Educational perspectives on multiculturalism in Korea

The Immigration & Education Nexus, 2012

The Immigration and Education Nexus: A Focus on the Context and Consequences of Schooling , 2012

Rapid economic advancements and urbanization since the 1980s has transformed South Korea into a country with high growth rates of immigration from the influx of migrant workers and foreign brides. However, because of South Korea’s long past as a homogenous society, there are few programs to assist in the integration of recent immigrants, and this has major implications for the education and schooling of multicultural children. While some systematic attempts have been made to better integrate multicultural families, these attempts only aim to better assimilate multicultural families to Korean culture. What is lacking is a broader curriculum that aims to teach all Koreans to better understand and appreciate cultural differences. This paper examines current schooling practices in South Korea and the barriers that minority children currently face.

Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 28(1): 43-60, 2013

The ideology of one nation, one race, and one language has been constructed and reinforced in the Korean mind over the course of its history. However, a recently growing number of migrants in South Korea have challenged this ideology, and the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) announced the Educational Support Plan for Children from Multicultural Backgrounds (ESP) in 2006 to address the needs of multicultural children in schools. Under this initiative, the national curriculum was revised to raise the understanding of diverse cultures among all students, and textbooks were developed under direction from MEHRD. Taking a critical perspective toward language policy, the current study aims to offer a historical account of the emergence of monolingual ideology in South Korea and then to analyze how this ideology has shaped recent multicultural education policies.

2016

Despite the South Korean government’s recent policy interventions to accommodate the emerging social and classroom reality that has increasingly become multicultural, few guidelines have been provided for multicultural education practice at the local and municipal levels in South Korea (Henceforth, Korea). In particular, investigations focusing on newcomer adolescents’ linguistic and cultural identities are scarce. In this light, this doctoral inquiry investigates how multicultural students, their languages and cultures are reflected in Korean society and schools and especially, how newcomer adolescents’ linguistic and cultural identities are negotiated in terms of their own success in Korea. 8 multicultural education policies and 27 news media publications as well as the narratives of 7 students and 6 educators from two high schools are analyzed through Fairclough’s (1992, 2003) critical discourse analysis. Based on the analysis, the discourses of diversity embedded in the nation-s...

Melbourne Asia Review, 2024

This study aims to investigate the politics of inclusion and exclusion embedded in South Korea's multicultural education documents. The study examines eight multicultural education policy documents published annually from 2006 to 2013; it focuses on what strategies the government chooses to acculturate multicultural families and students. As a methodology for analyzing text, this study applies critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is capable of highlighting the (un)avoidable result of the process of abjection between Korea's majority and the minority-a bifurcation depicted in Korean society and evidenced in governmental policy documents. Thus, this paper explores how multicultural education policy documents articulate the politics of inclusion/exclusion. An integration strategy is indeed signaled in the basic idea of multicultural education. Throughout the governmental policy documents, however, practical plans and programs are deeply engaged with the assimilation and/or the segregation strategy. Based on an apparent conflict between generalities and particulars, this study proposes a hopeful vision for a South Korean multicultural education policy.

International Journal of East Asian Studies, 2014

For centuries, Korea has viewed itself as an ethnically homogenous society but now globalization has pushed South Korea to be increasingly multicultural in composition. The issue of how to integrate migrants into society so as to achieve a healthy balance between diversity and national unity has become problematic. Korean Society as a whole has responded well to this new multicultural reality. Policymakers have taken actions, albeit slowly, to accommodate the needs of migrant workers and marriage migrants. However, the existence of many different interpretations of norm. However these policies are inconsistent and discriminatory, making it inappropriate for the foundation of coexistence among peoples of different cultural background. Thus, the article argues for more universal and inclusive policies of social integration that can be applied to all members of Korean society.

This essay examines how the projects seeking to promote damunhwa, literally translated as multi-culture, in South Korea inadvertently reinforce cultural stereotypes and reproduce cultural hierarchies. Unlike many studies that focus on discrimination against racial or ethnic minority populations, this paper argues that the seemingly benevolent acts of the majority towards ethnic minority populations in Korea produce unintended consequences. Based on descriptive content analysis of Internet news stories, this paper demonstrates the manner in which the dominant Korean society develops an oppositional binary between citizen and foreigner. Building on Edward Said’s work, this paper introduces the concept of internal Orientalism that highlights the teleology of cultural distinction by rendering minority populations with weak subjectivity and stigmatizing them as vulnerable populations through a multitude of policies and programmes designed to help them. Doing so ironically and simultaneously constructs opportunities for the Korean society to create a benevolent society, thereby crystallizing an interdependent binary between the dominant and minority populations.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015