[KS] Now On My Way to Meet Who?

[J.Scott Burgeson]

Dear Hilary --
   thanks for the response and link to your article, which I will have a closer look at over the weekend.
   I think that "multiethnic" would be a more apt term than "multicultural," if the dominant model in South Korea is largely unidirectional assimilation into the South Korean collective and culture.
   I gave a lecture on this topic myself several years ago in Seoul and Kwangju, and include the abstract here. I don't think I was the first to come up with the term "gendered multiculturalism," but I did arrive at it myself independently after long-term local observation. It's no coincidence, in my opinion, that the two most popular talk shows here over the years featuring non-South Koreans have been mainly comprised of young foreign females, and not men. In any case, here's a general outline of the lecture I gave, in late 2009:

   "These days we often hear in the South Korean media and from the South Korean government that Korea has entered a "New Age of Multiculturalism." The reasons for what I will call the Korean establishment's promotion of this idealized notion are complex, and for now I can only offer two primary causes or motivation here: First of all, the old national ideals of "Danil Minjok" and "Han Bando" (i.e., Reunification with the North) have come under widespread questioning in the past few years, and are no longer seen as realistic or desirable by many Koreans, and so a "Multicultural Korea" offers a positive alternative identity as the nation seeks to "rebrand" itself in today's globalized world. More to the point, this is simply a "good" international marketing strategy, as South Korea aims to attract more "multinational companies" and "international investment" here.

   "A second reason is driven by what we might call "gendered multiculturalism," specifically in response to the many "foreign brides," mostly from China and Southeast Asia, who have been coming to Korea since the late 1990s to marry Korean men, often older men in the countryside. These bicultural families, which presently number over 100,000, have in turn been raising a new generation of bicultural children, prompting the South Korean government to introduce a number of laws and policies in the past few years in support of such "multicultural families." Of course, from the 1950s and well into the 1990s, tens of thousands of "bicultural children" were born of Korean mothers and U.S. military service members, and quite a few more as the result of marriages between South Korean women and male native ESL teachers from Western countries, who have been coming to Korea in large numbers since the 1990s. However, the South Korean government traditionally felt no
 need to support such "multicultural families" at the official level, and the reason is fairly obvious: Gendered multiculturalism has only recently been embraced by the Korean establishment because it serves the interests of Korean men, which is to say the patriarchal structure here. This becomes even more apparent when we consider that the number of male migrant workers here from Southeast Asia and China is roughly four times that of "foreign brides" from these same countries, and yet the South Korean government continues to make it difficult for male migrant workers from developing countries to obtain permanent residency or citizenship here, and often they are deported in large numbers. Clearly, "multiculturalism" has a rather narrow meaning as far as official Korea is concerned, which is why I call it "gendered multiculturalism" in the service of Korean patriarchy."

   In my lecture, I sought to offer "an alternative formulation of multiculturalism here based not on ethnicity, since Korea will remain overwhelmingly homogenous ethnically speaking for the next several decades (reaching only 10% in 2050), but rather based on alternative values transcending race and ethnicity, which will ideally help Koreans better tolerate differences and diversity among themselves." I might note that although my Korean publisher made great efforts beforehand to promote the lecture to the local media – and it was presented both in Korean and English – not one Korean journalist, editor or producer bothered to attend in either Seoul or Kwangju, although large numbers of the general public did come (the lecture was in support of my last book, itself about "multiculturalism in Korea"). This would not seem to be terribly surprising, if indeed "multiculturalism" in Korea implies one-way assimilation, and as a consequence Koreans
 themselves, or more specifically Korean men, seek to maintain full control of the "narrative of multiculturalism" here.

   Cheers again,
                   Scott Bug








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On Mon, 11/11/13, Hilary V. Finchum-Sung <finchumsung at snu.ac.kr> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [KS] Now On My Way to Meet Who?
 To: "J.Scott Burgeson" <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>, "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com>
 Date: Monday, November 11, 2013, 2:19 AM
 
 
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 Dear List
 and Scott Bug:
 
 Just a quick response to
 Scott's thoughtful post. More specifically. I am
 responding to his questions regarding his
 interpretation of multiculturalism. 
 
 On the
 surface, yes, multiculturalism does imply an acceptance of
 difference.  However, studies on multiculturalism in
 places such as the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, etc.
 reveal that in each location the meaning of multiculturalism
 is construed differently.  
 
 There are
 many scholars who have done research on mutliculturalism
 (Han Geonsu, Andrew Kim, among others) in Korea and
 most would agree that the Korean brand of mc is one of
 assimilation. Multicultural programs at schools (of which my
 oldest child was a part) are aimed at teaching Korean,
 teaching 'multicultural' parents the fine art of
 making kimchi; essentially training non-Koreans (even
 children who are, technically and by nationality
 "Korean") to be Korean. Thus far, the focus of
 multicultural programs are of two general types: introducing
 foreign residents to Korean culture (free tours, prime seats
 at cultural events, etc)  and training members of
 'multicultural families' to assimilate into Korean
 society. Members of the latter include families in which one
 spouse is foreign born as well as families of North Korean
 refugees.
 
 If you are interested, I will refer you
 to a recent article I published on the topic:
 
 2012. "The
 Rainbow Chorus: Performing Multicultural Identity in South
 Korea." Seoul Journal of
 Korean Studies 25/1: 127-159.
  
 
 
 
 
 Sincerely,
 Hilary Finchum-Sung
 
 
 
 ---
 Original Message ---
 From :
 "J.Scott
 Burgeson"<jsburgeson at yahoo.com>
 To :
 "Korean Studies Discussion
 List"<koreanstudies at koreanstudies.com>
 Date : 2013/11/10 일요일 오후
 3:19:52
 Subject : [KS] Now On My Way
 to Meet Who?
 
 
 
     
         
             
             
             I recently read
 Christopher K. Green and Stephen J. Epstein's "Now
 On My Way to Meet Who? South Korean
 Television, North Korean Refugees, and the Dilemmas
 of Representation" in the 14 Oct. 2013 edition of The
 Asia-Pacific Journal, and found it quite illuminating, as
 usual.
 
 One of the main themes of the essay is the
 "Otherizing" of North Korean female defectors on
 the show "Imangap," whereby the North is presented
 via their personal narratives as a quaint, exotic or
 pitiable backwater to the "superior" or far more
 modern, developed South (in a kind of hierarchized
 relationship). I don't normally watch much TV, Korean or
 otherwise, but I have seen a few installments of the show
 when in Southern hotel rooms, as well as odd clips on
 YouTube, and what struck me was how many of the woman had
 been thoroughly South Koreanized: Their North Korean accents
 muted or replaced with standardized South Korean accents,
 make-up styles overtly South Korean, and fashions as well.
 Having recently lived in NE China for several years, and
 interacting with dozens of young North Korean women there
 (none of them defectors, I should note, but there for
 various official or state-sanctioned reasons), the South
 Koreanizing of these women seemed obvious to me, and
 what I am wondering is if this struck anyone else who has
 seen the show as well? More to the point, is this so-called
 "South Koreanizing" at odds with the theme of
 "Otherizing" these women, or is there in fact a
 double "Otherizing" at work here, in the sense
 that these women have been encouraged to present themselves
 according to contemporary South Korean standards of beauty
 and speech, whether because of the producers or the broader
 South Korean society in which they now live, and are
 consequently further alienated from their own original, or
 primary, North Korean identities? Certainly there seems to
 be a process of standardizing and homogenizing at work here,
 and indeed I've also noticed that the American drummer
 of Busker Busker, Brad Moore, has undergone a similar kind
 of "South Koreanizing" subsequent to his
 appearance on the hit TV show "Superstar K": Thick
 oversized black glasses currently in vogue here in the
 South, an overly whipped South Korean
 hair style and a fashion sensibility that is distinctly
 South Korean well -- call it a rather conservative type of
 "indie preppy," if you like.
 
 In any case, if multiculturalism implies an
 acceptance and celebration of cultural difference, erasing
 or downplaying cultural differences would seem to be at odds
 with the much-heralded rise of "multiculturalism"
 in South Korea, would it not? Is "Imangap" simply
 another instance of South Korean
 "multiculturalism" actually being code for radical
 assimilation and incorporation into the South Korean
 collective?  
 
 
 Scott Bug