The Need for Multicultural Education in South Korea

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.

2018

The aim of the article is to present the results of an analysis of some educational perspectives of multicultural families in South Korea. The first part of the article focuses on a brief theoretical observation on some terms such as ‘official language’ and ‘mother tongue’ as well as the terms ‘multicultural family’, ‘multicultural student’, ‘multicultural teenager’, ‘multicultural classroom’, ‘multicultural education’, etc. The second part of the article is dedicated to elucidating the current state in Korea where the existence of multicultural students has led to the need to formulate and implement a specific educational policy treating the current multicultural diversity of the contemporary Korean society.

2021

This chapter identifies and presents a range of factors that impedes North Korean students' learning and social adaptation in the South Korean educational system. Such factors include differences in learning approaches, social experiences, behaviour, mindset, language use, among others. All of these lead to low acceptance by the host towards the immigrant both in schools and in everyday communication. Attempting to stretch beyond painting a bleak picture of cultural mismatch, this chapter argues that while it seems impossible to restructure the thinking of a society overnight, small changes can take place in the everyday classroom learning through culturally sensitive activities. Such activities need to help students demonstrate respect, build social understanding, reduce communication mismatch, break social stereotypes, avoid discrimination, develop supportive principles, tolerate differences, and nurture a healthy sense of belonging. All of these are to be considered for the practice of a more inclusive, empathetic, and culturally sensitive pedagogy, which teachers would need not only to help students learn but also to strengthen teachers' professional development.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015

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...

The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ attitudes toward multicultural education and problems caused by the application of an assimilationist paradigm in the South Korean classroom. Twenty-six South Korean middle and high school teachers were given a survey to assess multicultural attitudes and experiences. Select teachers with experiences teaching diverse learners were then given a follow-up qualitative interview to collect more information. Results of the initial survey revealed that teachers had a positive attitude towards multicultural education, but did not fully grasp its relevance. Results of the follow-up interview revealed challenges to multicultural education, such as conflict over perceived roles of teachers and students, avoidance of discussion about diversity, overprotective teachers, problems comprehending the traditional Korean school curriculum, and limited involvement of both students and parents from diverse backgrounds. These problems appear to reflect an overall failure of the South Korean education system to embrace and accommodate diversity.

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.

Melbourne Asia Review, 2024

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.

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.