Multicultural and Global Citizenship in a Transnational Age: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

Transnational flows and influx influence perspectives about the concepts of citizenship limited within nation-state borders. The author challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship education in order to explore possibilities for the advancement of both multicultural citizenship and global citizenship education. He situates South Korea’s case within this discourse and suggests multicultural citizenship and global citizenship education as alternative, defensible, and appropriate paradigms at the transnational and global age. In the final part of the paper, he discusses the implications of this paradigm for citizenship education in South Korea.

Retos y tareas de Educación para una Ciudadanía Global en Asia Oriental: política de asimilación de los estudiantes de familias multiculturales en Corea del Sur

“…For its opportunities, Korea quickly adopted the theme of global citizenship and the school curriculum made efforts to revise the contents of textbooks in 2000s, reducing the emphasis on Korean traditional and national concept (MOON & KOO, 2011). On the other hand, there exist challenges to develop global citizenship education due to the social political issues in the society: assimilation approaches to multicultural education (MOON, 2010). In fact, there is empirical evidence that suggests young nationals lack critical thinking on cultural diversity in the society.…”

“…Korean scholars have criticized that the multicultural education policies of multicultural family students focus on liberal assimilation, forming a single nationality (MOON 2010;KANG 2010;KIM 2011). They argue that the existing multicultural education curricula drive MF students to be equipped with Korean values instead of supporting their cultural originalities.…”

Facing multiculturalism’s challenges in Korean education and society

“…Apparently, the Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST) has recognized this problem, and since 2008 has shifted its emphasis toward a student-centered focus that attempts to avoid collectively isolating and stigmatizing a category of students (Lee 2010b). 14 The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology had, at some point, considered creating bilingual education programs for the children of ''multicultural families'' (Kwak 2008;Park and Jung 2009), although the programs apparently have not been widely implemented (Moon 2010). If bilingual education is adopted for ''multicultural'' children, and not for their classmates whose parents are 12 As Jun (2011) has pointed out, in Korea (and, I would add, elsewhere), multiculturalism writ broadly ''has been inseparable from the subject of education…[E]specially among concerned civic groups and academics, there often has been no clear-cut distinction between the discourses on multiculturalism and the discourse on multicultural education' ' (pp.…”

Towards Progressive and Dynamic Multicultural Education: Teachers’ Awareness of Multicultural Education in South Korean Schools

“…South Korea has boasted relative ethnic and racial homogeneity for some time, and its schools long celebrated the concept of Danil Minjok (Ethnic Uniformity or One-Blood Ethnicity) as the basis for national pride and identity (Watson, Park & Lee, 2011;Moon, 2010). This pride was challenged as the nation experienced an explosion of cultural diversity in recent years.…”

“…Many of these multicultural students come from families where one or both of the parents emigrated from different parts of Asia. Some of the parents settled in Korea after marrying a Korean citizen while others sought to improve their economic circumstances by seeking employment and over-staying their working visa to become undocumented or illegal immigrants (Moon, 2010;Tschong, 2009;Won, 2008). Still others came to Korea as refugees from North Korea to escape both economic and political hardships.…”