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SOUTH KOREA: RACISM CREATES DOUBLE STANDARD FOR MIGRANTS(English IPS News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 19, 2007 (IPS/GIN) -- South Asians and Southeast Asians in South Korea are resentful that Westerners -- particularly those in the country's booming English language teaching industry -- are seen differently from other mirgrants. Rights activists in South Korea have been fighting since August against a crackdown on illegal migrant workers. Bonojit Hussain, a member of the Progressive Students' Union in India and a graduate student at Song Kong Hoe University, said the Korean left focuses on migrant exploitation in a way that "can be problematic if they are not talking about 'white migrants.'" Most "progressives" in S. Korea, he suggested, highlight the plight of migrant workers and push for legal reforms but downplay issues of race, class and nationality, particularly in relation to English-teaching foreign workers from the richer Western countries. Moreover, he said, popular discourse on migration has become more politicized and the word, "migrant" itself usually evokes a negative sentiment. "If you bring the element of class into it, not their class background in their own country but after coming to Korea -- white or brown or yellow or whatever -- then if you add the dynamics of class, then I think we should qualify it this way: 'working-class migrant' and 'elite migrant,'" Hussain said. "There is a distinction -- all white migrants are elite." In 2006, the Korean immigration service issued 29,263 E-2 teaching visas to foreign workers who mostly came from the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The number would be much higher if English-teaching foreigners who work illegally in South Korea are taken into account. According to a 2007 Canadian government study, South Korea spends more per capita on English language education than any other nation. Currently, it spends $4.6 billion on language education abroad and between $2 billion and $4 billion domestically. Meanwhile, according to Amnesty International, approximately 350,000 migrant workers -- or roughly 1.5 percent of the total Korean workforce -- are present in this country of 20 million people. Most South Asian migrants are from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, while those from Southeast Asia come from Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma. According to Hussain, historical factors involving colonialism and knowledge production have allowed white foreigners not to wear the "migrant worker" label. "Koreans look at even me as a migrant worker," said Nur Kholis, a commissioner for the Indonesian national commission on human rights who is a graduate student at Sung Kong Hoe University. Kholis said South Korea's historical allegiance to the U.S., as well as its embrace of capitalism and Minjok ideology (a strain of nationalism based on the idea of "one race, one bloodline") were mostly to blame for many Koreans' racist perceptions toward South Asians and Southeast Asians. He added that Korean people "will try to learn from the white" migrants but tell migrants from poorer countries, "You cannot teach us anything." Nilani Manthrinayake -- a member of Lawyers for Human Rights and Development in Sri Lanka and a graduate student studying Sri Lankan migrant workers -- said: "I think the Korean government wants to get rid of all these illegal migrants. There are many reasons [but especially] if these people get married to Koreans then they become permanent residents of Korea. They don't mind if the Americans do it, but if other people do it, it's a problem." The Korean government has signed agreements with several sending countries, effectively legalizing cheap migrant labor in Korea, she said. In this way, poorer countries also attempt to solve their domestic problems by exporting their labor to richer countries with the expectation of receiving gainful remittances. In recent years, more Sri Lankan migrant workers have opted to go to Korea instead of other popular destinations such as Saudi Arabia, in hopes of receiving higher salaries. "You know the basic [monthly wage] for a migrant in Korea is really about $800," she said. "Compared to [what you get in] Sri Lanka, that is big money, and if you compare to the Middle East, it's also big money. [Sri Lankan migrant workers] think it's big money." Hussain echoed this point and added that migrant workers who come to South Korea require enormous amounts of social capital to make the journey possible. Many of them already come from relatively higher economic backgrounds in their home countries. Therefore, they view their experience in South Korea only as a temporarily intense period in their life to earn up to 20 times what they earn in their home countries. Manthrinayake said, however, that migrant workers in South Korea have made positive strides, including the formation in 2005 of the Migrant Workers Trade Union and the creation of Migrant Workers Television. Copyright 2007 Global Information Network |