This aint news: Korea pursuing a one-sided assimilation policy and calling it multiculturalism. Watson, Iain. Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South Korea. Asian Politics & Policy 4, no. 2 (2012): 233-58. South Korea’s rapid development has been predicated on a widespread and profound assumption of racial and ethnic homogeneity, as “one family, one race, one nation.” This assumption of a 5,000-year-old Korean racial ancestry and a jus sanguinis, or bloodline, is deeply rooted in the South Korean psyche and its political institutions (N. Lee, 2009; Lim, 2011; Shin, 2006). The United Nations Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination1 has expressed concern with South Korea’s continuing and substantive beliefs in ethnic homogeneity and with distinctions made between sunhyeol (pure blood) and honhyeol (mixed blood; Koo, 2007).2 Some scholars suggest that those who regard racial and ethnic beliefs as a limit to multiculturalism in South Korea have focused on the “wrong enemy.” Rather than being an issue of racial and ethnic homogeneity, the problem is the continu- ing belief in Korean cultural superiority (Koo, 2007). For instance, in 2006, Presi- dent Roh Moo-hyun’s government “stressed the need to stop teaching ethnic homogeneity and enhance the tenets of multiculturalism” (Koo, 2007, p. 8). The government will replace terms implying racial discrimination, such as mixed blood and biracial, with politically correct terminology (Lee Kye-Hyung, 2008, p. 116). The message was that belief in racial and ethnic homogeneity could be officially “untaught” or “unlearned” through “state-led” approaches to multiculturalism. Such state-led initiatives are symptomatic of South Korea’s response to global- ization. Lee Bae-Jong, chairwoman of the Presidential Committee on National Branding and former Ewha Women’s University president, stated that “culture and history” are effective tools to “make foreigners better understand us” and suggested that South Korea use these tools to “meet the needs of foreigners” rather than to “satisfy our needs.”3 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) is involved with a foreign textbook revision project to help present South Korea’s overseas image (“New Book,” 2012). Such projects are promoted to show South Korea’s democratization and openness to diversity, although the practice of “revising history” can have more pejorative connotations. I argue that exclusivist racial and ethnic beliefs are paradoxically reinforced by the multicultural policies that are being adopted. Race, ethnicity, and culture as well as nationality and citizenship are indistinguishable for Koreans. In Korean society, “race is understood as a collectivity defined by innate and immutable phenotypic and genotype characteristics” and while ethnicity is usually defined as culture, “Koreans have not historically differentiated between the two” (Shin, 2006, p. 4). From this perspective, race and ethnicity inextricably influence beliefs about Korean culture. Yet the South Korean government has institutionally and conceptually separated these terms by focusing on the issue of culture and mul- ticulturalism. This has two implications. First, by separating culture from beliefs in race and ethnicity, the underlying assumptions of Korean exclusiveness are obscured even as they continue to influence that culture. Second, if race, ethnicity, and culture are linked, then it would be reasonable to suggest that multiculturalism may become a transformative force with intended or unin- tended changes to the underlying racial and ethnic beliefs and their relationship. Indeed, this is the space that independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are strategically considering for promoting an alternative to government- sponsored multicultural policies (Olneck, 2011). While the policies of inclusion, respect, and promoting diversity in South Korean society are easily identifiable, the questioning of exclusive racial and ethnic beliefs as to what it essentially means “to be Korean” is “out of bounds” because to question the assumption of shared bloodlines is often regarded as “political incorrectness” (Shin, 2006, p. 3). This means that multicultural policies are reinforcing the distinction between “us” and “the foreigner.” I will show that one group in particular (i.e., foreign brides in so-called “international marriages” with ethnic Korean men) has been chosen to represent multicultural Korea as a limited and explicit link between race and culture. However, I will also show that even this policy—in effect a policy of assimilation into a unique racial and ethnic exclusiveness of mainstream Korean society—is carefully orchestrated. Conse- quently, this strategy merely reinforces the exclusive racial and ethnic assump- tions that underpin multiculturalism policies. Moreover, there are subliminal messages within the myriad policies and debates on South Korean multicultur- alism that also imply that this uniqueness has to be protected from external and foreign forces, of which globalization and multiculturalism are the latest mani- festations. This leads not only to competing narratives from the state and NGOs as to what multiculturalism actually is, but also to questions as to the substantive Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South Korea 235 nature of multicultural policies. This is because assumptions of racial homoge- neity, ethnic nationalism, and cultural uniqueness are deeply embedded in much broader DNA issues of South Korean identity, economic development, and national security. I suggest that at this stage, government policy is beginning to use up all possible strategic combinations of creating and marketing a multicul- tural Korea while simultaneously protecting these exclusive racial and ethnic beliefs. This has led to concerns from a plethora of migrant groups that are not only excluded from mainstream Korean society on the basis of their race and ethnicity (even if they speak fluent Korean and have lived in South Korea for decades), but also, adding insult to injury, this exclusion is then portrayed as representing Global Korea’s “cultural diversity” in line with the norms of the international community. Watson, Iain. Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South Korea. Asian Politics & Policy 4, no. 2 (2012): 233-58.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 03:26:44 +0000
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