Multicultural children on steady rise in S Korea
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Kim Junghyun
Michelle, a Filipino woman who married a South Korean, is among tens of thousands of interracial couples in South Korea.
As her son approaches pre-school age, her concerns are slowly growing.
"My son hasn't encountered any explicit discrimination yet. But things might change once he goes to school," she said.
And she is not alone in her worry.
With 36,204 interracial marriages last year adding to the already rapidly growing foreign population of 1.1 million, South Korea, once taking pride in being an ethnically homogeneous nation, is increasingly becoming something the country never considered itself to be: a multicultural society.
Multicultural children, whose number now reaches some 100,000, are the first generation of a substantial population of interracial unions that drastically increased during the early 1990s due to a huge influx of married migrants, many of them from China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Challenges those children face, which ranges from language barriers to discrimination based on different skin colors, have recently come under spotlight as the government and advocacy groups scramble to meet their needs, albeit belatedly.
A recent survey conducted by the Multi-cultural Family Support Centers showed about 30 percent of multicultural children find catching up with school and doing homework difficult, double the rate of South Korean children in a similar situation, while only 65 percent of the multicultural children said they are happy, compared to 77 percent South Korean children.
"Married migrant women often talk about how difficult it is to help their kids do homework because they can't really communicate well," said an official at a local branch of Multi-cultural Family Support Centers who asked to stay anonymous. "They need real help. "
Many multicultural children, feeling alienated at school and unable to keep up with study, often quit school, with the percentage of dropouts rising as children grow up, local media have reported.
In a response to growing problems, Seoul's Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs recently announced plans to provide Korean language education for such children, set up local child care centers for them and increase financial support for married migrants who are yet to obtain South Korean citizenship.
Dispatching child care workers for infants from multicultural families is also under consideration, according to the ministry.
The Ministry of Defense also appears to be moving to embrace diversity as more and more males from multicultural families will be drafted, in a country where all able-bodied men over the age of 19 are all required to serve the army under a two-year mandatory conscription system.
Race-based discrimination in military will be banned, under the ministry's blueprint, while mixed-race males are allowed to join the military together with others from similar backgrounds, according to local media reports.
Ruling party lawmaker Won You-chul is even planning to nominate a member of a multicultural family as a candidate for a local election in June under the proportional representation system, an attempt he says is aimed at making diverse voices heard.
But the country seems to have a long way to go.
"Of course such changes are welcome, but we'll have to wait and see how much it would actually help," the official at the support center said.
Married migrants also welcome the changes, but see other challenges untackled.
"Regardless of the government policy, I still don't speak Korean that well. So I can't really follow conversations in Korean between my husband and my son," said Vangie, another Filipino woman who only gave her first name.
"I don't understand what my own son says -- isn't that a problem?"
-- Xinhua
Michelle, a Filipino woman who married a South Korean, is among tens of thousands of interracial couples in South Korea.
As her son approaches pre-school age, her concerns are slowly growing.
"My son hasn't encountered any explicit discrimination yet. But things might change once he goes to school," she said.
And she is not alone in her worry.
With 36,204 interracial marriages last year adding to the already rapidly growing foreign population of 1.1 million, South Korea, once taking pride in being an ethnically homogeneous nation, is increasingly becoming something the country never considered itself to be: a multicultural society.
Multicultural children, whose number now reaches some 100,000, are the first generation of a substantial population of interracial unions that drastically increased during the early 1990s due to a huge influx of married migrants, many of them from China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Challenges those children face, which ranges from language barriers to discrimination based on different skin colors, have recently come under spotlight as the government and advocacy groups scramble to meet their needs, albeit belatedly.
A recent survey conducted by the Multi-cultural Family Support Centers showed about 30 percent of multicultural children find catching up with school and doing homework difficult, double the rate of South Korean children in a similar situation, while only 65 percent of the multicultural children said they are happy, compared to 77 percent South Korean children.
"Married migrant women often talk about how difficult it is to help their kids do homework because they can't really communicate well," said an official at a local branch of Multi-cultural Family Support Centers who asked to stay anonymous. "They need real help. "
Many multicultural children, feeling alienated at school and unable to keep up with study, often quit school, with the percentage of dropouts rising as children grow up, local media have reported.
In a response to growing problems, Seoul's Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs recently announced plans to provide Korean language education for such children, set up local child care centers for them and increase financial support for married migrants who are yet to obtain South Korean citizenship.
Dispatching child care workers for infants from multicultural families is also under consideration, according to the ministry.
The Ministry of Defense also appears to be moving to embrace diversity as more and more males from multicultural families will be drafted, in a country where all able-bodied men over the age of 19 are all required to serve the army under a two-year mandatory conscription system.
Race-based discrimination in military will be banned, under the ministry's blueprint, while mixed-race males are allowed to join the military together with others from similar backgrounds, according to local media reports.
Ruling party lawmaker Won You-chul is even planning to nominate a member of a multicultural family as a candidate for a local election in June under the proportional representation system, an attempt he says is aimed at making diverse voices heard.
But the country seems to have a long way to go.
"Of course such changes are welcome, but we'll have to wait and see how much it would actually help," the official at the support center said.
Married migrants also welcome the changes, but see other challenges untackled.
"Regardless of the government policy, I still don't speak Korean that well. So I can't really follow conversations in Korean between my husband and my son," said Vangie, another Filipino woman who only gave her first name.
"I don't understand what my own son says -- isn't that a problem?"
-- Xinhua