In April, Incheon Metropolitan Office of Education announced that eight school-age children from the refugee help center on Yeongjong Island would attend an alternative education institute for multicultural children.

It was a bittersweet ending for the children dubbed by local media as “education refugees” after their attempt to enter local Youngjong Elementary School was thwarted by protests from parents.

The parents of the school said they did not want their children to share the classroom with students of African and Middle Eastern decent. The IMOE decided it was unwise for the children to attend a 40-student school due to concerns over “cultural clashes.”

In light of the increasing number of asylum seekers in South Korea, the country enacted the Refugee Act in 2013 to provide humanitarian protection for them. The law stipulates that foreigners who have applied for refugee status and their families are entitled to the same level of primary and secondary education as Korean citizens if they are underage.

But even though the law seeks to provide the basic facilities for those forcibly displaced, the prevailing social prejudice and racism in the country remains a hindrance for the refugees as they try to settling down. 

This is not the first time the refugee help center made headlines in relation to the anti-refugee sentiment. Back in July 2013 when the facility was about to launch operations, local residents of Yeongjong Island held protests against the center.

“Is Yeongjong Island a prison? What is the deal with the refugee center?” read one of the placards hoisted by civic groups, who vowed to “oppose the center to death.” It was a not-so-subtle indicator of the prejudice some Koreans have for refugees and foreigners in general.

Korea’s hostility toward foreigners appears to have been fueled by reports that the number of crimes committed by foreigners has increased. Rep. You Dae-woon of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy recently called for governmental countermeasures on the rising crime by foreigners, pointing out that criminal cases involving foreigners jumped from 22,543 in 2010 to 30,684 in 2014. The number of arrests per 100,000 also rose from 824 to 882 in the same period.

But local experts say discrimination is one of the major reasons the foreigners commit crimes.

Kim Jung-hyu, a professor of American Studies at Keimyung University, studied the cases of 800 immigrants in Korea and extrapolated that financial distortion, discrimination and mistreatment were the most important factors that lead to crimes by immigrants.

“Immigrants feel greater pain from being victimized by crime than local residents, because social minorities suffer more from the same damage. ... This means victimized foreigners are likely to be angrier (than victimized Koreans),” he wrote in an article, “Foreign Migrants: symbolic violence and discrimination,” published in the journal Korean Criminological Review.

Such discrimination has ailed Vincent ― not his real name ― who fled political oppression against minorities in his African home country in 2012.

He is currently waiting for the Justice Ministry to approve of his application for refugee status. The ministry tallies the number of asylum seekers from 2010-2014 at 9,155, but roughly 1 in 30 have been accepted as a refugee.

Vincent and the remaining thousands live outside the protection of the social welfare system, receiving medical treatment, and on the insecure G-1 visa ― a temporary residential visa for asylum seekers, foreigners involved in lawsuits, and others allowed to stay on humanitarian grounds.

Three years, the birth of a child, and many nights of struggle have passed since Vincent first handed in his paperwork.

“I am here with my family. My kid was born in Korea, but she does not have a document because of my current status,” he said. The Youngjong Elementary case had a particular meaning to Vincent, who says he is concerned about the education of his 2-year-old daughter.

“The law seems to be very tight for children. There should be a way to make children feel that they belong to the universe,” he said. “I worry everyday (about my daughter) because she has to go to school soon. I don’t know how to handle that.”

Another hurdle standing in the way of the 36-year-old African is his G-1 visa.

“My former boss used (my status) to his advantage. He made me and my wife work overtime without providing food or anything. He used to call us (expletive) every day,” said Vincent.

“His problem was that we’re Africans, we are refugees; we don’t have a choice.”

One day, things got heated between Vincent and the employer, who terminated the contract. When he went to the labor office, the officials did not overrule the termination and told him to pursue legal action.

Vincent now runs a small business on a porter truck he bought. “Getting a job is not easy,” he said.

He said that even many who do not know that he is an asylum seeker give him a hard time because of his ethnicity.

“When you have black skin, it doesn’t work well for you (in Korea),” he said.

During his time working at a factory, he recounted there was a “caste system” among workers, even immigrants. Chinese, whose appearance and culture are relatively similar to Koreans’, were at the top while Africans were at the very bottom.

“You get into a bar and there is only one seat left. And there is a Korean sitting near. You go sit there, and he just leaves. Nobody’s going to sit beside you. Same in the subway,” he said.

Vincent said his wife came home crying one day because, Korean women who worked with her gave her a hard time, saying “Namsae! Namsae! (smell!).”

“I understand it’s a culture that is not very familiar with foreigners, especially Africans. It’s very common practice,” he said. “Believe me, I don’t feel comfortable with that. But I don’t have a choice.”

Despite the rising number of multicultural families, Korea remains a largely homogeneous society in terms of ethnicity and culture. According to Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, there are some 820,000 members of multicultural families in 2015, roughly 1.6 percent of the country’s 51.5 million population.

There is a widespread belief that Korea is a country of single ethnicity. Up until 2007, the country’s high school history textbook stated that Korea was “one of the rare countries in the world that retains a tradition of a single-ethnicity society.”

The strong sense of nationality by Koreans is well demonstrated in their interest and pride toward prominent foreign individuals of Korean descent, such as World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim, or celebrities like golfer Michelle Wie or retired footballer Hines Ward, whose mother is Korean.

Such sentiment of “one nation,” however, also makes it harder for Koreans to accept people of foreign descents.

But Seol Dong-hoon, a professor of sociology at Chonbuk National University, warned against vilifying the anti-refugee movement as collective selfishness.

“We need to pay attention to what the people are complaining about. Many problems can occur from the government driving all the refugees into one place,” he said, pointing out that many of the people seeking refugee status are at the bottom of the social ladder.

“Putting all the (refugee) children at one school can be difficult for teachers who have to take care of them. Local residents are also concerned over the possibility that the concentrated refugee population will convert their town into a slum.”

He said that the authorities must take measures, which can include distributing the refugee children to several adjacent schools. “We have to approach the issue from a systematic point of view. We can’t just say ‘Oh, these people are selfish,’ and be done with it.”

Experts like Seol say Korea need to find ways to persuade people of Korea to amicably accept refugees as part of the society. Refugees say an open-minded attitude is a precondition for this to happen.

“I think Korea will be even better if some people could have an open mind for foreigners. Give a little leeway for foreigners to express themselves, get to know them even better. Because you judge me when you don’t know me,” said Vincent.


By Yoon Min-sik
(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)