AsiaTEFL: "Unity Within Diversity, Diversity Within Unity"

Routledge eBooks, 2022

Road to multiculturalism in South Korea (front matter only), 2021

This book aims to capture the complicated development of Korea from monoethnic to multicultural society, challenging the narrative of “ethnonational continuity” in Korea, through a discursive institutional approach. At a time when immigration is changing the face of South Korea and an increasingly diverse society becomes empirical fact, this doesn’t necessarily mean that multiculturalism has been embraced as a normative, policy-based response to that fact. The approach here diverges from existing academic analyses, which tend to conclude that core institutions defining Korea’s immigration and nationality regimes—and which, crucially, also reflect a basic and hitherto unyielding commitment to racial and ethnic homogeneity—will remain largely unaffected by increasing diversity. Here, this title underscores the critical importance of “discursive agency” as a necessary corrective to still dominant power and interestbased arguments. In addition, “discursive agents” are found to play a central role in communicating, promoting, and helping to instill the ideas that create a basis for change on the road to remaking Korean society. The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, immigration and migration studies, race and ethnic studies, as well as comparative politics broadly.

Unity and national integration has been the main agenda of the Malaysian government, especially the country's leaders up till the present time. Various slogans, mottos and programs have been organized for the purpose of fostering unity and relationship among races by means of various policies that have been planned. It is indeed appropriate that Malaysian citizens play an active, positive role as agents in reducing conflict among races on one hand and increasing unity among them on the other. Malaysia has been very fortunate as it possesses a wealth of diverse cultures, religions and languages. The idea of 1Malaysia put forward by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak gives importance to the slogan " People First, Perfomance Now ". Do Malaysian youth understand this message of the Prime Minister? What are the roles and the challenges that need to be given attention by the youth groups in their efforts to realize this noble aspiration? Hence, this article will...

The story of Malaysia's struggle to maintain peaceful co-existence in the midst of challenging contradictions it has to lived with

Society for the Anthropology of North America Home/Field, 2021

How are transgressive multiracial coalitions built and sustained? What are the a ective and epistemological limits of individually-oriented "how-to" antiracism work? With an ethnographic focus on Black-Asian solidarity work, what impasses in collective identity emerge to beg the question, what is Asian America? Home/Field brought Jong Bum Kwon and Elizabeth Hanna Rubio into conversation to discuss these and more themes, based on Rubio's recent publication in Journal for the Anthropology of North America.

/Angles Cultural diversity as a battleground. As Anderson reminds us (1991), nation is "the imagined community", and this "imagination" has to be enabled, taught, promoted, supported or, if all else fails, forced. However, many groups and individuals for numerous reasons (want to) stay out of this exercise of unity. For one reason or another, claims for diversity have intensified after the Second World War, when rethinking the homogeneous national state has become a common place throughout the world (Helly, 2002; Paquet, 2008; Meer, 2012). Among the new approaches to the management of cultural diversity, multiculturalism became a widely popular solution early on (Modood, 1997; Kymlicka, 2007). As any other solution, it had to be pushed forward. "The concrete benefits of multicultural citizenship include higher levels of naturalization, greater incorporation into the political system, and less violent debates about the accommodation of diversity" (Bloemrad, 2007, p. 170-171). As we see, applying certain policy solution comes with a whole package of promises. After the 'fall of multiculturalism', intercultural dialogue became the new policy mantra, and just like before, it has been attributed almost magical powers. It is said that it "can produce social cohesion, economic boost and fulfilment of human rights as well as conflicts, segregation and wars" (

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2007

The Historical Background The stage: Korea. The times: early nineteenth century. Main characters: the uncle Chǒng yag-yong, one of the greatest Korean Confucian scholars known by his pen name as Tasan, and the nephew Chǒng Ha-sang, one of the best loved Korean Christian saints known by his baptized name as Paul. The real-life drama starts with how Tasan, in exile from a top official position because of his fascination with new Western learning, and particularly with Catholicism, was shocked or "awestruck" by the Buddhist funeral ceremonies of his soulmate, an unconventional Buddhist who was attracted to Confucian teachings. In the end, Tasan returned to his home village and died peacefully, while Ha-sang gracefully endured torture and beheading for his faith. These stories are not unique as during this time, many noblemen and women became martyrs as a consequence of religious intolerance and ruthless political persecution. Such cross-cultural encounters are neither merely local nor only of historical interest, but are universal stories that remain relevant to the present day. This is very clearly portrayed in the historical novel Encounter by the eminent contemporary Korean writer Hahn Moo-Sook [1]. Based on real historical figures and events, and following the traditional mode of one-man Korean opera (p'ansori) and its developed form (ch'anggǔk), Hahn reveals what multicultural meeting, particularly the meeting of the Eastern and the Western cultures as incarnated in Confucianism and Catholicism, has brought to Koreans-to men and women, to adults and children, to the ruling and the ruled, to the intelligentsia and the peasantry. More vividly than any scholarly work could do, Hahn's novel brings to life how the grand human drama of the meeting of the East and the West was experienced in early nineteenthcentury Korea. In doing so, she vividly portrays the complexities of cross cultural meeting-its benefits and costs, joys and pains, fusion and clash, embracing and resisting, acting and reacting, enrichment and struggle. Most importantly, this portrayal of life in early nineteenth-century Korea reminds us that Asia, contrary to popular belief, is, and has been, as with most other parts of the world, multicultural for a long, long time. And while much has been written about the potential for globalisation to lead to a clash between Western values and the more traditional cultures of the East, the reality is that some form of cultural mix and clash has been an essential feature of life in Asia for many centuries. Buddhism and Confucianism offer two salient examples of this deep-rooted and pervasive multicultural reality. The trans-regional spread of these two