Introduction :
What the multi-cultural families face in the Korean society
1. Group Members
Dongwon Yi (21, Dentistry)
Jaewan Oh (20, Materials science and engineering)
Shinhyo Bang (20, Nuclear engineering)
Our group consists of 3 people who studies at the Seoul National University. The names are Dongwon Yi, Jaewan Oh, Shinhyo Bang. We are taking an Advance English class that discusses about the cultures and societies in the other world. And through that class, we had an opportunity to learn about subcultures that exist here in Korea. What we were interested was about foreigners who are included as a member in a Korean family. So for this spring semester we are going to search for things that are related to the stereotypes which multi-cultural families face and experience. Through the ethnography we will feel the danger of the single story about things around us which we have learned at the previous classes.
2. Topic : Multi-cultural families who live in Korea
As our society, Korea, is growing rapidly we are spreading our influences abroad to other countries. Even when we see in our University, we could meet a foreigner every steps we go. That means we are globalized and many foreigners are interested in our country and want to blend in. To be specific, we are interested in those who has participated to be one of the member in the Korean family. However they are not treated as a normal person but as a special and different person. Therefore when they go out to the society, they experience different treatment from people and more terribly face discrimination. So our project is to know what bad and also good things they face from their lives and examine why they face it, how serious our society has the thought about different races and how we could solve it.
3. Stereotypes & Prejudices
To begin, we started by sharing out thoughts about stereotypes and prejudices of multi-cultural families. Here are the examples.
- The nationality is normally Southeast Asia
- Domestic violences happen frequently for example foreign wives beaten up by Korean husbands
- Half blood children experience discrimination at school.
- Foreign workers experience discrimination at work.
- Foreigners get married for money, not love.
- They are the major social evils for example tax thieves, crimes, illegal immigration.
- The foreigners are really poor
- It effects the employment rate in Korea
- They don't speak Korean fluently
- They experience over than two cultures and languages
- The appearance will not be as same as a normal Korean person
- Normally they experience a hard time in the childhood
4. Interview Plan
We searched for groups or institutes that are related to multi-cultural families and the first choice was 'Kosian's house'. It was a place that does a sorts of events for the families and make them feel comfortable in Korea. And we called and send a mail for our request. However we searched for more resources and found 다누리 which is an institute that consult about the problems the multi-cultural families face. We are trying to contact them and ask the specific things about the life to be an multi-cultural family. When the interviews are not successful, we have a few suggestions and we will be prepared.
This is a video clip of Al Jazeera about the situation of multiculturalism in South Korea. It is mostly about how Koreans are adapting to the phenomenon. There are protests claiming that multiculturalism should be banned, and also there are some interviews and other video clips about multicultural people’s life in Korea, like Jasmine Lee.
B. http://thediplomat.com/2013/08/koreas-multicultural-growing-pains/
In this article, there are some statistics and cases that show multicultural families’ troubles. “Korean people usually have negative attitudes toward people with a multicultural background.”(Kim) Interviews with the actual immigrants and multicultural families show the difficulties that they are facing.
If article B showed multicultural families’ stances, this article shows how Koreans think about them. The point is that according to the experts, Koreans are “not ready” for the multiculturalism. Koreans tend to have positive attitudes toward European and American immigrants, but not toward those who are from Asia or Africa. The writer emphasizes this with supporting statistics.
D. Multicultural families are facing unfortunate lives, Korea Herald.
35% of migrant wives tend to RETURN home. The reason for their moving back
was primarily the nostalgia, followed by their intention to educate children outside
Korea. This is interesting because we think that Korea gas better education
environment than any other countries. 67% of foreign wives are sending money to
their own country. This could be viewed as a loss of domestic capital. Marriage
without love; but it's financial purpose.
35% of migrant wives tend to RETURN home. The reason for their moving back
was primarily the nostalgia, followed by their intention to educate children outside
Korea. This is interesting because we think that Korea gas better education
environment than any other countries. 67% of foreign wives are sending money to
their own country. This could be viewed as a loss of domestic capital. Marriage
without love; but it's financial purpose.
In this blog, these three interviewees said they had some very difficult things living in Korea. First, they get much trouble in communicating with Koreans. Second, they live in poverty and want their financial assistance to improve. Third, they think that too many people think of the immigrants from Asia as potential criminals. Finally, they want Koreans to marry foreigners to be honest as possible. When I see these problems, first of all, I think to be honest is the first important thing that Korean men to marry Asians have to change. Most female immigrants for marriage with Koreans choose their marriage for money not love. And they are generally deceived from their own partners as ages, wealth and their life situations. Usually the female immigrants are to be low in their society. So, when they marry each other, there is high probability to make many social problems and to be divorced easily. I think if male Koreans who want to marry Asians are to become more sincere and honest, their marriage is to become a good life.
답글삭제Just like you mentioned in the Stereotypes section, we tend to think of southeast Asian women married to Korean men. I am very curious to see if you had a chance to interview any other cases. Also, I think that the issues or hardships that people face will be different based on what culture the foreigner is from, so I am interested to see if those kind of differences showed in the interview.
답글삭제I recognize that many southeast Asians come to Korea to marry for money, or for a better life, and I do agree with the video clip that we cannot blame them. However, I feel sorry for them and just like Yongchan said in the comment above, I wish Korean men and his family would be more considerate before deciding to have a southeast Asian wife.
Sorry.... Sohyun, NOT Yongchan. I don't know what got into me..... And I also don't understand why blogger won't let me fix my comment =(
삭제I think that the problems occur in multicultural families are more encouraged by abnormal international marriages. Some brokers encourage south-east women to come to Korea saying that they can live luxury life in Korea. These women come to Korea just for money, not knowing about her future husband and this can cause discord in family. Some of them even plan to come back to her country after getting benefits from their husbands and they have boyfriend in their hometown.So I think that we should be alert this type of marriage.
답글삭제What could we do about our prevailing stereotypes that other cultural people are different from us, and by thinking that way generating problems. I think educating our people, that is Korean people is very important. There would be many ways that inspire them to know that they are not just different, by showing some kinds of video, or by making them experience a simulating situation that can make them know they should not treat foreigners that way! I can't remember exactly, but I think that many documentaries and something like that was very impressive, and changed my mind about dealing with foreigners! It would be adapted to other people:)
답글삭제I have had stereotypes about multicultural families. These are mainly negative things. I think I got these stereotypes from my surrounding environment like media or people talking. I didn't have much thought about American or European looking people but had very uncomfortable feeling about foreign Asian people. I regret this and hope to learn more about their multiple stories. Your plan and selected articles are great. I felt deeply that living as different Korean in Korean society is very harsh.I'm familiar with South-East brides coming to Korea but I couldn't sympathize with them because I thought they are different from me. However, they are also Korean and we need to help them adopting to Korean culture. I always have thought I relatively had more knowledge than other subjects like Muslims but I should admit my knowledge is distorted and needs to be corrected more fairly.
답글삭제After reading this blog post as well as the preliminary research I was especially interested in why biracial kids who are of Western countries and South Eastern countries receive such different treatments. As one of the article mentioned, the reason may be because Western countries are thought to be more prosperous than Korea so kids who are partly from those countries are treated with more care where as those who have the blood of a South Eastern parent will be discriminated because Korea is at a higher state than many of the South Eastern countries. Personally I think another reason why discrimination occur is due to looks. In general, those whose father is a Korean and mother from a Western country have pale skin, large eyes, tall nose and therefore are portrayed as being beautiful biracial kids. On the other hand, for those whose father is a Korean and mother from an Asian country, a lot of the times their skin color is darker and their looks are not much different from those of pure Koreans. I think discrimination starts here. When a kid with an Western parent can't speak English, Koreans will understand and try to help them out. In fact they may think that its 'cute' to stumble when they speak Korean. However this is not the case for those whose parent is from the South Eastern region. If these kids don't speak Korean, the pure Koreans will disregard them and insult them for not being able to speak their 'native' language and thus will not consider them as real Koreans. I think what determine these actions are the looks of those biracial kids.
답글삭제I wholeheartedly agree with the article saying that Koreans tend to favor those from more developed countries than those from developing countries. Indeed, I feel anger from deep inside whenever people strive to use awkward English to converse with White people - even though they are not native English speaker - while scolding those from other regions beside America for not speaking Korean in Korea. Such contradicting attitude exactly tells how far Koreans have to go to multicultural nation.
답글삭제I definitely agree with the video on Al Jazeera. Multiculturism will exist as long as there are immigration, and it's a phenomenon that the Korean government along with Koreans have to deal with in the end. And when people in the case of immigration, I heard that Koreans refusing to work in harsh environments known as the '3D jobs', and that is the reason Korean companies are accepting so many foreign workers. So, Koreans are unmistakeably related to the increase of immigrants and ignoring that population altogether is a very irresponsible thing to do. Also, I agree that the policies that the government are suggesting aren't that effective. I think they should search for some successful cases in other countries considering accepting multicurturism, adjust that to the current situation of our country, and make some notiaceable changes in our society. It was all very interesting information. Thank you!
답글삭제It was very surprising that Al Jazeera has made a news report about South Korea's multiculturalism. So far, I actually couldn't even recognized about how big is the issue in current Korea. But through the information you gave, I could feel that multiculture issue is the thing that Korea is now confronting with, and we should take some actions about the issue. And also it was very interesting, that even though Korea is making some efforts to deal with the multicultural issue, but it is mostly leaned to assimilation, but not to supporting diversity. Thank you~ :)
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답글삭제I really strongly agree with the contents of article 3. The article said that we different attitude toward foreigners form 'advanced' countries and foreigners from other countries such as Malaysia, Nigeria, and etc. I think this comes from Korea's history that the Korean peninsula was always exposed to the invade of other nations, and to prevent that, ancient Korean countries become politically subordinated to China (to add on, this isn't that Korea was colony of China, but it is that Korea and China had 'hierarchy' for politics between them). After the world war II, the US is in position of China at ancient times. To summarise, Korean people are favoured to Americans and foreigners from other advanced countries for historical pathway that Korean has passed. I think we Koreans should abandon this kind of snob-like mind to move on to real globalisation.
답글삭제What especially intrigued me was the Caucasian worshiping attitude that could be found in korean adults, even when dealing with children. I think its fairly safe to assume that children of the south eastern are actually treated worse than their western counterparts. While i hate to admit it, I feel that such stereotype exists within me as well. Because that was a situation i could relate to, without any logical reasoning whatsoever, it especially intrigued me as to why koreans, or people in general, can be so xenophobic towards one race but so welcoming towards another. One possible reason I feel is that Caucasian children tends to fit more closely to the desired 'handsome guy', 'pretty girl' look as compared to their south eastern counterparts. Anyway, I feel that we as koreans have a mentality that likes to exclude others. We love to judge people based on their looks, language, and many other factors. We dont need that mentality.
답글삭제By reading this post, I realized that "ethnical" Koreans are not ready to accept people from other countries or multiracial kids as the citizen of Korea. I aslo did not think them as the citizen of my country. Thank you for awaring me of the hidden bias I had. I believe that more Koreans should be informed about this situation of migrants and biracial kids in order to lessen the diffilculties that they face in Korea. We should now change our thoughts about the monoracial country and progress towards the multicultural country since it is impossible to stick on the history.
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