Jasmine Lee's question to Korea

By Jason Lim

Jasmine Lee, the first Philippine-born, naturalized Korean to be elected as a proportional representative for the ruling, conservative Saenuri Party, is probably the most unifying politician in Korea today; she's hated by both the right and the left for her main sponsorship of the bill that would allow birth registration of children born in Korea from one or more parents who are illegal aliens.

Although they wouldn't automatically become Korean citizens, these children would be allowed to reside in Korea for a "special residential period" and entitled to basic rights to minimum healthcare, education, and welfare benefits. Their parents would also receive a temporary reprieve from forced deportation until their children's special residential period ends, which can be extended using an application process to be defined later.

Supporters are eager to point out that this bill, if passed, would affect around 20,000 children in Korea today, allowing their families to stay together and live without constant fear of being caught, stuck in a no man's land in terms of legal status. In that sense, it's somewhat similar to President Obama's recent executive actions on immigration that echoes the Dream Act that has failed to pass the U.S. Congress for the last decade, offering a legal reprieve to the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who've resided in the country for at least five years.

As Hankyoreh recently profiled, Lee is vilified from both the right and left for sponsoring this bill. The gist of their complaint is that Korean taxpayers shouldn't subsidize the children of illegal aliens who have, in effect, committed a crime by being in the country. However, lurking beneath the argument is an obvious vein of racism that pronounces that these children are not real "Korean" children deserving of support by a Korean society. The fact that Lee is originally from the Philippines serves only to enflame this racism by challenging it so visibly since they view her as a pseudo-Korean trying to provide a way for her fellow pseudo-Koreans to claim full rights of a Korean citizenship.

Funnily enough, Hankyoreh's article of Lee's travails reminded me of B.R. Myers' book, ''The Cleanest Race," published several years ago that claimed that North Korea's driving ideology wasn't Marxism or Stalinism but a race-based nationalism modeled after Japanese fascism. Myers claims that North Korea bases its citizenship strictly on race, with the underlying assumption that the ''Korean Race" is somehow more pure and morally superior.

At the time, what interested me about Myer's book was not his analysis of North Korea but its implications for South Korea. In other words, as North and South Korea share the basic historical and cultural makeup pre-1945, does South Korea also exhibit similar "Cleanest Race" cultural tendencies that Myers found in his study of North Korean internal propaganda?

Most likely. Although South Korea hasn't based its whole governance structure on an ideology based on racial purity as has North Korea, underlying cultural norms change very slowly over time. If so, how has the divergent paths that the two countries have taken post-1945 affected the ways through which these norms are manifested in society?

At least one way they manifest are through the explicit prejudice and attacks that we have so far seen against Lee and other non-Korean minorities. A recent poll by Asan Institute shows an increasingly negative attitude against families of mixed nationalities for the fear that they impede social cohesion. When you view this result against a demographics trend that may have one in nine children in 2020 to be from a multicultural family (with 49 percent of children in farming households being multicultural), it doesn't take a genius to predict some painful socio-cultural conversation around the topic of racial prejudice and the nature of what being a "Korean" means if it can no longer be easily defined by race.

However, I don't want to single out South Korea for being particularly racist. Every society is tribal in different ways and will have to navigate through their own respective journeys to deal with the heterogeneous demographics impacts of globalization. In effect, Korea has already started this painful conversation in earnest with the bill that Lee has sponsored – the language of the debate centers around immigration policies, incentivizing illegal aliens, budget impacts, children's welfare, etc. but the underlying cultural debate is undeniably one of fundamental clash dealing with collective self-identity, racism, and future of the peninsula as a ''Korean" state.

For a country that was nicknamed the "Hermit Kingdom" a little more than 100 years ago for its fearfully defensive and reclusive reactions against anything outside, such a debate is bound to be an emotional one that will seek to answer that fundamental question that this bill has thrown down as a gauntlet to Korean society:

"What will Korea do when her children no longer look Korean?"

The answer will define Korea moving forward.

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.

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