Korean Job Discussion Forums :: View topic - Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

Speak Korean Now!

Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!

Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"

FAQ

Memberlist

Usergroups

Profile

Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea
Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4 Next

Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> General Discussion Forum

View previous topic :: View next topic

Author

Message

ghostrider

Joined: 27 Jun 2011

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 6:19 pm Post subject: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

Quote:

Kim Ye-ryu attends Kumchon Elementary School in Paju, northwest of Seoul. The fourth grader, born to a Zambian mother and a Korean father, was called "monkey" on his first day in school and his hair was ridiculed as �a scouring pad.�

Quote:

Jeon Hyeong, a YMCA mentoring program volunteer for multicultural children, said discrimination against one of his charges, a half-Bangladeshi boy, was �very obvious and real� at Bogwang Elementary School in Itaewon, Seoul.

Quote:

�Students who have a Japanese mother or father are often blamed by their peers for Japan�s wartime atrocities,� Yamaguchi said. �This is a form of discrimination because they did not have anything to do with these crimes.�

Quote:

According to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, there were 168,583 children from multiracial families in 2012, a surge from 44,258 in 2007.

Quote:

Another problem facing multiethnic children in schools is that there is no legal ban on racial discrimination in Korea.

Although an anti-discrimination bill was presented in the National Assembly in March, it is unlikely to be passed due to opposition from right-wing lawmakers.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/05/116_135770.html

I think Korea is at a point where the US was about 50 years ago. Racism was much more socially acceptable. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. Until the Civil Rights Act there was no legal protection against many forms of discrimination. It sounds like conservatives are preventing similar legislation from being passed in Korea.

Paddycakes

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Seoul

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 6:32 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

ghostrider wrote:

I think Korea is at a point where the US was about 50 years ago.

I wonder how many ethnic Korean kids in American schools still get called "Chinks" or "Gooks" even though they are not Chinese or Vietnamese.

greene

Joined: 11 Dec 2008

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 6:33 pm Post subject:

i asked my middle school students last year: "what problems might a foreigner have in Korea?" after some whisper deliberation in Korean they answered back... "we don't know how to say, the blood, make not pure..."

Who's Your Daddy?

Joined: 30 May 2010
Location: Victoria, Canada.

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 7:57 pm Post subject:

"Because society is still immature about the issue, many schools are struggling with how to design and implement the programs,� said Kim Joon-sik, head of Asian Friends, a leading civic group for multiracial families. �In an environment where their parents openly speak of Africans using derogatory racial words when watching television, children have no choice but to be affected by that culture.�

hiamnotcool

Joined: 06 Feb 2012

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 8:19 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

ghostrider wrote:

I think Korea is at a point where the US was about 50 years ago. Racism was much more socially acceptable. Interracial marriage was illegal in many states. Until the Civil Rights Act there was no legal protection against many forms of discrimination. It sounds like conservatives are preventing similar legislation from being passed in Korea.

Nah, I think it's where it has always been and it is going to stay that way. It is a society that wants to maintain it's racial and cultural identity. Some adjustments are being made to accommodate how fast the world is globalizing, but other than that it's business as usual.

T-J

Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Location: Seoul EunpyungGu Yeonsinnae

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 9:15 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

hiamnotcool wrote:

ghostrider wrote:

Couldn't disagree more. An incredible amount of change has taken place since I first came 22 years ago. Change is accelerating if anything.

I don't think accepting and accommodating people from other cultures and maintaining ones own cultural identity are mutually exclusive.

jvalmer

Joined: 06 Jun 2003

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 9:23 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

T-J wrote:

hiamnotcool wrote:

ghostrider wrote:

I'd have to side with cool on this. These 'mixed' Korean are probably going to marry Koreans in the future. So their kids will be 3/4th Korean. Then most likely they will marry a Korea, and once again be 're-absorbed' into the 'Korean people'.

How many of these kids look fully foreign? Probably a very small percentage, most of these kids probably wouldn't raise an eyebrow to an old racist Korean if walking on the street.

maximmm

Joined: 01 Feb 2008

Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 9:45 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

jvalmer wrote:

I'm not sure that's true. I would argue that a 'mixed' Korean is just as likely to marry a Korean as a non-Korean. The more racism they experience while being young, the more likely they are to seek a life companion and perhaps even 'home' elsewhere.

Besides, the Korea that you see today is not the Korea of tomorrow. The marriages between Koreans and non-Koreans are likely to increase, much like migration to and from Korea.

jvalmer

Joined: 06 Jun 2003

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 5:40 am Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

maximmm wrote:

jvalmer wrote:

I would say a mixed-Korean would probably marry a Korean. It's pretty common in the US and Canada, where minorities marry into the majority. It happens all the time, I don't know why you don't see that happening here...

I'd would agree with you if Korea decided to accept mass immigration, but I don't see that in Korea's future. I think many are kind of in denial of how small the foreign population is here.

I'll give a generous figure of 3% of Korea being foreign nationals. So that would be roughly 1.5 million people. And supposedly more than half of them are actually ethnic Koreans.

So, again being generous here, 750,000 of these foreign nationals are not ethnic Koreans. Now how many plan on staying in Korea and plan on raising a family? Again being generous, I'll say 500,000.

So that is 1% of the population that is non-ethnic Korean that will raise a family here. How many of them will marry a Korean? Who knows? But if their kids are going to be raised in Korea speaking Korean, they are probably 50%+1 likely to marry a Korean.

And then there is the possibility of 22 million additional Koreans added to the population in the event of unification.

Korea is not a multi-ethnic state. And I don't see any 'other' ethnicity becoming a significant part of the population, significant being 5-10% being of one ethnic group other than Korean. That's 2.5 million to 5 million people. Unless the Chinese decide to migrate to Korea en-mass, like the did in SE Asia for the last few hundred years, Korea will remain very much Korean. Where ethnic-Koreans control and dominate the culture and economy in their own country, unlike other countries in the region. Also, this very much applies to Japan too.

joelove

Joined: 12 May 2011

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 6:12 am Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

jvalmer wrote:

So their kids will be 3/4th Korean.

What does that even mean? This defining of people and categories, and 'pure' nonsense, none of it makes any sense. I understand it still matters to lots of people for some reason. I have no choice but to call those people fools.

salutbonjour

Joined: 22 Jan 2013

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 6:44 am Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

joelove wrote:

jvalmer wrote:

So their kids will be 3/4th Korean.

When two people mate, their genes are mixed and their kids' appearance is a mix of those genetics. If two Koreans have a kid, he will look Korean. If a black person has a kid with a Korean the kid won't look Korean. If a Chinese has a kid with a Korean and that kid has a kid with a Korean then 3/4 of his genes will come from ethically Korean source and one quarter from a source that was close to Korean genes, thus this kid will most likely be hard to tell apart from a kid whose 4 grand-parents were Korean.

How did this not make sense?

What is it with people "rejecting labels"...

PatrickGHBusan

Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: Busan (1997-2008) Canada 2008 -

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 7:21 am Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

T-J wrote:

hiamnotcool wrote:

ghostrider wrote:

Could not agree more. Things change a lot over the period I was there too (1997-2008) and since then. The pace of change has accelerated too.

joelove

Joined: 12 May 2011

Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 12:30 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

salutbonjour wrote:

How did this not make sense?

Oh, makes perfect sense, but I reckon you can see what I was really referring to with the mention of the 'pure' nonsense and all that stuff that remains important to many, for some reason. That's the part that confuses me. The label is not important, but the thinking is. For many, the 3/4 or 1/2 part is an issue, and their children learn to treat it as an issue too. Who knows how many of those kids will see things differently when they get older?

Paddycakes

Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Seoul

Posted: Fri May 17, 2013 4:11 am Post subject:

Is it worse to black in the States or black in Korea? Could this video have been made in the Korean context? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sd52CRt6-DM

hiamnotcool

Joined: 06 Feb 2012

Posted: Sat May 18, 2013 5:19 pm Post subject: Re: Nearly 170,000 multiracial children in Korea

PatrickGHBusan wrote:

T-J wrote:

hiamnotcool wrote:

ghostrider wrote:

Could not agree more. Things change a lot over the period I was there too (1997-2008) and since then. The pace of change has accelerated too.

I think what you are seeing is that the country has not only advanced economically but diplomatically as well. I mean the same notions about racial and cultural identity prevail here but Koreans have become more adept at explaining them to foreigners in a diplomatic way. The xenophobia here is explained in a way that is not aggressive but rational and given a historical context (aka Japan is evil).

Interracial marriages will be accommodated due to the declining birthrate to an extent, but even then a child that has one Korean parent is going to have to make a decision at some point. Will they marry a Korean or a foreigner? At that point I think the line will be drawn, they will either rejoin the "pure" Korean society or become a foreigner. I think they will be welcomed into the fold if they marry a Korean and take up the Korean culture with all of it's benefits and drawbacks. However, if they decide to marry a foreigner they won't be a part of the society here. On the surface it looks like it has changed because this process of integrating an interracial child was mostly done with other asians in the past so the visual aspect wasn't really there. Now it's a little more evident though because some children come from a family with one Asian and one non-Asian. It is harder to hide this now and pretend like it isn't happening. Through time though I think the same process will happen and they will either take on the full Korean ethnicity or just become another foreigner visiting temporarily.

Display posts from previous:

	Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> General Discussion Forum	All times are GMT - 8 Hours Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4 Next
Page 1 of 4

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

TEFL International Supports Dave's ESL Cafe