Not many people may know that May 20th is the ‘Together Day (segaein-ui nal)’ which has been annually celebrated to raise awareness of cultural diversity in Korea since 2008. And it is followed by ‘the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development’ on May 21st, an annual international observance to promote people’s understanding of the values of cultural diversity and to encourage people to live together in harmony. It was proclaimed by the United Nations in November 2001, following the adoption of a Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). These domestic and international commemorative days share the basic intentions to promote cultural dialogue and understanding among people with different cultural backgrounds in order to avoid social tensions and conflicts.
    Over last two decades, Korea has become one of the major migrant receiving countries in Asia. As of March 2014, the number of foreign-born residents in Korea has passed the 1.6 million mark, representing approximately 3.1 percent of the country’s population. The types of migration into Korea are diverse, including work, marriage, study, business, investment and seeking political asylum. As the number of migrants is growing steadily, the Korean government is giving close attention to the introduction of policies to address key challenges that the migrant population faces in Korea. Since the early 2000s, the government and NGOs launched a campaign for the adoption of the term ‘multicultural family (Damunhwa gajok)’ to denote cross-border marriage couples and their children in Korea. The term, “multi-culture or multicultural (Damunhwa)” has now become widely used in the media and policy programs. This trend nevertheless raises a question: does the mere visible presence of ‘cultures’ and ‘newcomers’ in the country suggest the natural transformation of the society towards a ‘multicultural’ one, respecting cultural diversity?
    Under the name of “multicultural (Damunhwa) family policy”, social integration has emerged as one of the major policy areas, particularly for marriage migrants. The government has taken vigorous steps to introduce a series of programs for marriage migrants under this policy framework. While laudable, aspects of the policy and its implementation have been constantly questioned by academics and practitioners since the focus and rationale for the policy do not adequately consider the diversity of the migrant population in the country as well as the specific local conditions affecting the integration experience. The policy places far too much emphasis on familiarization with, and adaptation to, Korean culture. Besides, these policies tend to define those families merely as passive receivers or beneficiaries of social services. The principal aim of these policy measures is to provide very basic social security for marriage migrants and their children, while the promotion of the fundamental rights of recognition, equality and diversity for the groups is largely missing in the main tasks.
    Under the circumstances, “Damunhwa families” have become major beneficiaries of the government’s welfare programs and the corporate social responsibility projects of big companies. Predictably, this one-way policy wrought an adverse effect in the way that multicultural families are now viewed as vulnerable social groups sponging off the tax payer. It could be quite painful to admit, but Korea’s multicultural policy has created another social hierarchy and segregation among migrant groups within Korean society. In order to commemorate the genuine intentions of the ‘Together day’ and ‘the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development’, it is time to reconsider labeling marriage migrants and their children as “multi-culture (Damunhwa)”, which has created negative stereotypes on marriage migrants and their children, placing a heavy social stigma on them. Obviously, this adverse effect was never meant to be by the people who initially created the term, though. Promoting cultural dialogue is not only a process of migrants respecting the host society and fulfilling responsibilities and obligations as citizens, but also a reciprocal process in which the host society respect and tolerate differences and diversity, helping them become part of the society. After all, the relation between migrants and the host society is not assimilatory but dialectical in the way that respecting cultural diversity is conceived as a social practice and an individual and collective ‘learning process’, thereby making room for multiple spaces of belonging.

By Julia Jiwon Shin, Assistant professor, Department of Sociology