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Korea grappling with multicultural society
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Eedoryeong

Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Location: Jeju

Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:49 pm Post subject:

komerican wrote:

Scotticus wrote:

komerican wrote:

It is of course very important to know this history when discussing and comparing multiculturalism in Korea or one risks the danger of turning into an angry lynch mob of parochial foreigners continually asking �why can�t Korean men��

Good lord, are you still here? Do you ever get tired of typing out how terrible the West is and spending your time finding quotes to "prove" your claims? You're like those morons who take single verses of the Bible and use them to justify hating/killing particular groups of people. Komerican, you need a hobby, badly.

Of course just quoting from a book doesn't prove anything. All I'm saying is that your comments to your class about race are cartoonish. You are being a propagandist when you paper over how race relations developed in the US. It wasn't "Presto!" everyone's white. It took a lot of time and there were specific historical reasons.

caniff wrote:

komerican wrote:

Of course the ruling whites, the WASPS, in America, initially considered many continental european whites the "Lesser Whites" including the Irish. But WASPS quickly elevated these ethnics to full white status for the above- mentioned reasons. And of course these �Lesser Whites� eagerly accepted their new elevated positions and took on the role of White Anglo-Saxons Protestants (WASPS) and their concomitant racial hatred for blacks. A good book to read on how this process occurred is �How the Irish Became White�, by Noel Ignatiev.

It is of course very important to know this history when discussing and comparing multiculturalism in Korea or one risks the danger of turning into an angry lynch mob of parochial foreigners continually asking �why can�t Korean men��

Sounds similar to the ongoing tensions we see between many Koreans and other ethnic groups in LA (as well as in some other American cities).

The Irish and other ethnic whites are actually "assimilated whites" in the US. The position of blacks I think has improved a lot since the days when the Irish started immigrating to the US so I don�t think even with the present tensions with blacks that Koreans will have as much influence on blacks as the Irish did. Blacks have had a harder time dealing with illegal immigrants from south and Central America.

Komerican, I have really enjoyed reading some of your posts on this board, particularly poking a finger in the eye of some of these diehard blindly devoted imperialists (who talk like only their country is allowed to define itself according to its own terms and values.) I really have.

Something you said above (I cut some of it) made me think about some of the ways that Irish have ascended through the system and I wanted to make mention of it.

It's true that when Irish arrived, they were considered lesser-whites, even non-persons in some places (in Canada there were signs on taverns of towns up and down the St. Lawrence, reading 'no dogs or Irish allowed in') but there is one thing that they did have that it seems foreigners here don't seem to have, and that's access to the system. Most Irish, for example, were initially barred from practising their faith (most Irish were of the Catholic faith, banned in the British Empire) but it was six Irish lawyers in Halifax who found a loophole in the British law + made it possible for them to practice legally. (South Africa I think was the second to overturn that British law) but the point was they had just enough room to get in the system and change it. With that same access they also slowly started to work their way up from entry level positions in city jobs until they became the police chiefs and fire chiefs of major North American cities in the 1950's

Blacks of course have several instances of similar achievements but their ascension as we all know has been a much slower and longer process. But there are instances. (One of the earliest that comes to mind is the Black Loyalists who left the US and bought the land in Africville, in the northend in Halifax, which may be the first land freed black slaves purchased in North America, possibly some farmlands in the deep South *maybe* rivalling for the position of first lands owned by blacks. And there were problems with Africville. But I digress.)

The histories of these two peoples in N. America obviously can not be compared in any significant way to that of foreigners in Korea today, but if one points to history to compare rates of assimilation of societies - and I suspect you're calling for understanding by pointing foreigners to examples of their own history - one needs to include the non-parallel of the picture, which is that foreigners in the two historical examples could get in the system, and move and navigate and change it, and they could settle in and stay so their changes were meaningful to them. But foreigners here don't have the ability to get in the system and change it. I wonder if even 1% of us are not just passing through? It may actually be a facilitator of their transient non-permanent nature. Okay I'm just guessing now. But maybe some of the root of the unceasing criticisms you point out stem from that non-access.

?

Pyongshin Sangja

Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Location: I love baby!

Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 9:01 pm Post subject:

Quote:

It may actually be a facilitator of their transient non-permanent nature. Okay I'm just guessing now. But maybe some of the root of the unceasing criticisms you point out stem from that non-access.

That's right. It's a vicious cycle.

"Welcome to Korea. Now please leave."

"Actually, I have a job here. I'd like to stay."

"Hm. Well, ok. You can stay for one year."

"Actually, I might stay longer than that."

(10 years later)

"Well, I'd like to a) vote b) not be tied to my employer c) have human rights now."

"Sorry, you are not Korean. But this kid who grew up in LA? Ah, Hangooksaram ida!"

"What about me?"

"Did you hear something, young man? I think this great hairy beast can speak."

"Yo, man. I don't speak Korean. I'm from LA."

bogey666

Joined: 17 Mar 2008
Location: Korea, the ass free zone

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:43 am Post subject:

maybe you people are being slightly too harsh on Koreans for preferring their society homogenous. They're not the only ones. it has been the NORM everywhere around the world for the most part, except for the likes of the United States and Canada (and to lesser extent Great Britain in the last several decades) A lot of European countries now have fifth column Muslim population in their midst, which makes one think "what were you thinking"? when you invited all of them in? this would include Londonistan. personally, I much much prefer the "multicultural" model, but don't blow the Koreans too much shit for being like EVERYONE else throughout history. (granted, they may take it slightly overboard.. but no worse than the Japanese and many others)

Stevie_B

Joined: 14 May 2008

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:03 am Post subject:

bogey666 wrote:

maybe you people are being slightly too harsh on Koreans for preferring their society homogenous.

They're not the only ones. it has been the NORM everywhere around the world for the most part, except for the likes of the United States and Canada (and to lesser extent Great Britain in the last several decades)

A lot of European countries now have fifth column Muslim population in their midst, which makes one think "what were you thinking"? when you invited all of them in?

this would include Londonistan.

personally, I much much prefer the "multicultural" model, but don't blow the Koreans too much shit for being like EVERYONE else throughout history.

(granted, they may take it slightly overboard.. but no worse than the Japanese and many others)

At least the Japanese have a native culture worth defending...

bogey666

Joined: 17 Mar 2008
Location: Korea, the ass free zone

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 1:39 am Post subject:

Stevie_B wrote:

bogey666 wrote:

At least the Japanese have a native culture worth defending...

hehehe.

the "value" of one's "native culture" is in the eye of the beholder, neh?

Though I'd agree with you on the merits of Japanese and Chinese cultures over the Korean, the Koreans are not the only people in the world, who take themselves and their "great culture" a little too seriously Smile

Scotticus

Joined: 18 Mar 2007

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 2:42 am Post subject:

komerican wrote:

Scotticus wrote:

I think it's funny that my students consider me "mixed." I tried to explain to them that, for most Americans, unless you're mixing outside your "race" (Asian/Black, Black/White, etc), no one thinks anything of it. But I suppose in a culture where any child who's not 100% Korean is "mixed," a guy who's 50/50 Polish and Italian is mind-blowing.

Please explain where I infer that any sort of overnight changes happened in American race relations and/or where I made any sort of comment that would imply that said race relations have always been like that. You always put on this educated air, and yet you manage to completely *beep* up the meaning of a post that's only a few sentences long.

Cotal Tunt

Joined: 23 Apr 2008
Location: A drill and your skull.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:23 am Post subject:

Quote:

Fantastic sense of humour, the Irish...

Been laughing all the way to the bank of late Wink

nautilus

Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:45 am Post subject:

MORE MORE MORE foreigners of every description are needed. bring them on! Things are improving, because today koreans were in the minority as i waited at a pedestrian crossing: myself, a Russian and 2 Thais outnumbered the one korean dude. he suddenly looked quite vulnerable. It was a significant moment^^ . soon we'll be able to form our own vigilante gangs and no-go areas. Viva the multicultural revolution.

SirFink

Joined: 05 Mar 2006

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:41 am Post subject: Re: Korea grappling with multicultural society

MA_TESOL wrote:

The nation's immigration and naturalization policies, however, appear to be rudimentary and favor only a select class of wealthy investors and highly-skilled professionals.

In other words, the same general policy of most post-industrial developed nations. If you're an American without a degree or job skill, just try to get a legal gig in the EU. So much for liberal, multicultural tolerance.

bogey666

Joined: 17 Mar 2008
Location: Korea, the ass free zone

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: Re: Korea grappling with multicultural society

SirFink wrote:

MA_TESOL wrote:

The nation's immigration and naturalization policies, however, appear to be rudimentary and favor only a select class of wealthy investors and highly-skilled professionals.

not wanting other countries' dregs and shit for brains is only common sense.

As more countries move politically toward a bigger burden on the state to provide social benefits for its population, allowing such immigrants is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire.

jajdude

Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:20 pm Post subject:

nautilus wrote:

myself, a Russian and 2 Thais outnumbered the one korean dude. he suddenly looked quite vulnerable. It was a significant moment^^ Laughing

.
.

Aye. It is something everyone should experience a bit, being the outsider. Perhaps it builds a little compassion?

komerican

Joined: 17 Dec 2006

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:44 pm Post subject:

Eedoryeong wrote:

komerican wrote:

Scotticus wrote:

komerican wrote:

caniff wrote:

komerican wrote:

Sounds similar to the ongoing tensions we see between many Koreans and other ethnic groups in LA (as well as in some other American cities).

How much of the NA experience is relevant to other countries? I�d say very little. Immigration into NA was limited to same-race, same-culture peoples, i.e. from Europe. The Irish had the advantage of speaking English and looked white although they were considered racially inferior to WASPs. So they had a leg up on other immigrants and of course they leveraged this advantage and the general fear of blacks, to the hilt in order to gain economic and political power.

It was only in the late 60s that immigration from non-western countries started due to America's participation in southeast-asian wars and a loop-hole in the 1965 immigration act. Still in America for example, Asians are only about 3 percent of the population, this after two centuries of immigration into the US. Non-Caucasians were kept out of the US. The only other non-white group, Hispanics, were either already in the US or got there illegally.

As for blacks in your post, clearly blacks were not immigrants and their history of assimilation was achieved not through voluntary acquiescence by whites but through the threat of insurrection and nation-wide violence, i.e. threats to burn the cities down, the demonstrations in the 60s were very violent. There is no history in NA of giving rights to non-whites through a peaceful process. The blacks simply would not go away, creating a "problem" that has been forced upon every generation.

In Korea, however, the non-Koreans not only don't look Korean but unlike the Irish immigrants to NA these folks cannot speak the native language and are not part of the same cultural orbit. Also, in the case of Europeans they will not immigrate to Korea in large enough numbers to make any significant impact on Korean society. Why would they? After all western culture reigns supreme over the world, culturally and economically, so why would Westerners in any significant number, raise their children in Korea? They could send their children to international schools in Korea but of course then their children would be culturally still western and in no way Korean. They would then also constitute a non-Korean elite class. Such a situation would of course be bad for Korea. It would raise the same sort of racial divide you see in the Americas where race-politics poisons every issue. But the question is moot anyway, since westerners, barring any strange calamity in the west, will not immigrate to Korea in any significant numbers that would make a difference here.

Yu_Bum_suk

Joined: 25 Dec 2004

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 5:06 pm Post subject:

komerican wrote:

In Korea, however, the non-Koreans not only don't look Korean but unlike the Irish immigrants to NA these folks cannot speak the native language and are not part of the same cultural orbit. Also, in the case of Europeans they will not immigrate to Korea in large enough numbers to make any significant impact on Korean society. Why would they? After all western culture reigns supreme over the world, culturally and economically, so why would Westerners in any significant number, raise their children in Korea? They could send their children to international schools in Korea but of course then their children would be culturally still western and in no way Korean. They would then also constitute a non-Korean elite class. Such a situation would of course be bad for Korea. It would raise the same sort of racial divide you see in the Americas where race-politics poisons every issue. But the question is moot anyway, since westerners, barring any strange calamity in the west, will not immigrate to Korea in any significant numbers that would make a difference here.

Westerners won't, except perhaps a small number of Eastern Europeans (if they count as westerners), but SE Asians will and are.

Re: the American immigration experience, you really need to look at three Korean sources: a small group of around 10,000 labourers prior to 1915, 90,000 GI wives since 1950, and 3/4 million economic immigrants since 1965. Considering that the first two groups have likely produced over 200,000 mixed-race children, Koreans have likely contributed more to America's cultural melting pot than any other Asian group. You just don't see them because they're not going to Korean churches and shopping at Korean supermarkets and, unless they win game MVP at the superbowl, will never be acknowledged in Korea.

In the case of Korea I quite understand how I will never be a part of 우리 unless I have more success learning the language and / or marry a local, but what I do really wish is that Koreans could just make less of a big deal about being foreign. Korea's reaction towards foreigners is that of a very, very immature country, and one that should do better considering that many of it's most important institutions were founded by foreigners at the turn of the 20th century and that Dae Han Min Guk only exists because of the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who've served here.

Eedoryeong

Joined: 10 Dec 2007
Location: Jeju

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:08 pm Post subject:

komerican wrote:

Eedoryeong wrote:

The histories of these two peoples in N. America obviously can not be compared in any significant way to that of foreigners in Korea today, but if one points to history to compare rates of assimilation of societies - and I suspect you're calling for understanding by pointing foreigners to examples of their own history - one needs to include the non-parallel of the picture, which is that foreigners in the two historical examples could get in the system, and move and navigate and change it, and they could settle in and stay so their changes were meaningful to them. But foreigners here don't have the ability to get in the system and change it. I wonder if even 1% of us are not just passing through? It may actually be a facilitator of their transient non-permanent nature. Okay I'm just guessing now. But maybe some of the root of the unceasing criticisms you point out stem from that non-access.
?

Well this has taken an interesting turn.

Originally I wrote in partly because I wanted to say, 'it might not be a good idea to point Westerners to their own histories for this purpose.' When I go back and re-read, it still seems like you're wanting to draw a parallel in defending Korea's slow rates of assimilation. But when I see this sentence, 'How much of the NA experience is relevant to other countries? I�d say very little.' you seem to have said what I wanted to say, which is confusing.

Yes, westerners' immigration histories don't really work for establishing the point that things are just fine in the R.O.K. but there are similar experiences in places that can point out where there's room for improvement. (I just want to qualify that by saying that I really like Korea and I think it has a lot of ideas which, if adopted, could only improve certain things in the West.) It's hard to see that when westerners with no tolerance for different systems blather on the way they do, with tones ranging from Messiah complex to persecution complex and everything in between.

But putting those noise-makers aside for a second, there are places in our histories where the immigrant experience does line up for a short time, and then there's a major disconnect.

You point out the Irish had the same language, but the people whose world they were assimilating into did not see it that way. Brits acted very much like Irish had a disease (their accent) that needed to be stamped out like a weed. They were constantly reinforcing this difference, which you alluded to, but it's not really underscored in your description that as soon as an Irishman opened his mouth and spoke that's when the words 'Paddy' came out and 'get back on the boat' and all the rest of it. You could say, 'at least they could communicate' and that's true, but if the people with the power don't want to talk to you, it doesn't matter. That's the economic equivalent of 'you can't communicate with me beyond where's the bathroom' But after they were able to build their communities and bring their values to the system, which as we know, made the system better.

I made a mistake talking about black Loyalists purchasing Africville in that I mashed Canadian and American history together. You're right about the picture you painted, but I was not talking about that scene. The black Loyalist elders involved in the transaction I'm refering to actually had zero power or threat in Halifax and did, in fact, purchase the land exactly because of the "acquiescence" as you put it of white Loyalists running the city (I think it's more accurate to see it as having been a simple business transaction.) (There are actually more such examples of said voluntary acquiescence in the surrounding area, and almost all of them, with the exception of the original Africville, are quite successful communities.) They sold them land that consisted of a thin top soil over bedrock, ensuring it was not really farm-able, but still, they did it. My example was not like you thought, but much more like the manner I presented it. There were no threats to burn down any city, nor any unaddressed squatting problem that forced them to acquiesce the land.

In hindsight I probably should have specified Canadian history because the other immigration examples I was thinking of also have very different dynamics (e.g. the Chinese coming in the turn of the century in large numbers and helping build the railroad.)

(In fact Africville may be regarded as a parallel example of foreign investment going bad, because they came up first, made the purchase, then went back and brought back a community, and then years later, it turned out that sitting on all that bedrock would cost too much to blast through for city pipes, partly the reason they were the last to get city water and sewage treatment compared to the rest of the city. They were eventually forced off their purchased land, and moved en masse to housing provided by the city in a new area.)

The NAmerican immigration history is not only relevant to other countries, it will become increasingly so as the struggle for resources intensifies in the coming years. But in situations where the people are about stalemated in terms of pushability, it may look more like parts of Canadian history than American. There are certain dynamics that are going on today overseas that can offer insights directly into Korea today. The first one off the top of my head is the issue of declining birth rates and who will inherit the country. In the West, this arises as the issue of who will provide all the health care for the baby boomers, which has led to a lot of interesting developments including the relaxing of Western medicine's view of Eastern ideas in preventative medicine, as well as the rapid development of new un-Westernized faith communities from countries providing a lot of the new generation nurses and health care professionals. Same issue in parts of Europe as well. Any country with a rapidly declining birth rate (Korea? Japan?) can look at the models and make projections on what might happen in their country. I should say at least, I know bigwigs in Korea are thinking about it, because there's a huge sign hanging off of the side of a building in north end of Mokpo that asks the people to please have one more baby.

Speaking of Korean babies, that reminds me of my next point - the internationalized Korean elite class you spoke of. I believe it already exists now, today. And I think they're having the effect you suggest. I think Koreans unconsciously are pushing toward that effect. But I don't think that's bad for the country, I think it's good. It means more Korean ideas get out, not just more western ideas get in. I just got off the phone with a fellow from CDI and his English was extremely fluent, although certain aspects of the sounds suggested I was speaking to a westernized Korean. But my point is he was a very capable English speaker and running the show that an inarticulate ajosshi used to do a few years before.

Anyway you can say those internationalized Koreans are just a small community, but if Korea's efforts to increase its presence on the world stage (via exporting manufactured products, and Korean contributions to technology and the humanities) are to meet their goals, this elite class will be an inevitable by-product. They will, by default of having one foot in both worlds, be the future face of Korea for the rest of the world, and they'll have to be embraced sooner or later (which also seems to already be happening.) In doing so, Korea can become a more serious player on the world stage with more Korea-loyal internationals willing to do the footwork.

I could only see it being bad for some Koreans with a very rigid view of how Korea's future should unfold, but if allowed to unfold naturally and not through arbitrary decisions in some politically driven social engineering experiment (in other words if they let Korea-loyal emigrants bring back their experiences and ideas to make host and guest countries better) Korea will only be stronger.

Don't you think that's hidden somewhere in what some of the foreigners are getting at?

vlcupper

Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Location: Gangnam

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject:

Leslie Cheswyck wrote:

Korea Grappling.

Korea Sputtering.

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