Abstract
Abstract 2018 was a politically tempestuous time for South Korea as a little over 500, mostly male, Yemeni asylum-seekers landed on Korea’s Jeju Island. Their unexpected arrival caught Korean society, already in the midst of its own #MeToo wave off guard, resulting in a wave of pro- and anti-refugee demonstrations across the country. Fueled by real and fake news about refugee illegal activities in Europe, anti-refugee backlash in Korea took an Islamophobic and feminist tone. Based on digital ethnography, this article presents observations from online voices – refugees, feminists, and media actors – expressed through Naver News and Naver Cafes to assess the ways in which Korea’s refugee crisis was represented in local and global anti-refugee and Islamophobic narratives, aimed in particular at Muslim men. This research highlights the impact of European narratives on Korean society and raises questions over how Korean society can create a wider, inclusive digital democracy.
Highlights
This article offers critical reflections on the intersections between Islamo phobia, anti-refugee sentiments, and feminist solidarities in contemporary South Korean society within the context of widespread anti-refugee and #MeToo demonstrations held in the summer of 2018
What are the connections between the anti-refugee and women’s movement in Korean society? Second, what is the relationship between Korea and Europe in the context of refugee representation online? Third, what does Korea’s response to the refugee crisis tell us about current race-gender dynamics in Korean society?
To address these research questions, this article examines digital voices: refugee, radical feminist, media, and right-wing discourse expressed in Naver News and Naver Cafés to assess the ways in which Korea’s refugee crisis was represented in local and global anti-refugee and Islamophobic narratives, those directed at Muslim men
Summary
This article offers critical reflections on the intersections between Islamo phobia, anti-refugee sentiments, and feminist solidarities in contemporary South Korean society within the context of widespread anti-refugee and #MeToo demonstrations held in the summer of 2018. This article demonstrates that individuals in one specific Naver Café engaged with transnationally sourced fake and biased news, mostly from European sources, highlighting the impact of neo-colonial narratives on the ways in which 500 Yemeni male Muslim refugee arrivals were received, framed, and eventually produced through Islamophobic discourses aimed at curtailing their human rights, based in part on alarmist concerns about the safety of Korean women. Korea’s rejection of refugees is rooted at least in part in existing anti-multicultural discourse mostly found in online forums, including membership-based cafés, highlighting the unexpected solidarity that emerged among these groups as something that needs to be explored in analyzing the anti-refugee movement in Korea (Jun 2019, 2020) This collective opposition to Yemeni refugees was heavily based on ill-informed assumptions about Muslims and Islam, fake and biased news, especially from Europe, and outright Islamophobic sentiments circulated and discussed online. This reaction indicates the profound impact of news, whether genuine or fake, that is spread, unquestioned, and permitted to shape negative perceptions that feed into global discourses filled with Islamophobia and anti-refugee sentiments, online
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