South Korea: Xenophobia and Discrimination

Apart from the part about the multiculturalism museum and foreign envoys, some interesting aspects about xenophobia and racism:

After a weeklong investigation into racism and xenophobia here, U.N. Special Rapporteur Mutuma Ruteere said on Oct. 6 that it was clear South Korea faced challenges related to its growing foreign community.

In addition to encouraging the government to pass antidiscrimination legislation, “South Korean authorities need to fight racism and discrimination through better education, as well as ensuring that the media is sensitive and conscious of the responsibility to avoid racist and xenophobic stereotypes,” according to a press statement on the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

But just days after he left South Korea, Donga Ilbo, one the country’s largest news dailies, published a report on Oct. 10 that warns Korean women “to be wary of foreign men” buying them a drink at a night club. The report warns all Korean women of “foreign men,” based on innuendo and two vague allegations.

Examples of racial insensitivity here have recently garnered international attention. In August, a bar in Itaewon tried banning “Africans” from entrance “due to Ebola.” Earlier this year, an advertising campaign for a cigarette brand, This Africa, featured a chimpanzee dressed as a news broadcaster. Periodic incidents of performers wearing blackface on major TV networks here to solicit cheap laughs attracted international attention this year.

To its credit, the government investigated recent reports of overt discrimination against migrant workers hired as low-paid, unskilled manual laborers. It was those complaints that instigated the visit by the U.N.

Envoys come out for multiculturalism.