Immigrants needed but not welcomed in Korea [AGENDA 2024]

Why do South Koreans discriminate against foreigners, and what can be done to make the country more welcoming to immigrants?

Children don traditional Korean clothing at a multicultural family support center in Buk District, Gwangju, on Jan. 19. [BUK DISTRICT OFFICE]

If South Korea didn't have immigrants and foreign residents, its demographic decline would already be well underway.

With a total fertility rate of 0.72 per woman — the lowest among developed nations and far below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman — the country’s total population would have fallen right back past the 50-million threshold it first crossed in 2013 without increasing numbers of foreigners residing in the country, according to data from Statistics Korea.

The agency also projected last month that if current immigration and fertility trends hold steady, one in 10 workers in Korea could be foreigners by 2042.

However, surveys show that most South Koreans are unenthusiastic about the prospect of welcoming foreigners from all over the world.

This sentiment has not gone unnoticed by the country’s foreign residents, who frequently report race- or nationality-based discrimination in employment, housing, social services, education or even dating opportunities in the country.

So why do South Koreans discriminate against foreigners, and what can be done to make the country more welcoming to immigrants?

A cold welcome for even ethnic Koreans

Historically, there has been little migration into South Korea, which has a largely homogenous population of around 51.3 million. According to government data released last year, only 4.8 percent, or 2.5 million, are long- and short-term foreign residents and naturalized citizens.

However, that figure belies a more complicated immigration situation dominated by ethnic Koreans, who make up 33 percent of foreign nationals in the country. In fact, there were almost as many ethnic Koreans from China — known in Korean as joseonjok — in South Korea in 2023 as there were migrants from Vietnam, Thailand and the United States, the other countries at the top of the country’s migration table that year.

Although the government emphasizes kinship with ethnic Koreans living abroad in line with its historical emphasis on the country’s so-called mono-ethnic composition, studies show that public attitudes toward such migrants are cooler in reality, especially among younger Koreans.

According to Kang Jeong-han, a sociology professor at Yonsei University who conducted a survey on immigration attitudes in 2016, South Koreans “are more likely to support liberal immigration policies when immigrants are framed as North Korean defectors” but express “significantly lower” support for other groups, such as ethnic Koreans from China, who are seen as a “semi-coethnic group,” or guest workers from Indonesia.

But Kang’s survey also found that individuals are “more likely to feel culturally and socially threatened” by joseonjok than by other groups.

Yoo Min-yi, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Migration Research and Training Center, told the Korea JoongAng Daily that younger South Koreans “place more value on how ethnic Koreans’ [economically] contribute to South Korean society and whether they are making an effort to assimilate ideologically, culturally and socioeconomically.”

However, the presence of large numbers of joseonjok immigrants in urban enclaves has sparked perceptions of a “cultural threat" among South Koreans, which, according to Yoo, prevents the former group from being included in South Korean society.

She also noted that younger South Koreans are wary of the possibility that joseonjok residents “might try to exercise collective political power, feel emotionally closer to China than to South Korea and potentially even compete with South Koreans in the labor market.”

Indirect expressions of such “cultural threat” are not difficult to find among South Koreans.

One 35-year-old South Korean housewife, who asked only to be identified by her surname Yoon in her interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily, said she specifically requested that a local housekeeping agency send her a local woman, and not an ethnic Korean from China, after unfavorable reviews of the latter category from an acquaintance.

“A woman in my building told me that her joseonjok housekeeper was caught stealing frozen food that had been in her refrigerator for months and tried to justify it by saying she thought it would have otherwise gone to waste,” she said, adding that the incident made her warier of “hiring people who don’t share quite the same cultural values as we do.”

Timothy Rich, a professor of political science at Western Kentucky University, also found through a study he published in The Diplomaty that while South Korean receptiveness toward ethnic Koreans from abroad appears to vary by place of origin, 42.22 percent overall disagreed or strongly disagreed with the idea of encouraging ethnic Koreans from abroad to move to South Korea, while only 19.46 percent said they would encourage such arrivals.

David Shin, a 32-year-old Bolivian of Korean heritage who has lived in Seoul for 15 years, recalled such discrimination during his time at a local university.

“Everyone treated me normally until they found out I was born and raised in Bolivia,” he said. “The teaching assistants wouldn’t help me as much as local students — they would give me only short answers but give lengthy explanations and examples to South Koreans.”

Perceptions colored by origin

Respondents to Rich’s survey exhibited even greater objection to the idea of most non-ethnic Korean groups migrating to South Korea, with one notable exception: Europeans.

While 62.92 percent said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the idea of encouraging people from Africa to move to South Korea, followed by 54.6 percent and 56.38 percent opposed to immigration from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, only 30.46 percent of respondents to Rich’s survey said they opposed European migration to the country.

In fact, Europeans were the only group for which a majority of respondents (52.98 percent) said they neither disagreed nor agreed with encouraging immigration, and 16.56 percent said they supported encouraging European migration to South Korea — a higher proportion than those who said the same for ethnic Koreans from China or North Korea.

Devan, a 33-year-old white South African English instructor who has lived in Korea for seven years, said such race-based discrimination was readily apparent in the private teaching field.

“I tried to assist two educated and experienced African friends to find teaching jobs, and one school that I knew seemed happy to hire one of my friends after reviewing their resume. But after the interview, they called me and seemed upset that I did not mention that my friend was black,” he recalled, adding that directors at hagwon, or private cram schools, “don’t want to hire black people for fear of what parents might say.”

One Filipino Singaporean who frequently visits Korea on business but declined to be named in this article also said he noticed Koreans “treat people with lighter skin more positively.”

Matt, a 46-year-old Australian who has lived in Korea for almost five years, noted that Koreans are “friendly and welcoming to visitors in general” but also acknowledged that “white people have an easier time” in the country, and that he was occasionally denied service or entry to venues when he was accompanied by people of other ethnicities.

Sojin Yu, a professor of East Asian studies at the University of Sheffield, believes that South Korean perceptions linking nationality to class form part of the picture of discrimination.

In her 2022 study of South Korea’s multicultural family support centers, which were established mainly to support the integration of foreign wives who had married Korean men, Yu found that the national origin of the non-Korean spouse “was the primary factor for Koreans in determining their social status, and whether they were suitable for the pejorative appellation ‘multicultural’ and not the more positive ‘international.’”

From her interviews with foreign women who frequented the centers, Yu noted that “those from countries that are popularly perceived to be economically less ‘developed’ than Korea, such as Vietnam, Thailand, China, Uzbekistan, had more direct experience of unambiguous discrimination and racism than those from economically more ‘developed’ countries, such as Japan.”

Yoo from the Migration Research and Training Center largely concurred that negative South Korean perceptions regarding foreigners owed much to their socioeconomic composition.

“The majority of foreigners currently residing long-term in Korea are foreign workers with an E-9 visa, foreign spouses, and ethnic Koreans with a foreign nationality, but most of them are either employed in occupations that South Koreans avoid despite domestic demand for such workers, so they often fall short of the average South Korean in terms of educational background and income,” she noted, adding that “given such conditions at present, foreigners residing in Korea, especially from China and Southeast Asia, are subject to prejudice that their living standards are lower.”

How to change attitudes

Since South Korean perceptions of different categories of migrants appear linked to prejudices about their economic status based on their place of origin, people will likely become more supportive of migration if popular assumptions about their socioeconomic status change.

This is no small feat in a country where 96 percent of people are ethnically alike and have little exposure in their daily lives to people from other parts of the world.

However, if South Korean politicians are serious about building popular support for immigration reform and attracting migrants, they should devise an effective strategy to shift perceptions regarding foreigners and the countries they come from.

According to Yoo, this entails not only a change in rhetoric but also enacting policies to actively improve the socioeconomic position of immigrants, which she cautioned would be a long process.

“Although there will be no visible effects in the short term, continuous improvement in education, income and living standards of foreigners residing in South Korea is probably the strongest way to foster their acceptance by broader society,” she said.

Yoo also noted that because South Koreans “favor foreigners who appear to contribute more to society than they receive in benefits,” the government should “gradually reduce the support system for multicultural families and slowly shift to a mid-to-long-term policy aimed at strengthening the capabilities of second and third generations of immigrants.”

Agenda 2024 Immigration Crisis Part 3

Korea faces an existential crisis with the lowest birthrate in the world and a rapidly aging population. As the country braces for the reality of a shrinking workforce — which could deal a sharp blow to its economic growth in the near future — alternative solutions grow more urgent, including embracing more immigration. The question remains: Is Korea ready? The Korea JoongAng Daily will examine the difficulties faced by foreigners wishing to work here as the government, experts, civic groups and the public mull the need for more comprehensive immigration policies so that the country becomes truly multicultural.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]