Immigrant Policy Attitudes in South Korea: Moving Beyond a "One Ethnicity" Society

Background/Purpose: The term “danilminjok” refers to Koreans belonging to one ethnic group. This belief that Koreans share one “blood and ancestry” was originally created to ward off imperialist threats in the early 1900s (Shin, 2006). However, the notion of “danilminjok” is being challenged by the rapid growth in immigration to South Korea (SK), consisting of predominantly low-income workers and marriage immigrants from China and Southeast/South Asia. In the past two decades, SK’s immigrant population has grown from 308,339 in 1998 to 2,049,441 in 2016 (Statistics Korea, 2018). However, there is a dearth of research on immigrant incorporation and policy attitudes in non-Western countries such as SK. In light of this year’s theme, “Social Work Science for Social Change,” the present study aims to empirically investigate SK’s policy attitudes toward racial/ethnic minority immigrants and explore whether Western models explain immigrant inclusion in non-Western advanced countries.

Methods: The study used a cross-sectional sample of 400 SK adults, aged 20-59, from the 2014 Awareness of Multicultural Acceptance Survey(AMAS) by the Korea Institute of Public Administration. Based on Castles’s (1995) typology of immigrant policy, the dependent variables were differential exclusion (4 items; e.g., “immigrants threaten Korean tradition/culture”), assimilationist (2 items; e.g., “government should support naturalized citizens learn the Korean language/culture”), and pluralist (3 items; e.g., “government should help the public understand diverse traditions/cultures") policy attitudes. Taking the item mean, each policy-attitude variable ranged from 1(SD) to 6(SA). Independent variables included gender, age (M=41), education level, income level, frequency of overseas travel, and overseas living experience. One-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H-tests were run on Stata15 to examine whether policy attitudes varied by these demographic traits. Additionally, OLS regressions were run to examine whether support for undocumented immigrants differed by policy typology controlling for sociodemographic characteristics.

Results: Neither gender nor age difference was found in policy typology. There was a marginally significant difference in assimilationist policy attitudes by education (p=0.05); and a statistically significant difference in pluralist attitudes by income levels (χ2 (9)=23.94, p=0.004). Post-hoc tests revealed that the difference lay between the second-and third-highest income groups (p<0.05). Those with more overseas-travel experience exhibited greater pluralist attitudes; whereas no difference was observed by overseas-living experience. By immigrant group, females and those with higher incomes, more travel experience, and greater pluralist attitudes were more likely to support undocumented immigrants, ceteris paribus (p <0.05).

Conclusions/Implications: This is one of the first empirical studies to model immigrant policy attitudes in an economically-advanced Asian country using Castles's typology. The results suggest that an average Korean supports a mix of all three policy types and that demographics are less useful in distinguishing policy attitudes in SK than in Western developed countries. A massive immigrant influx is a fairly new phenomenon in SK. It is possible individuals have yet to form clear positions. Nonetheless, evidence suggests higher education and income are associated with a more inclusive society. Thus, the potential role of social workers in educating the public, generating civic discourse, and designing multicultural/pluralist programs in a formerly-homogenous country will be discussed.