is the diversification of religious beliefs. Korea does not have a state religion and all religions are equally respected. People may choose not to have religion at all. Korean people make a wide variety of choices when it comes to religion.

Indigenous beliefs still have a strong foundation in Korean society. It is rare to find countries where Western-originated Christianity and Eastern-rooted Buddhism take root. It is even rare historically that no ``holy war'' has ever broken out despite the variety of religions. Dynamism in Korean society can be seen not only in the political and economic realms but also in the socio-cultural arena.

It has both bright and dark sides, and they interact to create new cultural trends and inclinations. Inter-generational divisions and unity, the presence of diverse value sets based on multiple cultures, and the consequent dynamics are driving forces in Korean society. It is too early to say definitively that Korean society has succeeded in managing in a satisfactory manner the opposing power of the bright and dark sides of dynamism. One clear thing is that the Korean people and the government are ready to embrace various cultures and generate positive energy from this.

Who is Eun Jae-ho?

The writer is a principal research fellow at the Korea Institute of Public Administration in Seoul, and is also a member of the Presidential Committee on Social Cohesion. He received his Ph.D. in policy science from Ecole Normale Sup?rieure de Cachan in France. His teaching, research and service activities focus on civil service reform, public policy analysis, and conflict prevention and resolution.

He serves as a technical advisor to the Office of the Prime Minister, helping to develop research and management programs to meet the technological needs of conflict resolution and social cohesion. His most recent publications include ``AIDS and Public Action in France,'' a study of the semantic dimension in AIDS policy changes in France and public accountability in the era of collaborative governance. He can be reached at eun@kipa.re.kr.