Korean Multiculturalism : The Genealogy of the Concept, Shifting Meanings, Issues and Implications

Abstract

South Korea is rapidly becoming a multicultural society, as more than a million foreigners live in the country. The increasing ethnic diversity has heralded the widespread use of the concepts of multicultural society and multiculturalism. However, these terms have often been misused and misunderstood, as reporters and even scholars have used them indiscriminately and interchangeably, failing to distinguish between multicultural society as a fact, i.e., ethnic diversity in Korean society, and multiculturalism as a policy and ideology. In particular, the latter has been used without an adequate understanding of the multiplicity of its meanings and implications. This paper aims to redress this problem by tracing the origin of the use of term damunhwa or “multicultural” and its related terms such as multiculturalism, multicultural family, multicultural children, and multicultural education. Through this exercise, the paper attempts to examine process through which these terms came into use and analyze how their meanings may have changed over the years, albeit their very short history. The paper also identifies the agents involved in the construction of those meanings and assesses their role in making these potentially alienating terms more palatable and tolerable. Lastly, the paper analyzes Korean multiculturalism from multidimensional approaches, discussing the applicability of the concept as a fact, ideology, policy, and process in the Korean context.