Hahm Ji-seon and her friend, Bonogit Hussain, were riding a bus near Seoul when insults were hurled at them.
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: November 1, 2009
SEOUL — On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain, a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend, were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurling racial and sexist slurs at them.
The situation would be a familiar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms. Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.
What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reported in the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging the man they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt, the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racist offense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rival political parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation that for the first time would provide a detailed definition of discrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.
For Mr. Hussain, subtle discrimination has been part of daily life for the two and half years he has lived here as a student and then research professor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul. He says that, even in crowded subways, people tend not sit next to him. In June, he said, he fell asleep on a bus and when it reached the terminal, the driver woke him up by poking him in the thigh with his foot, an extremely offensive gesture in South Korea.
“Things got worse for me this time, because I was with a Korean woman,” Mr. Hussain said in an interview. “Whenever I’ve walked with Ms. Hahn or other Korean women, most of the time I felt hostilities, especially from middle-aged men.”
South Korea, a country where until recently people were taught to take pride in their nation’s “ethnic homogeneity” and where the words “skin color” and “peach” are synonymous, is struggling to embrace a new reality. In just the past seven years, the number of foreign residents has doubled, to 1.2 million, even as the country’s population of 48.7 million is expected to drop sharply in coming decades because of its low birth rate.
Many of the foreigners come here to toil at sea or on farms or in factories, providing cheap labor in jobs shunned by South Koreans. Southeast Asian women marry rural farmers who cannot find South Korean brides. People from English-speaking countries find jobs teaching English in a society obsessed with learning the language from native speakers.
For most South Koreans, globalization has largely meant increasing exports or going abroad to study. But now that it is also bringing an influx of foreigners into a society where 42 percent of respondents in a 2008 survey said they had never once spoken with a foreigner, South Koreans are learning to adjust — often uncomfortably.
In a report issued Oct. 21, Amnesty International criticized discrimination in South Korea against migrant workers, who mostly are from poor Asian countries, citing sexual abuse, racial slurs, inadequate safety training and the mandatory disclosure of H.I.V. status, a requirement not imposed on South Koreans in the same jobs. Citing local news media and rights advocates, it said that following last year’s financial downturn, “incidents of xenophobia are on the rise.”
Ms. Hahn said, “Even a friend of mine confided to me that when he sees a Korean woman walking with a foreign man, he feels as if his own mother betrayed him.”
In South Korea, a country repeatedly invaded and subjugated by its bigger neighbors, people’s racial outlooks have been colored by “pure-blood” nationalism as well as traditional patriarchal mores, said Seol Dong-hoon, a sociologist at Chonbuk National University.
Centuries ago, when Korean women who had been taken to China as war prizes and forced into sexual slavery managed to return home, their communities ostracized them as tainted. In the last century, Korean “comfort women,” who worked as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army, faced a similar stigma. Later, women who sold sex to American G.I.’s in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War were despised even more. Their children were shunned as “twigi,” a term once reserved for animal hybrids, said Bae Gee-cheol, 53, whose mother was expelled from her family after she gave birth to him following her rape by an American soldier.
Even today, the North Korean authorities often force abortion on women who return home pregnant after going to China to find food, according to defectors and human rights groups.
“When I travel with my husband, we avoid buses and subways,” said Jung Hye-sil, 42, who married a Pakistani man in 1994. “They glance at me as if I have done something incredible. There is a tendency here to control women and who they can date or marry, in the name of the nation.”
For many Koreans, the first encounter with non-Asians came during the Korean War, when American troops fought on the South Korean side. That experience has complicated South Koreans’ racial perceptions, Mr. Seol said. Today, the mix of envy and loathing of the West, especially of white Americans, is apparent in daily life.
The government and media obsess over each new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to see how the country ranks against other developed economies. A hugely popular television program is “Chit Chat of Beautiful Ladies” — a show where young, attractive, mostly Caucasian women who are fluent in Korean discuss South Korea. Yet, when South Koreans refer to Americans in private conversations, they nearly always attach the same suffix as when they talk about the Japanese and Chinese, their historical masters: “nom,” which means “bastards.” Tammy Chu, 34, a Korean-born film director who was adopted by Americans and grew up in New York State, said she had been “scolded and yelled at” in Seoul subways for speaking in English and thus “not being Korean enough.” Then, she said, her applications for a job as an English teacher were rejected on the grounds that she was “not white enough.”
Ms. Hahn said that after the incident in the bus last July, her family was “turned upside down.” Her father and other relatives grilled her as to whether she was dating Mr. Hussain. But when a cousin recently married a German, “all my relatives envied her, as if her marriage was a boon to our family,” she said.
The Foreign Ministry supports an anti-discrimination law, said Kim Se-won, a ministry official. In 2007, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that South Korea adopt such a law, deploring the widespread use of terms like “pure blood” and “mixed blood.” It urged public education to overcome the notion that South Korea was “ethnically homogenous,” which, it said, “no longer corresponds to the actual situation.”
But a recent forum to discuss proposed legislation against racial discrimination turned into a shouting match when several critics who had networked through the Internet showed up. They charged that such a law would only encourage even more migrant workers to come to South Korea, pushing native workers out of jobs and creating crime-infested slums. They also said it was too difficult to define what was racially or culturally offensive.
“Our ethnic homogeneity is a blessing,” said one of the critics, Lee Sung-bok, a bricklayer who said his job was threatened by migrant workers. “If they keep flooding in, who can guarantee our country won’t be torn apart by ethnic war as in Sri Lanka?”
“When I travel with my husband, we avoid buses and subways,” said Jung Hye-sil, 42, who married a Pakistani man in 1994. “They glance at me as if I have done something incredible
I wonder how do they treat Blacks and Blasian Kids
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Tue 03 Nov 2009 14:28 Post subject:
Spiral: actually maybe better than an Arab, but only if they think they are American blacks. When I say "better" I just mean a little better than this situation. haha
I had the same experience. I can only speak for myself but I've been to several Asian nations with my Japanese wife and Korea was the place we had the most issue. Japan we had the least issue. I think about the same number of Japanese think the way Koreans do but the difference is in expression. Showing negative feelings like this in public in Japan is frowned upon as "barbaric" they rarely show this kind of thing. People keep this to themselves. Most Japanese remain very hospitable. I've never heard of one foreigner in my time living in Japan or sense being attacked physically or verbally for having a Japanese wife or girlfriend.
When I was in China some people would say things, but most would just stare, make a joke, or pretend not to look. No one in Shanghai or Beijing ever became physically abusive or even verbally threatening to my face. I did know a woman who was half Chinese/Japanese, when people found out her father was Japanese they would tell her to her face her mother was a traitor or a whore. That situation is due to WWII though, many Chinese still hate Japan over some of the things that occurred. Actually the girls mother is from Taiwan (long story, why that is different).
Anyway, I've been to Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan with my wife.
In Vietnam it was similar to China as far as hostility. In Cambodia there was more curiosity and shock, but I didn't feel any hostility to speak of.
In South Korea, at night drunken Koreans would become threatening. They would nasty thing in Korean and English (because they thought my wife was a Korean with a black American soldier I was told). They would make nasty faces, even stalk us a few blocks...I was not really scared as much as annoyed. My wife swears she will never step foot in Korea again.
My theory is this. If Koreans were not so nationalistic based on what I know of their history and their location between two much larger powers, that have constantly invaded them and inflicted serious casualties in the population, they would not exist. They would have been absorbed by China or Japan. The Korean ethnic identity is very strong for a reason.
I'm not excusing their behavior, it is more that I can understand their xenophobia.
My theory is this. If Koreans were not so nationalistic based on what I know of their history and their location between two much larger powers, that have constantly invaded them and inflicted serious casualties in the population, they would not exist. They would have been absorbed by China or Japan. The Korean ethnic identity is very strong for a reason.
I'm not excusing their behavior, it is more that I can understand their xenophobia.
I understand them a little better now, thank you for the info
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Wed 04 Nov 2009 02:30 Post subject: Re: South Koreans and "Race"
Powell wrote:
So what's the reaction to Korean men being in the company of non-Korean women? The article didn't address that.
In Korea you are Korean if your father is Korean so that is viewed quite differently. I believe even know you can't get citizenship if your mother is KOrean and not your father. It was like this in Japan some time ago but they changed that at least 20 years ago.
Also let me saying else. Also Koreans are not an immigrant country, they never colonized anyone (not since ancient times and only folks on their border) and they are a democracy. If they want to be racist and not allow anyone to immigrate ever. That is their business. There is no international law saying they have to treat foreigners fairly, nonKoreans, give them citizenship, etc.
That's all a Western concept that developed at the fact Western nations have non-white and nonChristian minorities that came to these nations due to colonization, slavery, etc. Koreans have a fairly rich nation and they didn't do these things so they don't owe anyone anything.
I don't care for Korea, been there twice. However, I don't hate the place either, I get it. Despite what I said above, most people were still respectful, but they just had a larger % of a-holes than other nations I have went to in Asia. I work with Koreans, shop at Korean grocery stores in America...etc. I have never had an issue with them, neither has my wife.
“When I travel with my husband, we avoid buses and subways,” said Jung Hye-sil, 42, who married a Pakistani man in 1994. “They glance at me as if I have done something incredible
I wonder how do they treat Blacks and Blasian Kids
not so well. I know Hines Ward works with biracial Korean kids to give them a helping hand against the discrimination that they face in Korea
November 29, 2009
NY Times
Baby Boom of Mixed Children Tests South Korea
By MARTIN FACKLER
YEONGGWANG, South Korea — Just a few years ago, the number of pregnant women in this city had declined so much that the sparsely equipped two-room maternity ward at Yeonggwang General Hospital was close to shutting down. But these days it is busy again.
More surprising than the fact of this miniature baby-boom is its composition: children of mixed ethnic backgrounds, the offspring of Korean fathers and mothers from China, Vietnam and other parts of Asia. These families have suddenly become so numerous that the nurses say they have had to learn how to say “push” in four languages.
It is a similar story across South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of foreign women have been immigrating in recent years, often in marriages arranged by brokers. They have been making up for a shortage of eligible Korean women, particularly in underdeveloped rural areas like this one in the nation’s southwest.
Now, these unions are bearing large numbers of mixed children, confronting this proudly homogeneous nation with the difficult challenge of smoothly absorbing them.
South Korea is generally more open to ethnic diversity than other Asian nations with relatively small minority populations, like neighboring Japan. Nevertheless, it is far from welcoming to these children, who are widely known here pejoratively as Kosians, a compound of Korean and Asian.
“We bring these children into the world, but sometimes I worry,” said Kwak Ock-ja, 48, head maternity nurse at Yeonggwang General, where a third of the 132 births so far this year have been of children of mixed background, up from almost none a decade ago. “Prejudice against these families is something society must resolve.”
The surge in births of mixed children is the product of the similarly explosive growth here in marriages to foreigners, as a surplus of bachelors and the movement of eligible women to big cities like Seoul have increasingly driven Korean men in rural areas to seek brides in poorer parts of Asia. In addition, a preference for male babies has helped skew the population so there are fewer native-born women to marry. The Ministry of Public Security says the total number of children from what are called multicultural families in South Korea rose to 107,689 in May of this year from 58,007 last December, though the ministry said it might have slightly undercounted last year.
That is only about 1 percent of the approximately 12 million children in South Korea under the age of 19. But if marriages to foreigners continue to increase at their current rate — they accounted for 11 percent of all marriages here last year — more than one in nine children could be of mixed background by 2020, demographic researchers say.
The trend is even more pronounced in rural areas, where most of these marriages take place. Among farming households, 49 percent of all children will be multicultural by 2020, according to the Agricultural Ministry.
This increase is coming as South Korea’s overall birthrate has fallen to about 1.22 children per woman of child-bearing age, one of the world’s lowest rates. While many Koreans say they hope that the rising number of mixed children will help rejuvenate their rapidly graying society, they also say they fear that a failure to assimilate them could create the sort of poor, alienated underclass of ethnic minorities they see in the United States and Europe.
The increase has also begun to prompt a national soul-searching here about what it means to be Korean. While most of these children have Korean fathers and Korean citizenship, their dual ethnicity still gives them an uncertain status in a society where membership was long seen as being based on blood.
“The hard reality of our low birthrate is forcing us to realize that we can’t be homogeneous anymore,” said Park Hwa-seo, a professor of migration studies at Myongji University in Seoul. “It isn’t easy, but there is no turning back but to embrace these more diverse families.”
The increase of mixed-background children is so recent that relatively few have even reached elementary-school age. Still, signs of strain are already appearing.
According to the Education Ministry, the dropout rate of mixed-background children from elementary school is 15.4 percent, 22 times the national average. Part of the problem, social experts say, is the mothers’ lack of Korean-language skills, which prevents them from filling the expected social role of guiding children through the nation’s high-pressure education system.
Compounding the risk is the fact that most of the foreign women marry older farmers or manual laborers. Some 53 percent of mixed families live on earnings at or below the national minimum hourly wage of 4,000 won, or less than $3.50, according to the Welfare Ministry.
However, social experts say the biggest threat to the mixed children is that they will be ostracized in a society that began grappling with ethnic diversity only when labor shortages forced South Korea to accept foreign workers in the 1990s. The risk has been underscored by recent studies showing that the children of mixed marriages are more likely to be the victims of domestic abuse or bullying in school.
“I’m afraid we are already too late in responding,” said Suh Hae-jung, a researcher on gender equality at the government-financed Gyeonggido Family and Women’s Research Institute in Suwon. “On top of getting slighted for their color, their learning is also falling behind.”
Such concerns are quietly felt by Vicky Merano, 29, who came here from the Philippines six years ago to marry a Korean rice farmer 18 years her elder. Their 5-year-old daughter, Kim Da-som, does well in a local kindergarten, and on a recent evening she proudly showed off her ability to read the Korean language’s script and several Chinese characters.
Her father, Kim Hee-jong, beamed with pride and said that his relatives accepted the girl, including his parents, who share their 80-year-old tile-roofed farmhouse. Ms. Merano agreed but said she worried about what might happen as Da-som advanced beyond elementary school.
“Maybe if they don’t see me, they’ll just think my daughter is Korean,” Ms. Merano said.
The South Korean government says it has tried to respond quickly, opening 119 multicultural family support centers across the country in the past three years to offer help in education and vocational training.
The one in Yeonggwang, a small provincial city of 57,000 residents, opened in January. On a recent afternoon, its four small rooms were filled with Chinese, Thai and Filipino women learning to use computers and sewing machines while staff members watched their young children. Teachers also offered Korean-language classes to the mothers and children.
One woman, Edna Dela Cruz, said she preferred raising a family here because South Korea had better schools and a higher standard of living than the Philippines, where she was born. But she also worries about her 6-year-old son, who wants her to speak to him only in Korean so his classmates will not treat him as a pariah.
“Koreans tell me my child will be insulted because of me,” said Ms. Dela Cruz, 33, who married a local farmer.
Posted: Mon 30 Nov 2009 16:46 Post subject: Re: South Koreans and "Race"
Dragon Horse wrote:
That's all a Western concept that developed at the fact Western nations have non-white and nonChristian minorities that came to these nations due to colonization, slavery, etc. Koreans have a fairly rich nation and they didn't do these things so they don't owe anyone anything.
Actually many Western European nations never colonized anyone either (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, etc.), yet they are expected to accomodate people from other countries.
Most immigrants in Germany come from a fomer imperial power, Turkey, and not from any of Germany's colonies.
Are you arguing that countries that have colonial histories owe someone, anyone something and so should embrace diversity, even to the point that it undermines their societies? Just asking.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Mon 30 Nov 2009 19:52 Post subject: Re: South Koreans and "Race"
G-Man wrote:
Dragon Horse wrote:
That's all a Western concept that developed at the fact Western nations have non-white and nonChristian minorities that came to these nations due to colonization, slavery, etc. Koreans have a fairly rich nation and they didn't do these things so they don't owe anyone anything.
Actually many Western European nations never colonized anyone either (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, etc.), yet they are expected to accomodate people from other countries.
Most immigrants in Germany come from a fomer imperial power, Turkey, and not from any of Germany's colonies.
Are you arguing that countries that have colonial histories owe someone, anyone something and so should embrace diversity, even to the point that it undermines their societies? Just asking.
I said nothing about "undermining society" that is your issue. That really comes down to a matter of opinion, in "what is enough or too much". I'm not interested in getting into that argument, that is for the citizens of each nation to decide. I do believe that nations that colonized groups of people should likely be more sensitive to diversity issues as they "put this on those people" and many of those colonials were actually given citizenship (the case of many Algerians who fought on the French side during the civil war).
As far as nations that never colonized anyone, no I don't feel they have any special responsibility to embrace any time of "diversity", if they be in Europe or elsewhere.
Posted: Mon 30 Nov 2009 20:17 Post subject: Re: South Koreans and "Race"
G-Man wrote:
Actually many Western European nations never colonized anyone either (... Sweden, Norway...)
Umm. Have you ever wondered why the English word for an equine is horse, rather than cavallus or chevalle or, for that matter, equine or hippos or something along those lines? The word is Norse, as are many Old English words, because the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes conquered, colonized, and occupied a great swath of England for generations. Eventually, their descendants all started eating figgy pudding for Christmas and turned into Brits. (Sort of the way that Atilla's followers colonized France, but then started eating frogs and snails, and all turned into Frenchmen.)
Posted: Thu 10 Dec 2009 03:36 Post subject: Re: South Koreans and "Race"
fwsweet wrote:
G-Man wrote:
Actually many Western European nations never colonized anyone either (... Sweden, Norway...)
Umm. Have you ever wondered why the English word for an equine is horse, rather than cavallus or chevalle or, for that matter, equine or hippos or something along those lines? The word is Norse, as are many Old English words, because the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes conquered, colonized, and occupied a great swath of England for generations. Eventually, their descendants all started eating figgy pudding for Christmas and turned into Brits. (Sort of the way that Atilla's followers colonized France, but then started eating frogs and snails, and all turned into Frenchmen.)
LOL this is a great point. The Brits have been raped, pillaged and colonized so much over the centuries by various tribes, many of them Nordic. I always chuckle when someone says a "pure Anglo-Saxon" (you hear that a lot in the Southwest) because there's nothing pure about the modern day English, Welsh, Scots and also Irish. Yet today the Nordics have the reputation of nanny state socialists who wouldn't hurt a fly and the English are disparaged the world over for their imperialism. How the worm turns.
I'd also make the general point that the Turks were invited to Germany as Gastarbeiter (guest workers). They didn't just show up demanding to be let in the country. The history of the Ottoman Empire didn't have as much to do with this as the need in post-war Germany for laborers.
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When I say "better" I just mean a little better than this situation. haha
