Abstract
This chapter examines the politics of belonging through the inter-ethnic relations of primary school children in South Korea. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data of 11–12 year olds from monoethnic and multiethnic Korean family backgrounds, this chapter examines multiethnic and monoethnic children’s experiences of racialised difference in the forced togetherness of school, how children navigate feelings of contested belonging, and their experiences of peer sociality, rejection and marginalisation. Going beyond multicultural education, cultural or linguistic assimilation and an imagined national Korean identity, this chapter argues for an affective understanding of belonging in a society grappling with the meaning of belonging in the face of increasing racial, ethnic and cultural diversity, past and present nation-building, and intensifying globalisation.
For the purposes of this paper and for stylistic reasons, hereafter, ‘Korea’ and ‘Koreans’ will refer to the Republic of Korea/South Korea and South Koreans.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The possibility for these opportunities was supported by increased democratic reform especially after the inauguration of the first democratically elected civilian president Kim Young-sam in 1993.
- 2.
In 2012, 95% of the budget for social integration programmes (about $1 billion) was allocated to multicultural families (Draudt 2016, p. 15).
- 3.
In Korea, a person is one-year-old when they are born. Also, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, everyone becomes a year older.
- 4.
Based on 2014 statistics, the average number of students from multiethnic backgrounds at elementary schools in Gyeonggi province is about 9.7 per school (KESS 2014). Gyeonggi province has the highest number of multiethnic elementary school students compared to the other provinces. However, in terms of the proportion of total multicultural students to the total number of elementary students, other provinces have a higher ratio (e.g., Jeollanam province is 3.46 and Gyeonggi province is 1.59) (KESS 2014).
- 5.
This method is based on an exercise used by Smith (2005) with 9–11 year old children to understand friendship networks and issues of belonging from their perspectives.
References
Cho, H. (2002). Living with conflicting subjectivities: Mother, motherly wife, and sexy woman in the transition from colonial-modern to postmodern Korea. In L. Kendall (Ed.), Under construction: The gendering of modernity, class and consumption in the Republic of Korea (pp. 165–195). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Chung, C. K., & Cho, S. J. (2006). Conceptualization of jeong and dynamics of hwabyung. Psychiatry Investigation, 3(1), 46–54.
Connolly, P. (1998). Racism, gender identities and young children. New York: Routledge.
Draudt, D. (2016). South Korea’s national identity crisis in the face of emerging multiculturalism. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 17(1), 12–19.
Eriksen, T. H. (2010). Ethnicity and nationalism: Anthropological perspectives (3rd ed.). London: Pluto Press.
Essed, P. (1991). Understanding everyday racism: An interdisciplinary theory. Newbury Park: Sage.
Grant, C. A., & Ham, S. (2013). Multicultural education policy in South Korea: Current struggles and hopeful vision. Multicultural Education Review, 5(1), 67–95.
Han, G. S. (2016). Nouveau-riche nationalism and multiculturalism in Korea: A media narrative analysis. New York: Routledge.
Kim, J. K. (2011). The politics of culture in multicultural Korea. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(10), 1583–1604.
Kim, N. H. (2012). Multiculturalism and the politics of belonging: The puzzle of multiculturalism in South Korea. Citizenship Studies, 16(1), 103–117.
Kim, H., & Won, S. (2015). Experiences of discrimination and its effect on life satisfaction: understanding differences within subgroups of foreign spouses from multicultural families in Korea. Asian Social Science, 11(26), 64–74.
Kim, E. M., Ok, K. Y., Lee, H. Y., & Cho, H. L. (2012). South Korea advances toward a multicultural society. Paju Book City, South Korea: Nanam.
Korean Educational Statistical Service (KESS). (2014). Basic statistics on schools: Multicultural students. Retrieved September 10, 2015, from http://kess.kedi.re.kr/eng/publ/publFile/pdfjs?survSeq=2014&menuSeq=3894&publSeq=2&menuCd=62384&itemCode=02&menuId=1_3_14&language=en.
Lee, H. K. (2008). International marriage and the state in South Korea: Focusing on governmental policy. Citizenship Studies, 12(1), 107–123.
Lee, C. S. (2016). Narratives of ‘mixed race’ youth in South Korea: Racial order and in-betweeness. Asian Ethnicity. Retrieved August 31, 2016, from https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2016.1219940.
Middleton, T. (2013). Anxious belongings: Anxiety and the politics of belonging in subnationalist Darjeeling. American Anthropologist, 115(4), 608–621.
Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD). (2006). damunhwa gajeong janyeo gyoyuk jiwon daechaek [Educational support plan for children from multicultural backgrounds]. Retrieved August 25, 2015, from http://125.60.48.13/home4/dl_files/edu/001/IM006954.pdf.
Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST). (2012). damunhwa haksaeng gyoyuk seonjinhwa bangan [Advanced plan for Multicultural Family Student]. Retrieved September 5, 2016, from moe.go.kr/web/100026/ko/board/download.do?boardSeq=66030 .
Norman, W. (2004). From nation-building to national engineering: On the ethics of shaping identities. In A. Dieckhoff (Ed.), The politics of belonging: Nationalism, liberalism and pluralism (pp. 87–106). Oxford: Lexington Books.
Ong, A. (1996). Cultural citizenship as subject-making: Immigrants negotiate racial and cultural boundaries in the United States. Current Anthropology, 37(5), 737–762.
Park, K. (2014). Foreigners or multicultural citizens?: Press media’s construction of immigrants in South Korea. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(9), 1565–1586.
Prey, R. (2011). Different takes: Migrant world television and multiculturalism in South Korea. Global Media Journal – Canadian Edition, 4(1), 109–125.
Shin, G. W. (2006). Ethnic nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, politics and legacy. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Shin, G. W., Freda, J., & Yi, G. (1999). The politics of ethnic nationalism in divided Korea. Nations and Nationalism, 5(4), 465–484.
Smith, G. (2005). Children’s perspectives on believing and belonging. London: National Children’s Bureau for Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Spivak, G. C. (1990). The postcolonial critic: Interviews, strategies, dialogues. New York: Routledge.
Strathern, M. (2005). Kinship, law and the unexpected: Relatives are always a surprise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tilbury, F., & Lloyd, M. (2001). Friendship and relationships in everyday life. In C. Bell (Ed.), Sociology of everyday life in New Zealand (pp. 70–88). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore Press.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2010). Theorizing identity: Beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy. Patterns of Prejudice, 44(3), 261–280.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2011). Politics of belonging: Intersection contestations. London: Sage.
Zembylas, M. (2014). Affective citizenship in multicultural societies: Implications for critical citizenship education. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 9(1), 5–18.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Walton, J. (2018). ‘I am Korean’: Contested Belonging in a ‘Multicultural’ Korea. In: Halse, C. (eds) Interrogating Belonging for Young People in Schools. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75217-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75217-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75216-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75217-4
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)