In the past 8 years, South Korea (hereafter Korea) has experienced a multicultural explosion-a growing emphasis on multiculturalism in both popular and political discourse. After demonstrating how multiculturalism has been framed as a means, indicator, and object of individual and national development, this article focuses on the improvement of global rank as one reason for the shift in Korea. In the course of diffusing the discourse and policies of multiculturalism, international intergovernmental organizations frame cultural diversity, and tolerance as a matter of development: Cultural diversity is necessary for individual and national development, and the more developed a society is, the more tolerant its people are. Korea's self-perception as a nation in the middle of the global economic and symbolic hierarchy encourages multiculturalism as a way to move toward the core. The Korean case then suggests a possible reason for the retreat of multiculturalism in Western Europe. In Western European countries, the failure of multiculturalism is blamed on (illiberal) immigrant minorities rather than on majority groups, so that retreating from multiculturalism does not threaten perceptions of liberality, democracy, or core status. In Korea, in contrast, achieving multicultural tolerance is construed as a task that nonimmigrant majority Koreans must achieve in order for the nation to gain the status of a truly developed country.
The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) voted in favor of allowing dual citizenship (156 in favor, 19 against, and 17 abstentions) in April 2010. Using South Korea as a case study, I make one methodological and one substantive argument regarding official acknowledgment of dual citizenship. First, de jure acknowledgment of dual citizenship will be likely to exhibit a path-dependent progression, from zero tolerance, to mere tolerance, and to official acknowledgment. Therefore, I argue that a study of dual citizenship needs to take into account various legislative changes that are indicative of increasing tolerance toward dual citizenship. Substantively I argue that introduction of de jure dual citizenship in South Korea indicates officialization of the strategy of flexible citizenship employed both by upper-class South Koreans and by the South Korean government. For upper-class South Koreans, dual citizenship has become a strategy to pass their class privilege on to their children while, for the South Korean government, dual citizenship has become a strategy to attract resource-rich overseas Koreans and global talent.
This paper analyses the discourse of the migrant worker advocacy movement in South Korea to examine how activists' strategic framing can expedite the mobilisation of international norms despite significant cultural barriers. Korean activists argue on behalf of migrant workers that adopting international norms will help the Korean nation gain more respect from other nation-states and that international norms are not antithetical to the true nature of the Korean nation. These framing strategies have enabled Korean activists to mobilise international norms despite cultural barriers. However, such a framing strategy does not cultivate a truly inclusive nationhood; Korean activists have circumvented cultural barriers, but have not overcome or transformed them.
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