Multiculturalism and Citizenship in South Korea: The Impact of Korean identity on Multiculturalism

Abstract

Ever since 2006, when President Roh Moo Hyun announced that Korea stepped on an irrevocable multicultural path, the Korean government has been investing efforts to accommodate rising numbers of immigrants, bi-racial and bi-ethnic people, whom this study names as ‘multicultural people.’ Over the years, Korean government has been adopting various plans and policies to improve their legal and social status, for example; the “Plan for Promoting the Social Integration of Migrant Women, Biracial people, and Immigrants,” or so-called the “Grand Plan,” “The First Immigration Plan (2008-2012),” “The Second Basic Plan for Immigration (2013-2017),” “The Third Master Plan for Immigration Policy (2018-2022),” the amended Nationality Act to allow permanent dual citizenship in 2010, etc. These policies regulated multicultural people’s access to citizenship, as well as their eligibility for welfare provisions, however, the policies themselves, proved to be insufficient to deal with some social problems, such as discrimination, prejudicing, stereotyping and others. In other words, the policies proved to be insufficient to achieve a complete integration and inclusiveness, which is the original goal of Korean multicultural polices. Considering those problems, the purpose of the study is to examine a degree of multicultural people’s integration and inclusiveness in Korean society in accordance with the broader concept of citizenship which includes not only a legal but also a social dimension. In order to achieve this purpose, the study firstly reviews theoretical concepts of multiculturalism, citizenship, and ethnic and civic nationalism, and continues to look into the nature of Korean national identity in terms of the above-mentioned theories. Based on these theoretical considerations, it tries to explain discrepancies in both, legal and social treatment of multicultural people with Korean national identity and related nationalism. To put it in another way, after examining a degree of the inclusiveness of multicultural people in Korea according to their legal and social status, the study evaluates the impact of Korean national identity on inequalities in their status. Finally, the study concludes by suggesting some recommendations based on the multicultural theory that adopting important features of civic national identity can be beneficial for creating inclusive multiculturalism in Korea. Multicultural people in Korea could be classified into four categories according to their legal status; naturalized and ‘new Koreans’, permanent residents, temporary residents, and undocumented immigrants. The category of naturalized and ‘new Koreans’ includes people who obtained Korean citizenship through naturalization such as foreign wives, people who were born in South Korea and are targeted by multicultural policies such as mixed children, and North Korean defectors. The second category is permanent residents, which encompasses people eligible for permanent residency, such as ethnic return migrants and foreign professionals. The third category contains people eligible for temporary residency, such as foreign labor, students, refugees, and tourists, however, this study deals just with foreign labor as other groups have a relatively small influence on multicultural developments in Korea. The fourth category is undocumented migrants who are also omitted from the study, as this group is not eligible for legal citizenship. The study finds that there are obvious differences in the legal treatment of multicultural people according to the four categories, however, differences in social treatment are not so easily noticed. This regards the treatment between native Koreans and multicultural people and among the groups in the four categories. Multicultural theories, presented by scholars such as Kymlicka, Parekh, Uberoi, and Joppke, offer explanations for discriminatory treatments of multicultural people in a society, emphasizing the importance of national identity for inclusiveness and acceptance of immigrants. According to them, national identity can be civic or ethnic. An ethnic-national identity stands for a sense of belonging to the same community based on ethnicity, bloodline, culture, common ancestry and other, while a civic national identity stands for a sense of belonging expressed in politico-institutional terms, such as citizenship, the rule of law, democratic values etc. This definition implies that a civic national identity can be deemed more inclusive toward immigrants, as it does not exclude people from the sense of belonging for their ethnicity, physiognomy etc. It could be told that Korean national identity has primarily an ethnic propensity. Korean ethnic-national identity and related nationalism were created during the colonial time, and they served as means of opposition to Japanese forceful assimilation. Furthermore, Korean presidents such as Syngman Rhee, Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, used Korean ethnic nationalism to justify their rule and to receive public support. Nowadays, the ethnic conception of the Korean nationhood in the eyes of Korean people has changed. Especially, the young generation seems to exclude co-ethnics such as North Koreans and Joseonjok from the conception of the same nationhood. Therefore, it is possible even to witness nouveau-riche nationalism and globalized cultural nationalism with the young generation. After examining all these forms of Korean national identity and related nationalism, the study concludes that, in spite of some modifications, ethnic-national identity is still at the base of Korean identification. Based on these Korean national identities, analysis of the main multicultural groups’ citizenship on legal and social levels shows that there is a hierarchy in both, legal and social treatment of multicultural people. For example, co-ethnics are legally preferred over non-ethnic Koreans, while they are socially less preferred comparing to white Caucasians. The same can be said for foreign wives. In spite of having good legal status, they are often discriminated based on skin color or a country of origin. The study evaluates that discrepancies in legal status cannot be understood as discriminatory per se, as they reflect the country’s sovereign right to create immigration policies according to its needs. However, discrepancies in social treatment are usually discriminatory, and the study points out that they are often motivated by Korean ethnic nationalism. Based on multicultural theories, this study argues that adopting important features of civic national identity could be beneficial for creating inclusive multiculturalism in Korea, and suggests some related recommendations. As integration of multicultural people into the society assumes a two-way process, it can be achieved only by investing efforts from both sides; Korean government and society, in this case, the provider of citizenship, should treat immigrants fairly and equally, while immigrants, in this case, the recipient, should invest efforts to integrate themselves into the society. However, this study focuses only on the aspect of the provider and leaves the recipient’s aspect aside for a later study. In addition, by using theoretical considerations, this study explores only the Korean multicultural case, it does not try to compare it with other countries’ cases, which could be done in some other research project.