The Korea Immigration Office reports that the number of foreigners who reside in Korea is about 11.5 million in 2010 and it will be grown every year. According to Cho sun daily newspaper’s January first, 2010 article, 20 percent of Korean general population will comprise of inter-racial marriage families. This alludes that Korea is multi-cultural society. It sounds like the Korea follows a good path of globalization with global village. But, there are three disadvantage sides of being multicultural society such as fail of establishing identity, lower nation image, and medical insurance.
The first weakness is that identity crisis of second generations. Chung-Ang University’s psychology professor, Park Jun-sung, states that 50 percent of interracial marriage’s juniors think they are foreigner in his work, Elementary School Adjustment in Korea of Children from Multi-culture. Also, 40 percent of second generation of interracial marriage replies that they are both Korean and foreigner even though their surrounding groups think they are foreigner. The others’ perspective affect greatly to their lives until around the adult, as well. For example, if children’s mother or father doesn’t speak Korean well so they cannot teach Korean to their children, their children’s ability of Korean delays and the time when the kids enter the elementary school is also pushed back. The worse thing is that the rate of dropout students in middle, high school is more sextuple than students who have Korean parents. According to research in government offices conducted by the National Assembly, 69.6 percent high school aged adolescents don’t attend school because of their differences from other students and identity crisis.
The other problem is that Korean national image can fall down because of violent and gross people who look down people from other culture. The paper, International Marriage Migrant Women’s Real Damage and Solution, produces lots of examples. In 2007 bride from Vietnam named Huanmami was broken her 18 ribs and dead because of her husband’s assault. Also in March 2008 Chinese bride death leaped to avoid her husband’s beating. Not only these two occurrences but also so many harm illustrations exist. In addition Korean Law of International Marriage has weak points. One point is that there is no duty to inform to international marriage people about their spouses’ history of violent crime, drug addiction, alcoholic, and financial problem. Also, if migrant people want to get visa, there are so many complicated processes. Like this, laws for migrant women’s position, right as a human and stable sojourn don’t exist. For reasons of these violent exemplify, community of nations think that Korea doesn’t have any consideration so they don’t want to interact with Korea.
Third weakness is that problem of medical insurance. Kim Hae-sung who is the representative of Policy Research of Multicultural Family Forum says that about 65 percent foreigner don’t have health insurance. Also, multicultural family’s low join rate of health insurance is big problem because the rate of unfaithful pay rises. So, although many foreigners live in Korea with their Korean family, they can’t receive proper pay. In addition they are in the blind spot of medical treatment so they can’t get treatment when they have to go to hospital.
Be global, be familiar, and show how good multicultural society Korea has! The problem is not way of showing Korean international culture and society. The matter is that just absorbing which the world says goodness without serious thought about being a multicultural society. First of all, this is the most important thing is that Korean society should find out some negative conditions such as the identity, image, and medical problem. After concern about all possible things and prepare comprehensive countermeasure, Korea can show how great multicultural society Korea have.