Multicultural Korea Research Articles

Mothers and nation in the global era: The role of evangelical Protestant mothers in the discursive construction of multicultural Korea

Despite scholarly work examining mothers’ roles in nation-building, few studies have investigated how religion plays a role in the process. Comparing two groups of evangelical Protestant mothers, namely, transnational and domestic mothers, this study argues that religion powerfully shapes mothers’ understanding of multiculturalism but only alongside their cosmopolitan experiences. Drawing on in-depth interviews with evangelical mothers originating from Seoul, South Korea, the article examines how mothers perceive multicultural families and children, in comparison with Korean citizens, and investigates the strategies they use in making discursive boundaries to include immigrants. The findings show that transnational mothers have a more inclusive perception of multicultural families and children than domestic mothers, through their use of the interconnected languages of religion and cosmopolitanism. The article claims that an intersectional lens helps us understand mothers’ unique ways of imagining a multicultural Korea, emphasizing their complex positions in families, churches, and global communities. The study contributes to bringing a religious and cosmopolitan focus into the literature on mothers and nation, negating the monolithic media portrayal of religious women as a homogeneous group preserving a total identity in conservative views.

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

Chapter 8 – Media reporting of migrants and migration

The (Mis)Understanding of Race and Racism in Multicultural Korea

This paper examines the (mis)understanding of race and racism in contemporary South Korea where ‘multiculturalism’ has recently emerged as a discursive space within which migrant incorporation and racial/cultural diversity are discussed. What is interesting in the Korean application of multiculturalism is that the term ‘multicultural (/multiculture)’ is dominantly used as a qualifier for certain people. This article explains how this employment of multiculturalism works as a euphemism for race, predicated on the discomfort with race and reciprocated with the persistent silence of racism. To this end, this article draws on the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with various opinion makers who actively respond to the multiculturalisation of Korea. The empirical evidence reveals what Mills identifies as an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ regarding race, shared by both mainstream multicultural discourses and anti-multiculturalists. This paper argues that mainstream multicultural discourses as an incarnation of good nationalism keeps racialising migrants to effectively manage their in-/exclusion.

Citizen and Citizenship Education in Global·Multicultural Korea - Emerging Issues and Challenges

Citizen and Citizenship Education in Global·Multicultural Korea - Emerging Issues and Challenges

Debating Multicultural Korea: Media Discourse on Migrants and Minorities in South Korea

Since the early 1990s, South Korea has experienced growing, public debate about migrants, minorities, and related government policies. Much of this ‘multicultural’ discourse occurs in the internet-based, cyber-media, which offer space for various producers, including mainstream media professionals, netizens, and resident foreigners. A prevailing discourse of victimhood is associated with small, ideologically homogeneous groups of media producers (mainstream media and nativist websites); in contrast, mixed and nuanced discourses are more common in large and heterogeneous, online communities, where users interact with a variety of viewpoints. Moreover, actors who are framed in non-negative terms — as neither xenophobes nor corrupt elites — serve as more effective brokers and bridges across various media. Most foreign-origin netizens are passive consumers of media discourse; but a few, active foreigners communicate effectively with both mainstream media and netizens and help to diversify the prevailing discourse. We find supportive evidence from a content analysis of 15 websites, supplemented with informant interviews and observations.

Debating Multicultural Korea: Media Discourse on Migrants and Minorities in South Korea

Since the early 1990s, South Korea has experienced growing public debate about migrants, minorities and related government policies. Much of this ‘multicultural’ discourse occurs in the internet-based cyber-media, which offer space for various producers, including mainstream media professionals, netizens and resident foreigners. A prevailing discourse of victimhood is associated with small, ideologically homogeneous groups of media producers (mainstream media and nativist websites); in contrast, mixed and nuanced discourses are more common in large and heterogeneous online communities, where users interact with a variety of viewpoints. Moreover, actors who are framed in non-negative terms—as neither xenophobes nor corrupt elites—serve as more effective brokers and bridges across various media. Most foreign-origin netizens are passive consumers of media discourse; but a few, active foreigners communicate effectively with both mainstream media and netizens and help to diversify the prevailing discourse. We find supportive evidence from a content analysis of 15 websites, supplemented with informant interviews and observations.

Art and Identity in Multi-cultural Korea

Art and Identity in Multi-cultural Korea

All for One or One for All: An Analysis of the Concepts of Patriotism and Others in Multicultural Korea Through Elementary Moral Education Textbooks

Korea faces a unique and complicated situation in becoming multicultural. Modern Korean education has changed several times in response to the contextual shifts which have occurred in the country’s demographic composition. Given the complex social circumstances which exist in Korean society, this paper explores how the social ideologies of patriotism and multiculturalism are presented in Korean elementary moral education textbooks which are currently used. In order to do so, we particularly examine which groups are considered as “others” in Korean multicultural society. With this approach, we aim to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how moral education textbooks reflect current conditions present in Korea.

Rearticulating Black Mixed-Race in the Era of Globalization

Since the mid-2000s, the term multiculturalism has entered the Korean lexicon as migration has become more and more prevalent due to globalization. The cornerstone of this multicultural explosion was a 2006 visit by American football star Hines Ward, born to an African-American father and a Korean mother. As a black mixed-race sports celebrity, he suddenly became an emblematic media figure in the Korean televisual landscape, signifying a broader racial reconfiguration in Korean society. This media event – what I shall call ‘the Hines Ward moment’ – created and opened the discursive space for racial politics and multicultural issues in Korean society. Hence, this article aims to look at what this discursive explosion of multiculturalism and mixed-race means in the context of globalization. Reading the Hines Ward moment as a symbolic media text, the paper examines how the media discourse on Hines Ward articulates the issues of national identity and racial politics in contemporary Korean society. For analysis, newspaper articles, television programmes and television commercials that deal with the Hines Ward case are examined. By analyzing the modes of articulation of the Hines Ward moment, this study deconstructs the image of a ‘global, multicultural Korea’ shaped by the Korean media and examines the struggle for Koreanness in the televisual area of contemporary Korean media.

The Politics of Culture in Multicultural Korea

The South Korean government has demonstrated a strong commitment towards the social integration of international brides and the children of mixed ethnic heritage by establishing 100 ‘multicultural family support centres’ throughout the country. Given its record of opposing the long-term settlement of foreigners in Korea, this recent government announcement signals a very significant change in its policies concerning international migrants. Consequently, the proliferation of migrant support programmes bearing the title ‘multiculturalism’ unwittingly suggests that Korean society is receptive toward the internationalisation of families. In this article I show that the establishment of these support centres represents a governmental response to the accumulated societal pressure from below that sought to improve the precarious social conditions of international migrants and to embrace multiculturalism as an inevitable, but positive, social force. Despite their impressive scope and resource allocation, the contents and approaches of the newly emerging multicultural programmes reproduce, rather than minimise, the cultural hierarchy between Koreans and non-Koreans. I utilise the concepts of ‘cultural paternalism’ and ‘cultural fetishism’ in order to capture the manner in which the dominant members of Korean society define the terms of and approaches to dealing with cultural diversity, reduce the complex issues of social equality to cultural differences, and treat culture as a fetish by uniformly emphasising the expressive dimensions of culture.

Constitution and Citizenship in a Multicultural Korea: Limitations of a Republican Approach

Constitution and Citizenship in a Multicultural Korea: Limitations of a Republican Approach

Multicultural Korea: Celebration or Challenge of Multiethnic Shift in Contemporary Korea?

Multicultural Korea: Celebration or Challenge of Multiethnic Shift in Contemporary Korea?