Foreigners or multicultural citizens? Press media's construction of immigrants in South Korea

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which new immigrants to South Korea are portrayed and constructed in press media. The influx of labour and marriage migrants from Southeast Asia and China to South Korea since the early 1990s has been significant enough to cause national concerns about diversity and the country's future as a multiethnic society. Mainstream newspapers in South Korea have been a major shaper of the public opinion of diverse groups of immigrants whose presence is becoming increasingly visible in this country with a strong self-image as a mono-ethnic nation. The ways in which these new immigrants, typically lower class, are constructed in public discourses expose the nexus of citizenship, class and ethnicity. Using articles from two major South Korean newspapers between 1990 and 2008 as data, the analysis highlights the economic and historical contexts in which public discourses on new immigrants have been formed and transformed.