Multicultural Korea?
Though many older Koreans may not welcome it, South Korea is opening up as a society as its economy becomes more advanced and internationalized. Increased immigration is resulting in greater ethnic diversity. The foreign population rose from around 200,000 in 2001 to 1.4 million by 2011. Half of these are Chinese, but the number of countries that have provided thirty or more immigrants to Korea is almost in the triple figures. Many foreigners have married locals, and more than 10 percent of Korean weddings now involve a foreign partner. The change has come very quickly: in the year 2000, the international marriage rate was just 3.5 percent, and in the 1980s it was so low as to have looked like a statistical anomaly. The children of these mixed couples are starting to blur the once obvious lines between Korean and non-Korean.
Statistics suggest that the younger generation is beginning to embrace a new era of openness in attitudes to foreigners. This change mirrors the increasing willingness of Koreans overall to accept alien cultures in cuisine, art, imported products, and so on. After years of defining nationality by race, Korean society shows signs of allowing foreigners to put one foot in the “us” (woori) camp rather than excluding them as a pure “them” (nam). For non-Koreans, it is becoming possible to develop deep social networks in Korea rather than remain excluded, as was the case before. This is fortunate, because the presence of foreigners provides an obvious and practical solution to a serious social problem: the nation’s drastically low birth rate.
Drops of Ink in the Han River
During a 2006 meeting between North and South Korean delegates, the former brought up the issue of South Korea’s so-called race mixing. When a Southern representative (falsely) stated that the amount of mixing amounted to no more than a “drop of ink in the Han River,” the reply from the North was blunt: “Not even one drop of ink must be allowed to fall in the Han River.”
Of course, North Korea is not your average communist state. Perhaps the true inheritor of the mantle of the Hermit Kingdom, it promotes a strong brand of race-based nationalism that somewhat resembles fascism. Regardless, the Northern delegation was laboring under a delusion. Throughout the history of Korea, intermarriage and a mixing of genes has taken place with Chinese, Mongols, and many other peoples from across the region. There is even a Korean clan, the Deoksu Jang (a family with the surname Jang originating from a place named Deoksu), that was founded by an ethnic Uighur from Central Asia during the reign of King Chungnyeol (r. 1274–1298). The founder’s original name was Samga, and he came to Korea in the retinue of a Mongol princess, who was sent to marry none other than Chungnyeol himself. Particularly in Koryo dynasty Korea, these were not isolated cases.
Pure blood is a fiction, but as we have seen, in Korea as in many other places, it has proved a very useful one. Koreans locked in the struggle to overcome Japanese colonialism embraced the concept of national unity based on shared blood. Following the devastation of the Korean War, the unifying ideology of ethnic nationalism was employed in the service of nation building, to great effect.
One consequence of this ideology was prejudice toward anyone who chose to look beyond the “pure blood” in-group of the Korean minjok (race) and marry a foreigner. Especially women who went for American soldiers were singled out for hatred and subjected to harassment and epithets such as “yanggongju” (“Yankee princess”), a term far more derogatory than its translation sounds. Families forbade their daughters from marrying non-Koreans and in some cases disowned those defiant enough to go ahead with it. Children produced by such marriages were ostracized. Both a woman who married a foreigner and her child were essentially no longer part of the national in-group.
In the 1980s, international marriage was so uncommon that the Unification Church, known to most people as the “Moonie” cult, could show up in statistics as one of the main reasons for it. Founder Moon Sun-myung comes from Korea, and since he offers followers matchmaking in the form of instant marriage between strangers, a number of foreigners, particularly Japanese women, came here for that purpose. Reverend Moon believes he has the God-given ability to select a person’s perfect partner, and his followers trust in him to do that. Through him, thousands of international marriages have taken place; many such couples participated in mass blessing ceremonies, which sometimes are so large that they are held in stadiums. Among the general population, however, the idea of marrying a non-Korean remained anathema. Even by 1990, only 1.2 percent of marriages in Korea had one foreign partner.
In the past two decades, business ties, overseas study, travel, and generally increased contact with the outside world has led South Koreans to change their attitude towards people from other countries and become more open, as a result. It is not unusual now for Koreans to have foreign friends or go on solo backpacking trips to foreign countries, staying in hostels and mixing with an international crowd. This has been accompanied by the increased acceptance of international marriage. Mixed-race children, once treated as pariahs, are now admired for their looks, and are in great demand as models in advertisements. The process is happening so quickly that foreigners who have lived here for four or five years remark on how perceptible the change has been in so short a time. There were 2.5 times more international marriages in 2008 than in 2002, according to Statistics Korea.
The Rural Revolution
South Korea’s increasing globalism (openness to trade, travel, foreign culture, and so on) is only the second-greatest driving force towards Korean-foreigner marriage, though. Perhaps surprisingly, the real beating heart of multicultural Korea is to be found in the countryside, and it is not born of cosmopolitanism but rather the desperation of rural men for wives. The simple fact that most Korean women do not want to marry poor farmers is resulting in a huge influx of Vietnamese, rural Chinese, and Filipina women whose families can only dream of the kind of wealth even the poorest Korean men possess. It is very much like the “mail-order bride” phenomenon found in the West, but on a grand scale: in 2009, 43.5 percent of male farmers marrying in South Jeolla Province tied the knot with foreigners, the vast majority from one of the three aforementioned countries.
As a consequence, marriage brokerage has become a serious business. In rural areas, advertisements for agencies that will introduce Vietnamese wives, for example, are commonplace. Back in their own countries, these women are sold an image of Korea, and Seoul in particular, as a glamorous place. Korean TV shows and films that are popular throughout the region back this up. Financial expediency also means that many parents are eager for their daughters take the plunge.
Naturally, things do not always work out. A lonely farmer in his forties is not the same as a heart-throb TV actor, and South Jeolla, though beautiful, is not downtown Seoul. Reportedly, 53 percent of such couples live in poverty, by its South Korean definition. Tales of domestic violence, homesickness, the inability to communicate, and runaway brides are legion—so much so that one can sometimes see advertisements for wives who “don’t run away.”
However, according to research cited in an article by veteran Korea-watcher Andrei Lankov in 2009, the majority do not regret their decision to marry in Korea. Plainly, poverty in South Korea is very different to poverty in Thailand or Cambodia. 57 percent of the women are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their new lives. The cynical will observe that this figure is probably not much worse than the general satisfaction rates among married people the world over. Furthermore, the government is actively engaged in programs to smooth the integration process, providing language classes and promoting publicity campaigns encouraging people to embrace multiculturalism.
Seoul Metro stations are full of advertisements showing happy multicultural families, and in particular, dutiful Southeast Asian wives who seemingly enjoy cooking Korean food and studying the Korean language for the benefit of their grateful husbands. The aim of these poster campaigns is to increase social acceptance of such women, by portraying them as warm, somewhat subservient (and thus non-threatening), and as near Korean as possible. In the long run, this will probably have to change: though the government’s intentions are noble, they are portraying an outdated image of women, and only promote the idea of immigrants adapting to Korean culture, rather than of Korean society also learning something from them.
It Depends on What Kind of Immigrant You Are
According to Professor Chang Ha-joon, a more ethnically diverse Korea “is going to happen, like it or not.” But do people like it? A Ministry of Veterans’ Affairs survey on young people in South Korea, China, Japan, and the United States found that South Korean youths were in fact the most likely of the four to say that they welcomed immigration and multiculturalism in their country, despite the holdover effects of pure-blood theory. Broadly speaking, this acceptance is generational. As may be expected, the young are much more welcoming of change than the old. The implication, naturally, is that as the years go by, the acceptance of international marriage will continue to grow.
At the same time, attitudes often depend on the origin of the immigrant in question. In 2009, Professor Bang Hee-jung of Ehwa Women’s University surveyed 121 Korean students and found that they tended to show positive bias towards white people, slightly negative bias towards black people, and more strongly negative bias towards Southeast Asians. Furthermore, in 2006, Amnesty International reported that Southeast Asians faced a much greater likelihood than other foreigners of being randomly stopped by police and searched than Koreans or other foreigners, such as Westerners.
The reason for strong prejudice against Southeast Asians is arguably economic rather than specifically racial. Westerners in Korea come from wealthy countries and work in fields like teaching or business, or for the U.S. military. Because of the poor financial circumstances of their own countries, Southeast Asians tend to come to Korea to work in low-wage, relatively unskilled jobs, regardless of their level of education or ability. Unfortunately, South Koreans thus tend to look down upon them. There have been many cases of abuse of Southeast Asian laborers by factory bosses, such as beatings and the withholding of salaries. Bonojit Hussein, an Indian academic who won a landmark case against a Korean man who racially abused him and a Korean female companion while they were traveling on a bus, was quoted in the Korea Herald newspaper as saying, “I interacted with many migrant factory workers and after my incident they said: ‘This is nothing. The media are taking it up because you are a research professor. We face much more serious situations.’”
It is unfortunate that while South Koreans are opening up very quickly to people from abroad, the pace of change is much slower for those from places like Indonesia or the Philippines. Since discrimination against people from these countries is mainly a product of wealth disparity, it will probably remain in spite of the decline of pure-blood nationalism.
Inevitable and Necessary
In desiring an open, outward-facing economy, South Korea has already made an implicit choice in favor of multiculturalism. When countries develop advanced economies and feel confident in throwing open their doors to investment and trade, people will follow. They will come in the form of factory workers from poorer countries, students seeking to learn the language, wealthy foreigners seeking to invest, and others such as journalists, who go to satisfy the curiosity that settles on increasingly important countries like South Korea.
South Korea needs these new people, and it needs them to stay—assuming economic growth is desired. According to Professor Chang, “We need more foreigners to build a new nation.” The reason is demographic: South Korea’s boom generation of the late 1950s and 1960s is of course aging, while today’s Korean women have on average just 1.2 babies each over the course of their lives. The consequence of these two trends is that South Korea is now the most rapidly aging country in the world. By 2026, it will be a “super-aged society,” according to the UN, with 23 percent of its population above the age of sixty-five. The imbalance of relatively few workers paying the taxes that provide the pensions for a large population of elderly people will act as a drag on economic growth: according to the Korea Development Institute, South Korea’s potential maximum annual GDP growth will reach just 1.7 percent by 2030, due mainly to what may be termed “Grey Korea.”
There are several possible countermeasures to this problem, and, given its severity, all should be employed. They include raising the retirement age, using incentives such as a better childcare provision to encourage couples to have more children, and bringing more women into the workforce. The quickest way to counter the problem, however, would be to bring in more foreigners of working age. Immigrants will expand the workforce and, through their taxes, pay for the increasing numbers of elderly people, while having children of their own who will eventually support their parents’ generation in retirement. Entrepreneurs who can create jobs should be especially welcomed. While members of the older generation may naturally wish to preserve Korea’s traditional culture and so-called “pure blood,” in opposing a policy of foreign integration they hurt their own pension pot, risking a situation like that faced by Japan—a super-aged society that lacks a sufficient number of younger adult workers yet persists in its hostility toward the idea of granting permanent residency to foreign workers.
Increased internationalization will provide other benefits. One problem for South Korea is a lack of recognition that borders on bad PR. A BBC survey of people from twenty-five different countries in 2011 found that only 36 percent had a positive view of South Korea, while 32 percent had a negative one. A further 32 percent had no opinion at all. Surprisingly, this is actually an improvement on previous scores. The only countries ranking below South Korea in this poll in terms of approval were controversial ones: Russia, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and Iran. South Korea is clearly not in the same league as any of those countries in terms of either real or perceived nefariousness. The only reason for its lack of popularity (other than a misunderstanding about its trouble with the North) is that people know nothing about it. The more people who have a Korean in-law, or indeed a Korean friend or business partner, the sooner the PR problem will disappear. And the more foreigners learn about South Korea and find things to approve of, the better it is for the nation’s security. The potential value of Korea’s soft power, like the value of its globalized business interests, is not to be underestimated.
Maturity
The trend towards internationalization within Korean society is a sign of South Korea’s growing maturity as a nation. We can also see this maturity in the way that South Korea relates to other states—it has recently emerged as an aid-giving nation, a mere few decades after being an impoverished aid recipient itself. The amount donated is small in absolute terms, but it is projected to triple by 2015. This signals an acceptance by Koreans that their country is no longer a poor victim but a member of the wealthy elite and a responsible nation with an important place in the world. The sending of delegations to countries like Vietnam to advise on economic development demonstrates South Korea’s increased desire to show leadership and share what the country learned from its GDP miracle; this will also no doubt be positive for diplomacy. Furthermore, the generous charitable response from South Koreans in the wake of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 was especially impressive, given the historic enmity towards Japan.
South Korea is growing up. And the fact that the number of foreigners married to Koreans rose by 85 percent between 2005 and 2010 does not signal a polluting of some metaphoric Han River—rather it is a sign of openness and maturity.