Local Exposure Effect of the 2018 South Korea Refugee Crisis

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How do local natives react to a sudden influx of asylum seekers? Scholarship has consistently found that respondents exposed to a refugee crisis tend to exhibit an increase in anti-immigrant attitudes. However, because most such studies have been conducted in a Western setting, we have surprisingly little understanding of how natives would react in a different political setting, especially in an East Asian context. I use difference-in-differences analysis to examine how local natives reacted after the 2018 Jeju refugee crisis. Two independent studies show little evidence of increased hostility. Local residents who were equally or more anti-immigrant (on multiple dimensions) before exposure became less anti-immigrant after exposure than mainland residents. This finding contrasts with previous studies but also provides grounds for understanding the conditions under which an influx of asylum seekers can induce relatively positive reactions among local natives.