earticle

영어

The number of non-ethnic Koreans living long term in South Korea reached 1.5 million in 2012 leading to preemptive multicultural legislation. This has challenged widely held beliefs in racial and ethnic homogeneity regarded as the mainspring of South Korea’s national security and defense against a belligerent North Korean state which shares similar beliefs in ethnic homogeneity. North Korea has been politically and ideologically ‘othered’ as a ‘foreign’ Korean state and therefore a threat. The representation of the foreign is intrinsic to South Korean identity and multicultural initiatives are generating competing narratives on the site and nature on national identity. This paper considers the strategic implications of multiculturalism for the nature and direction of inter-Korean relations.