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영어

This study looks at the problems and challenges of recent flow of immigration to Korea and their implications for the transitional situation of multicultural society of Korea. The social visibility of “foreigners” has a crucial role in the heightened attention and concern for transnational migrants and “multiculturalism” in Korean society, which has maintained a strong commitment to racial purity and homogeneity. However, South Korea’s migration governance for “multiculturalism” sustains its promotion of ‘migration without settlement.’ Since the 1990s, South Korea has been host country to a growing number of East and South Asian migrant workers, but no official discourse has yet to emerge to incorporate these foreigners as equal members of Korean society nor new citizens of the country. At the same time, the shift from co-ethnic marriage to multi-ethnic and inter-racial ones has also triggered a considerable amount of fear and worries among the local Koreans. South Korea’s long-cherished cultural concept of nationhood based on a homogenous Korean essence is being challenged by the rapid increase in marriage migrants from Southeast Asia. A dilemma therefore arises between the preservation and maintenance of an ethnically homogeneous society on the one hand, and, on the other, the need to ensure continuous economic growth that is causing the hybridization of cultures through the expansion of transnational reproductive migration to maintain and reproduce Korean families. South Korea’s political platform fails to incorporate the ethical stand of multiculturalism, which is based on mutual recognition of different cultures and development of just relationship between the Korean society and migrants.