Immigration and Korea as advanced nation

By Bernard Rowan

Immigration is an important issue for Korea’s future as an advanced nation. Whether and to what extent South Koreans tolerate and embrace immigration implies something for how they will negotiate one important aspect of the eventual transition for North Korea with reunification. More immediately, immigration will help South Korea meet its general economic interests, transcend perceptions of scarcity and ethnocentric attitudes, and address the implications of South Korea’s aging population. Korean advancement will turn in part on its willingness to become more multicultural through immigration.

Many advanced nations today face declining populations as a result of delayed marriage, longer life expectancies, and smaller family size. Perhaps advancement tends to entropy without corrective policies. In itself, there is nothing wrong with a smaller population, but the demographics of public budgets and policies also are involved. A smaller population with a higher percentage of elderly relative to younger, working-age citizens creates problems for tax revenues, social policies, and pensions. It also situates generational gaps in expectations, social processes and structures, and perceptions. In this situation, it should be no surprise that calls emerge for an immigration policy that encourages the inflow of persons.

I would argue that advanced nations need immigration, just as all nations must accept immigration in a globalized and internationalizing world system. Often viewed as a threat or in defensive terms, immigration is scientifically understood as a benefit to societies. Immigration revitalizes, adds diversity, and enables countries with declining populations to enhance their social systems with new members. Immigrants tend to be people who have and will have families, thus increasing the potential to renew an advanced nation inter-generationally.

South Korea remains a self-defined culturally homogeneous society. Its attitudinal and behavioral challenges to embracing further diversification and immigration are not insurmountable, and they are certainly not unique. It also should be said that many Koreans enjoy and favor a society open to more foreigners.

Economically, in particular in bad times, South Koreans ― like Americans and other peoples ― resist immigration as a source of perceived and actual labor competition. This ramps the tendency to permit or situate cultural scapegoating. Many citizens with these types of biases may also be disinclined to internal policies that stimulate increased population or to cuts in public subsidies and budgets that result in part from declining working populations. Advanced nations should avoid succumbing to the “something for nothing” attitude. This may be joined to a spend-on-credit-and-public-debt mindset that sweeps national, state/provincial, and local budgeting.

As a matter of policy and planning, South Korea should allow more foreigners from China, from Southeast Asian nations, and from elsewhere to become part of the next generation in 21st century Korea. Just as the United States is viewed as a country of opportunity, South Korea’s economic success draws foreigners to work and live in your country. Many of them want to remain.

Immigrants to Korea need education in the Korean language, access to the same services and institutions that other Koreans enjoy, supports for those who enter the workforce, including women, and enforcement of applicable laws to protect their rights. Koreans need educational messages and school curricula that incorporate balanced discussions of immigration, of Korea’s intention to treat immigrants lawfully, respectfully, and equally, and the contributions of immigrants to Korean society.

The plight of women workers, the problems of immigrants who seek asylum, and the tendency of migrant workers to remain in Korea illegally are just a few of the special attending issues that require governmental and non-governmental attention. Major agencies and companies, such as Citibank Korea (KT, Nov. 23, 2012), should present positive images of a more multicultural Korea.

It also should be noted that the image of Korea as a monoculture is not really the best way to understand her history. Real history, meaning accurate history of Korea and Manchuria, for example, shows that flows of people were much more the norm than our Mercator maps and Rand-McNally atlases would have us believe. Beneath occasional attempts to appropriate multi- and inter-cultural realities ancient and modern for narrow purposes, our past and present is one of human flow in terms of people and trade that present much more interaction and cultural openness. Many cultures, including Korean culture, are really multicultures.

South Korea needs to further update its immigration policies. Illegal aliens and workers should be provided routes to legal status. The Korean government and chaebol should coordinate large-scale economic projects to target related employment and to work with unions in this regard. The growth of Korean culture, hallyu, is not just something that happens outside of Korea. It should include an internal component that extends receptivity to people from other countries who want to live and work temporarily or permanently in Korea. Prudent approaches to immigration policy can only help South Korea and set an example for the world.

Bernard Rowan is director of assessment and program quality, professor of political science and coordinator of international studies at Chicago State University, where he has taught for 19 years.