The KWB noticed that several articles have come out in Korean Media concerning the issues of Multicultural Families and their Multi-Racial children. This update show just how far Korean society has come…and how much further it must go. There are positive signs though, but for the families and their children they will have to meet the challenge daily.
By Jonathan Hicap
Korea Times Correspondent
Discrimination Still Lingers for Multicultural Families
SEOUL ― Despite social integration programs and millions of dollars in funds poured in by the Korean government to help multicultural families live at ease, the sting of discrimination is still a problem for foreign wives and their mixed-race children as Koreans have not accepted them as part of society.
This is the prevailing sentiment among foreign wives married to Koreans who say that despite their efforts to blend in, they still feel that they have a long way to go before they can be accepted as Korean.
One of them is Jean, 36, a Filipina who married a Korean in 2007 and moved to Korea the same year. She is happily married to her husband but said Koreans regard foreign spouses and their children as lower in social status.
``It is an unfortunate fact in Korea that multicultural families are second-class citizens since they are not pure Korean in blood,'' she told The Korea Times.
Based on data from Statistics Korea, there were 36,204 international marriages in Korea in 2008, which amounts to 11 percent of the total 327,700 marriages held in the country for that year. In 2000 there were 11,605 international marriages.
Out of the 28,163 marriages, the number of Chinese women marrying Koreans amounted for 13,203 or almost half of the total number, followed by Vietnamese with 8,282, Filipino women with 1,857 and Japanese with 1,162.
In contrast, Korean women who wed foreigners preferred those from industrialized countries. Last year, 2,743 Japanese men were married to Koreans, followed by Chinese (2,101), American (1,347), Canadian (371) and Australian (164).
By the end of 2008, there were about 182,712 multicultural families in Korea.
In 2008, there were 116,535 divorce cases in South Korea, according to Statistics Korea. Of these, 11,255 cases involved divorce between Koreans and foreign spouses.
The KWB notes that YES, some of the marriages end up in DIVORCE. As you see here they are exactly Ten percent of the total divorce cases in 2008. The majority are Korean men married to foreign women who divorce. If we focus ONLY on the divorce cases one could say that international marriages are doomed, bad, too difficult. What about the huge majority that are slowly changing the rural areas of Korea? Where most of the families are changing the demographics as more and more MIXED-BREEDS like the Korean War Baby are growing up. Over 100,000 HoNurAh, nice word for Mixed-Blood children are now flooding into Korean schools.
For some children perhaps they need to get “a rock in a sock” instructional…(Look here)
``Korean society is now becoming increasingly diverse,'' declared Vice Minister Kim Sung-Hwan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade last year before the U.N. Human Rights Council during the universal public review of Korea's human rights issue.
…Han suggested in the report that Koreans should shake off their stereotypes and start to esteem migrant women's culture, diversity and human rights. ``Married migrated women are Korean citizens. When they are respected not as Koreanized citizens but as citizens who have an identity of dual culture and seek harmony in diversity, the way for a multicultural and multiethnic society will be paved,'' Han said.
Hope and Change, is happening NOW, the so called “homogeneous” society of Korea is one of the PAST. Get with the program folks, accept the multicultural society with open arms. Or there will be many angry children like the KWB, with “Rocks in their Socks”!
Multicultural Society Korea
Breaking Down the walls of Discrimination
SNUE takes lead in quest for multicultural society
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