Seoul Lights Up for the Holiday Season - Korea.net

FOREIGN VIEWPOINT
Multiculturalism Starts At Home
South Korea has instituted several programs
aimed at promoting awareness of a nation
evolving towards a more diverse constituency;
from local governments to the national
level, laws have been enacted to ensure a
proactive approach to the challenges of a
multicultural society.
For the Philippines, multiculturalism takes
on greater significance as more than 50,000
of our countrymen reside in South Korea as
students, workers, missionaries or spouses of
Korean nationals. With this trend expected to
continue, I wish to offer my views on multiculturalism,
particularly as it relates to mixed
marriages:
■ It is not enough that South Koreans help
foreign spouses adjust to life in South
Korea. The Korean spouses must also
learn and understand the culture of their
foreign spouses.
■ President Lee Myung-bak once proposed
having Korean men undergo mandatory
education prior to interracial marriage.
The Philippines already implements a
similar program whereby Filipinos going
abroad as fiancés or spouses are required
to attend guidance and counseling sessions
before their departure.
■ Aside from the cultural gap, Korean institutions
should also address the mismatch
in expectations between the
Korean husband and the foreign spouse.
The former expects his spouse to help
him with the family trade and take care of
his parents, but the latter enters the marriage
hoping to be gainfully employed
and thus be in a position to extend economic
help to her own family.
■ Ties to the home country are nurtured
and strengthened specially during special
festivals akin to Chuseok for
Koreans, when families take extra effort
to be together. These events include
Christmas, New Year, birthdays and the
like. Recognition by the Korean spouse
of the need to commemorate these important
occasions will go a long way in
fostering mutual understanding.
■ More opportunities for civic service
BY LUIS T. CRUZ
PHILIPPINE AMBASSADOR TO SOUTH KOREA
should be given to naturalized Koreans.
Many have already taken up positions as
civil servants in their respective local
governments.
■ Foreign spouses should be encouraged
to form interpersonal networks, particularly
with other foreign spouses. These
networks provide invaluable support
systems and reduce the feeling of sadness
and isolation.
■ The Philippine Embassy carries out a program
that introduces Filipino culture not
only to children of multicultural families,
but also to Korean spouses and in-laws.
There should be more of these, and
Korean government institutions and NGOs
should come up with cooperative projects
with embassies and other institutions that
promote inter-cultural understanding.
■ There is a need to educate educators as
well. Because behavior forms at an early
age, parents and teachers must be
aware and wary of discriminatory practices-including
their own.
■ Some Filipino parents I talked to send
their kids to school overseas because of
the reported bullying of their children, the
high cost of education in South Korea
and the strong pressure born by young
students to extend their study and extracurricular
sessions until late at night.
Programs that address the added challenges
faced by multicultural children,
particularly bullying, should be instituted.
■ Foreign spouses, who are often welleducated
in their home countries,
should be given opportunity to pursue
higher learning in South Korea. This will
also make them become more productive
members of society.
■ People-to-people exchange must be
further strengthened. Government
agencies like the Korea Local
Authorities Foundation for International
Relations, an agency under the Ministry
of Government and Home Affairs, assist
in developing sister-city arrangements.
■ Some local and national government
units sponsor a program where family
members of the foreign spouses are invited
to South Korea to get acquainted
with Korean life and culture.
Conversely, Korean NGOs like the YW-
CA, through its Migrant Women’s
Homeland Visiting Project, sponsor
trips of Korean husbands to the country
of their spouses. These should be encouraged.
■ South Koreans must remember that foreign
countries stood by South Korea
when it needed help. Several countries
rushed to its aid during the Korean War.
Now that South Korea is a developed nation,
it is now in a good position to pay
back and help others in the global society
who are also in need.
■ Koreans who study abroad are exposed
to other cultures over a period of time.
They should be harnessed to help promote
multiculturalism in Korea.
To be really effective, programs must not only
permeate all levels of government but also be
endemic in the grassroots. Multicultural families
must themselves be active in promoting
consciousness about the issue. Instead of
merely helping a foreign spouse become assimilated
to Korean culture, South Korea will
do even better by embracing the richness of
cultures naturally present in the homes of interracial
couples and using the knowledge
derived from multicultural families to equip
the nation with a truly global perspective. ■
66 KOREA DECEMBER 2008