South Korea’s Emerging New Social Hierarchy

In a recent meeting with the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Corporation (KOTRA), South Korean President Park Geun-hye indicated that many of the country’s youth are going overseas, especially to the Middle East, to find jobs. While Park may think young South Koreans are going abroad to find gainful employment, given South Korea’s position in the global political economy the structural truth is rather different. Foreign workers, women, and students are all moving to the southern half of the peninsula in rising numbers.

According to Lee Jin-kyung of the University of California, San Diego, changing labor flows and immigration patterns are indicative of the rise of South Korea as a “surrogate (sub)empire,” a provocative claim. Lee’s understanding of South Korea’s new role, articulated forcibly in her book Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea, is worth quoting:

Global labor migration and immigration from periphery to core nations, both of which have accelerated in the past three decades or so, have been understood as phenomena that trace their roots to the history of colonialism, as a postcolonial return of the ex-colonized “back” to the metropole. South Korea represents an interesting variation as a postcolonial location that has moved, only very recently, from a neo-colony whose own migrants’ and emigrants’ “return” was destined for the United States, to a sub-empire to which other ex-colonized peoples of Asia migrate, short of reaching metropoles. (p. 31)

Indeed, the world has witnessed a significant structural transformation. Economic growth and development has pushed South Korea (and other “miracle” economies) into a new category within the global capitalist economy. Lee continues:

[T]he recent influx of Vietnamese workers and “immigrant brides” into South Korea is a latter day manifestations of the earlier historical triangulation among Vietnam, South Korea, and the United States. Occupying the position of sub-empire entails performing a series of surrogate labors for the empire. South Korea “develops” peripheral nations, including North Korea, by “technology transfer,” by disciplining the labor force in the offshore locations as subcontracting firms for the United States and other core economies, and by creating a consumer population with “made in Korea” products. In its role as surrogate (sub)empire, South Korea also absorbs part of the formerly colonized populations who would have traveled further to the metropole. (p. 32)

As South Korea absorbs more migrant workers, “mail-order brides,” and other immigrants, the fabric of Korean society will inevitably change, and with it social identities and attitudes. The influx of people of non-Korean lineage appears to be contributing to an interesting shift in national identity among South Korean youth from ethnic-based understandings of “Koreanness” to a civic national identity. While a decline in ethno-nationalism can be interpreted as a good thing, the increase in South Korea’s immigrant population has also generated new social hierarchies.

In a phenomenon described by Seol Dong-hoon and John Skrentny as “hierarchical nationhood,” South Koreans have long distinguished between different kinds of ethnic-Korean immigrants (Korean-Chinese, Korean-American, etc.). Only recently, however, have non-Korean migrants and immigrants constituted a significant slice of the population. This change has precipitated new a discourse on Korean society and, it appears, a new kind of social hierarchy.

A March 31 JTBC “Exploration Plus” segment, entitled “Foreigners disrupt South Korean society? Young people are more negative towards foreigners,” reports and analyzes numbers from a new public opinion survey on what people think about foreigners and multiculturalism in South Korea.

While the title of the segment (and framing of the findings) suggests otherwise, the survey actually shows that most South Koreans are quite comfortable with foreigners. Only one-fifth of the respondents think “foreigners destabilize South Korean society.” There has, however, been a slight increase in feelings of unease about multicultural families. “Three out of ten people believe that multicultural families impede social integration. This number has risen markedly compared to results in 2011 and 2012,” JTBC reports.

Notably, those in their 20s and 30s are less comfortable than their elders. Among those who think foreigners “destabilize South Korean society,” the 20s and 30s age cohorts account for 22.2 percent and 20.4 percent respectively. Numbers for the 40s and 50s age cohorts are significantly lower (16.8 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively). The reason for this variation, as noted in the segment, might be quite simple: young people are competing with some of the foreigners for jobs and university degrees.

However, a relatively large proportion of those in their 20s and 30s also answered “Yes” to the question “Are foreigners’ efforts to adapt to Korean society insufficient?” The data doesn’t provide any answers, but it isn’t unreasonable to think that it isn’t just jobs and university degrees that cause many young people to perceive foreigners in South Korea in a negative light. Race is also a factor.

The breakdown, by country of origin, of negative views toward foreigners shows a racialized hierarchy. The data indicates that South Koreans do not hold negative views toward all foreigners. Only 30 percent of respondents, for example, expressed negative views toward Americans. However, nearly half of survey respondents have negative images of foreigners from “third world” countries (such as the Philippines and Nigeria) as well as those from China.

Again, the data doesn’t provide any answers, but there is a strong reason to suspect that the "surrogate sub-empire,” much like the “core empire,” has generated a racialized hierarchy based on nationality. This should come as no surprise. Racism is as much, if not more, a problem in South Korea as it is in the United States. Given the demand for more migrant labor for South Korea’s small and medium enterprises, interest among rural farmers in foreign brides, and an uptick in the number of foreign students, how South Korean society responds to an increase in its immigrant and non-ethnic Korean population will be a question of rising importance.