Internal Orientalism and multicultural acts: the challenges of multicultural education in Korea

Abstract

This essay examines how the projects seeking to promote damunhwa, literally translated as multi-culture, in South Korea inadvertently reinforce cultural stereotypes and reproduce cultural hierarchies. Unlike many studies that focus on discrimination against racial or ethnic minority populations, this paper argues that the seemingly benevolent acts of the majority towards ethnic minority populations in Korea produce unintended consequences. Based on descriptive content analysis of Internet news stories, this paper demonstrates the manner in which the dominant Korean society develops an oppositional binary between citizen and foreigner. Building on Edward Said’s work, this paper introduces the concept of internal Orientalism that highlights the teleology of cultural distinction by rendering minority populations with weak subjectivity and stigmatizing them as vulnerable populations through a multitude of policies and programmes designed to help them. Doing so ironically and simultaneously constructs opportunities for the Korean society to create a benevolent society, thereby crystallizing an interdependent binary between the dominant and minority populations.

Keywords:

• Benevolent society
• damunhwa
• internal Orientalism
• multi-culture
• Korea

Notes

1. Korea’s social integration policies consist of efforts to culturally integrate the marriage migrants, most of whom come from the South-East Asia, the Philippines and China, that intermarried with Korean men in rural areas. The Korean Government established more than 100 Multicultural Family Support Centers throughout the country to provide a variety of social services, educational opportunities for the brides and their mixed heritage children, and cultural integration programmes (Kim, 2011).

2. The term ‘multiculturalism’ is used in varying contexts to describe both the conditions and criteria of particular social, economic and political arrangements in a given nation state. Classical works on the topic are vast, and we seek not to list them here. In the South Korean context, however, this term is often used synonymously with the Korean word, damunhwa, which means literally ‘multi-culture.’ Currently, there is no uniformly accepted definition of this term, since it is used widely by governments, non-government organizations, television shows and school textbooks. However, the general understanding of this term may refer to any policies, programmes and perspectives that recognize and value the importance of living in harmony with people of diverse cultural backgrounds.

3. The term ‘multicultural performative acts’ derived from Judith Butler’s notion of ‘gender performatives’ (Butler, 1988) where she viewed gender as a performance through which individuals reinforce the socially resonant meanings regarding gender roles and identity Similarly, multicultural performatives encompass a wide range of individual and institutional acts or performances that reify the concept of damunhwa in the Korean context

4. By ‘ontology,’ it refers to what actually exists, thus the division between the Orient and the Occident can be understood in terms of the ‘objective’ or real differences in language, customs, religion and mores. The epistemological divisions denote the manner in which we come to know and understand these differences through socially and culturally ascribed meanings, thus these involve our valuation of these perceived differences.

5. The first stanza of Kipling’s poem, ‘The White Man’s Burden,’ captures this idea: ‘Take up the White Man’s burden –; send forth the best ye breed –; Go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives’ need; To wait, in heavy harness, on fluttered folk and wild –; Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.’ (Kipling, 1899) This famous line was a rallying cry for Americans to go abroad and serve the needs of the Filipino people the year after the Spanish-American War.

6. By ‘conditions of inequality,’ we refer to both latent, or unconscious, and manifest, or explicit, forms of discrimination that is embedded in social and cultural structures. There is a long history of colourism in Korean society where dark-skinned persons are socially devalued due to the perception that they earn livelihood outside of an office environment, such as in rural communities. Also, historically, children of mixed ethnic or racial heritages, particularly those who have a dark complexion, with certain non-white features, are equally denigrated due to the history of race mixing with American soldiers who are stationed in Korea. This perception is also largely gendered because many of the women who bear children with US soldiers were perceived to have been involved in sex work, which adds another layer of social valuation that affects the children of such mixed marriages. Given this context, ethnic minorities, who are visibly dark or whose parent may be from economically less well-to-do countries, are subject to a variety of mistreatments and discrimination, such as bullying in schools, social ostracism and employment discrimination.

7. Various sociologists expound upon the concepts of norm construction and routinized acts. Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of habitus and Giddens (1984) theory of structuration spoke to how individual acts simultaneously reproduce and create conditions for future action contexts, thus exhibiting and embodying structural qualities.

8. A fine line separates between recognizing society’s structural inequalities and ascribing social characteristics to a population based exclusively on the perception of frailty and weakness. The former calls into question the socially embedded structures and subtleties of power that produce conditions of inequalities, in terms of the distribution of wealth, access to pecuniary and educational opportunities, and social-psychological wages of tangible and intangible differences. The latter, however, socially stigmatizes the population by associating the community characteristics with intrinsic and inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities, thus leading to social marginalization, a difference construction based on an inferiority-superiority binary, and an opportunity to do, ironically, philanthropic works on their behalf.

9. This is also what the son of Warren Buffet called ‘conscience laundering’ where those with means outweighing their needs ‘give back’ (Buffett, 2013).

10. The phrase relational epistemology refers to the co-construction of the self and the other discursively through racialized Orientalist narrative, which suggests ‘the natural existence of categorical and essential differences between … the other and the self’ (Hirose & Pih, 2011, p. 1487).

11. Experiencing non-Korean cultures reflects a cosmopolitan lifestyle where an increasing number of Koreans now travel to diverse, overseas destinations, including South-East Asia, the Philippines, Europe and the Americas. For many who are unable to afford such excursions, the availability of multicultural festivals allows them to experience, albeit in a limited way, the seemingly middle-class sensibilities.

12. By ‘borders,’ we refer to both symbolic and physical boundaries that demarcate difference through performative acts and segregation of social, economic and cultural spaces. The performative acts consist of a wide range of actions, both positive and negative, that reify cultural differences by ascribing social values to those differences. The construction of certain knowledge about particular ethnic groups also reinforces future action contexts that mediate social relations in workplaces, neighbourhoods and other public spaces.

13. Multicultural education should not be perceived as the sole responsibility of educators, but it requires a concerted effort on the part of institutions and organizations that seek to promote and address inequity deriving from cultural conflicts and structural disadvantages. Thus, broadly defined, multicultural education involves the work of the various branches and levels of the government, the business and the non-government sector.

14. Aquino (2016, p. 105) argued that ‘institutional anti-racism challenges structural formations of racialized inequality,’ and extended the point further by stating that ‘everyday anti-racism’ ‘… identifies the cultural repertoires that frame how individuals deal with racism across different contexts.’

15. Mosley (2010, p. 449) used the term ‘critical race literacy pedagogy’ as a ‘subset of the approaches’ of ‘multicultural education, culturally responsive teaching, and anti-racist teaching’ that ‘practice racial literacy in school settings.’

16. Lee and Walsh (2015, p. 45) suggested that, while the concept of ‘social justice education’ is widely advocated to ‘address the educational inequities facing immigrant students,’ they point to the lack of adequate conceptualization and engagement. This concern, too, is particularly pertinent in the discussion about South Korea’s multicultural education that attempts to mitigate not only the blatant forms of discrimination based on race and culture, but also how the mundane, everyday practices of differentiation contributes to social hierarchies.