The number of foreign residents living in Korea is 2.3 million, with the total population exceeding 4%, requiring policies for foreign families to adapt to Korean life and social integration. Multicultural households account for more than 2% of the sublease population, and the ratio of marriage immigrants and naturalized people for more than 15 years is more than 60%. However, Korea’s multicultural acceptance is less than 54 points, the lowest among OECD countries.
At this level, the discrimination that multicultural families experience in their daily lives remains.
Therefore, Korea should strive to become a society that increases inclusion in multicultural families, increases multicultural acceptance through education and respect for mutual culture, and increases multicultural acceptance and diversity through changes in multicultural perception in the long run. In addition, the main requirement is that the general family members are married immigrants or families who have acquired Korean nationality by naturalization. Still, more foreigners must adapt to Korean society by defining them as foreigners who have obtained work visas and residence visas for more than two years.
In addition, it avoids discrimination on the grounds of nationality, race, ethnicity, etc. It gradually enhances multicultural acceptance through respect for mutual differentiation by establishing a new bill for multicultural awareness across the country.
It should be raised to the OCED average so that various cultures can be respected in significant policies in the long run.
The number of married immigrants, which had increased by more than 30% every year since 2002, increased by about 5% year-on-year to about 160,000 as of 2018. Until the 1990s, most Japanese women entered the country through religious organizations. Still, since the 2000s, marriage immigrants from China and the Philippines, and recently, citizenship from Asia, Europe, the Americas, the Ocean, and South America have tended to vary.
Multicultural families have increased in earnest since 1995, and multicultural families have increased significantly. In addition, the direction of education is an essential task for multicultural students when the number of students is currently over 100,000.
From April 2021 to February 2022, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education operates an Online Language Exchange Program involving 71 schools from nine countries, including Korea, Australia, and China. Online cooperative classes spoken in the other country’s language are held in real-time at least once a month on the video conferencing platform. Korean students and international students will have a unique opportunity to understand other countries’ cultural history and art. About 150 schools in Australia and New Zealand currently adopt Korean as their official foreign language. They are working with Hangeul School to understand Korean culture and educate the Korean language. It will be an excellent opportunity to increase cultural exchanges that have become difficult in the COVID-19 era and meet new opportunities and cultures for the next generation.
In a survey of Korean students who participated in online cooperative classes, satisfaction was 4.34 out of 5, and 85% of the participating students said they were satisfied and wanted to join in the next lesson again. Some students are said to be continuing active exchanges on social media even after the program is over. In the future, the local education office and the Ministry of Education believe that education is needed to increase various cultural exchange programs nationwide and increase diversity and acceptance for more children. Also, I think teachers and leaders participating in the program should find ways to modify and secure suitable educational methods and guidance plans for the post-COVID-19 era.
Online collaborative classes consist of global citizenship education. They should be developed as a course to foster internationalization that fosters critical thinking through prior activities and topic discussions between Korean students, Australian and New Zealand students. Through this program, let us make it an opportunity to respect various cultures, objectively view ourselves and our own culture, and lay the foundation for growing into a global citizen.
Korea, which once lived in a monolithic language and culture, is transitioning into various races, cultures, and languages. However, it is by no means easy to recognize people from multiple cultures, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and China, which are always concerned about the demotion and division of the European community due to refugee migration, the atmosphere, and votes of exclusion of immigration.
Due to the influence of the Korean Wave and the increase in foreign exchange students, the number of foreigners living in Korea is increasing year by year. But, regrettably, the prejudice against foreigners is still low. As of 2018, the multicultural acceptance score remained at 54, the lowest in the OECD.
David (26), an Indian-New Zealand exchange student, lives in Seoul. In one class, he asked his friends, “Indian??” He said he would be good at math. At first, it was considered insignificant because it was a compliment, but as time went by, he was offended. On the outside, it can be felt like a compliment that “black people are good at music and running and white people are good at English,” but it is a prejudice. It is called “positive prejudice” in psychological terms, and prejudice is the same as negative or positive. I think it’s enough to feel discriminated against to evaluate yourself according to stereotypes without accepting yourself as you are.
Koreans are particularly interested in appearance and appearance, and foreign students and migrants who visit Korea are under a lot of stress in evaluating their appearance, such as “big eyes, small faces, pretty blue eyes, really high nose.” He also complained that he wanted to live like ordinary Korean students and office workers, but only the sense of difference grows as time goes by.
Aidan (26), who came from Australia, said he was an extremely ordinary person in Australia. Still, in Korea, he evaluated himself as a model, saying he was uncomfortable with unwanted attention and interest rather than praise. As an ordinary student and employee, I wanted to be a member of the Republic of Korea, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry that I was always a stranger in Korea. A Russian international student who arrived in Korea thinking that he would improve his skills by talking to Korean students in Korean regretted that many students speak English only because they are white.
I think these problems emerged from the subtitle of education. I believe that Korea can enter the developed countries simultaneously as the economy, culture, and society can become a country encompassing the world by interacting with children raised in various cultures at a young age and increasing multicultural acceptance in the long term.
Also, I think various cultures, exchanges, and education should be expanded nationwide. The multicultural acceptance of Seoul and metropolitan acceptance was about 68 points, more than 10 points higher than the national average. It shows that the gap between education and acceptance varies from region to region. The Ministry of Education and local offices of education should provide many children with opportunities to experience new cultures through MOUs with schools in other countries and sisterhood relationships.
According to a comparison of the 2015 and 2018 surveys conducted every three years by the Korea Women’s Policy Institute, it was announced that the multicultural acceptance score of the people fell in 2018. I think the lower score is the gap between consciousness and reality. According to the researcher’s analysis, there is a universal sense of accepting multiculturalism as a global citizen. Still, when it comes to our problem, it turns into a passive attitude, such as the Yemen refugee crisis and the Korean people’s consciousness of Korean-Chinese. The willingness to interact with migrants decreases and migrants should unilaterally assimilate into Korean culture is growing.
I think the base of this consciousness comes from the critical thinking that multicultural foreign policies are not successfully progressing. In particular, it is true that Koreans who have heard the news of refugee issues rising socially in major European countries called advanced countries to have doubts about the fundamental question of whether multiculturalism is necessary.
On October 16, the New Zealand Embassy’s New Zealand Education Promotion Agency conducted a New Zealand global competency qualification program with Korean high school students and New Zealand high school students selected through the Gangwon International Education Center and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. The New Zealand Global Competency Self-Program is a high school student program run by Messi University in Auckland through global citizenship education in New Zealand. Mokpo sponsors students to perform and discuss online tasks, understand themselves and others, and enhance their knowledge as global citizens.
It is contributing to enhancing multicultural acceptance, a survey showed. When comparing the acceptance scores between multicultural and non-participants, there was a unique gap between adults and adolescents. When the general public participated in education (57.70) and when they did not participate (52.57), there was a difference of about 5 points or more, and teenagers had about 3 points between the participation score (72) and the non-participation score (69). I think this number shows the impact of education on multicultural acceptance. I believe this results from proving to adolescents and adults that they need to receive gifted education for a smooth relationship with migrants.
Throughout New Zealand, an annual event called INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE WEEK is held in the fourth week of May to introduce and learn diverse languages worldwide and provide students with opportunities to explore the values of diversity, community, and respect.
New Zealand, a society composed of many immigrants, ranked fourth in the 2018 multicultural policy evaluation. I think it can be a model country as Korea’s leading country in line with increasing immigrants. In this respect, I think we should pay attention to the inclusion, diversity, and consistency of New Zealand’s multicultural education. The principle of cultural diversity is essential to recognize the value of linguistic and cultural diversity of each nation. Still, I think the start starts with respecting the value of an individual. In a healthy society, I don’t believe individual values should be affected by whether the individual belongs to a minority, majority, mainstream, or non-mainstream community. There is a need for education that recognizes each individual’s value and allows all students to accept it without directly seeing it as a national or ethnic appetizer.
Therefore, I think we should ultimately recognize and express individual diversity, cultural diversity education and accept each other to respect individual cultural elements. According to the curriculum in New Zealand, the curriculum reflects the cultural diversity of everyone, the value of history and tradition. Therefore, in New Zealand schools, principles are incorporated into the entire curriculum without stopping cultural diversity education in only one class, one unit, and one subject. The event is not only a one-time event, but it is not a short-term spotlight when society’s attention is focused on an accident, but a detailed development in the appetizer curriculum and is consistently reflected.
In addition, I think teachers’ consistent encouragement, respect, attitude, social inclusion, and related subjects and activities should be essential elements for the successful development of cultural diversity education.
New Zealand’s cultural diversity events and environments encourage students to see and participate in person. Experiential education that you can experience and feel with your whole body, not one-time events that end with simple knowledge or cramming education, will be remembered for a longer time in students’ lives.
I think cultural diversity in Korean education and society is a process of making as it is a transition period that begins now. I hope that there will be an environment where students can grow into global citizens who can develop further as an experience that enriches their lives, not as a subject or knowledge that increases the number of tasks to study.
