{"id":37504,"date":"2014-09-29T00:49:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T00:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37504"},"modified":"2014-09-29T00:49:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T00:49:56","slug":"defining-racism-in-s-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37504","title":{"rendered":"Defining racism in S. Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defining racism in S. Korea<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

AsiaOne<\/a>
\n2014-09-05<\/p>\n

The Korea Herald\/Asia News Network<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

“We apologise, but due to Ebola virus<\/a> we are not accepting Africans at the moment.”<\/p>\n

This is what a bar in Itaewon<\/a>, a popular area for expats and tourists in Seoul<\/a>, publicly posted in front of its property last month.<\/p>\n

The statement triggered thousands of angry comments online, both from expats and locals \u2015 especially after the public learned of reports that the bar admitted a white person from South Africa, while banning almost all dark-skinned individuals, regardless of their nationalities.<\/p>\n

The incident is likely to get attention from Mutuma Ruteere<\/a>, the UN special rapporteur on racism. Ruteere is scheduled to visit Seoul later this month to monitor the situation of racial discrimination and xenophobia in Korea and will file a report to the UN Human Rights Council next year.<\/p>\n

The incident is one of the growing number of racism cases in the country \u2015 Asia’s fourth-biggest economy, a key manufacturing powerhouse in the region, as well as the producer of hallyu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While the nation’s immigrant population continues to rise, Korean racism \u2015 both structural and internalized \u2015 is becoming a growing concern to the international community.<\/p>\n

Complex nature of racism in Korea<\/strong><\/p>\n

Korean racism, however, must be understood differently from its Western cousin, experts say.<\/p>\n

It is a complex product of the country’s colonial history, postwar American influence and military presence, rapid economic development as well as patriotism that takes a special pride in its “ethnic homogeneity,” according to professor Kim Hyun-mee<\/a> from Yonsei University…<\/p>\n

…Korean racism also contains internalized white supremacy, Kim added.<\/strong> “After the Korean War<\/a>, Korea became a country with US military presence. At the same time, it was exposed to American popular culture, including Hollywood films, and was influenced by their representation of visible minorities,” Kim said.<\/p>\n

“We need to note that interracial marriage was legally banned in (parts of) the US until 1967<\/a>. The very first children who were sent overseas for foreign adoption in 1954 from Korea were mixed-race children born to African-American soldiers and Korean women.”<\/p>\n

Internalized white supremacy can be seen even in today’s TV shows in Korea, according to a local NGO Women Migrants Human Rights Center of Korea.<\/p>\n

When a Korean person is married to a (white) citizen of Western country, his or her family is referred as a “global family” with a positive connotation by hosts on TV programs, while families consisting of a Korean man married to a woman from a Southeast Asian country is called a “multicultural family,” a term that is rather stigmatizing and discriminatory among Koreans, the NGO wrote in a report to be submitted to UN Rapporteur Ruteere.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Racially insensitive programming on Korea’s national broadcasting networks have also emerged as a problem. In February, national broadcaster KBS aired three Korean comedians, dressed as “Africans” by wearing a curly wig and painting their faces black, in a segment in its comedy show “Gag Concert.” The programme received a criticism from expats here, saying that it was racist and extremely inappropriate…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defining racism in S. Korea AsiaOne 2014-09-05 The Korea Herald\/Asia News Network “We apologise, but due to Ebola virus we are not accepting Africans at the moment.” This is what a bar in Itaewon, a popular area for expats and tourists in Seoul, publicly posted in front of its property last month. The statement triggered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,394],"tags":[17974,228,229,8601],"class_list":["post-37504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-asiaone","tag-korea","tag-south-korea","tag-the-korea-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}