South Korea as an ‘Ordinary’ Country: A Comparative Inquiry into the Prospects for ‘Permanent’ Immigration to Korea

Abstract

South Korea has often been portrayed as a special country. Certainly, its rapid rise from a poor, technologically backward economy in the 1950s to a significant, even dominant, economic player in high-tech consumer and industrial markets by the 1990s has been exceptional. There is no denying, moreover, that the country has unique historical and cultural characteristics. Nonetheless, this paper argues that, in terms of those processes related to economic, social and political transformation, South Korea is an ‘ordinary’ country. One of the most salient of these processes is associated with migration which, in almost every industrialised democracy, moves from temporary foreign-worker migration to permanent settlement. Because of South Korea's rigidly monocultural and exclusionary heritage, however, many observers have assumed that the permanent settlement of large numbers of ‘foreigners’ was out of the question. Yet, a close and comparative analysis of the economic, political and social dynamics of international migration to South Korea shows that this will not necessarily be the case. Indeed, this paper asserts that there is good reason to believe that South Korea will become a ‘country of immigration’.