A street remains empty in Yeongyang, a county in North Gyeongsang Province, in this Sept. 8, 2021 photo. After the revelation of its policy idea of inviting 40 refugees from Myanmar last week, the county office is under growing pressure from residents to abandon the plan. Korea Times photo by Cheong Kwang-jin
Yeongyang, a peaceful county with a population of just around 15,000 in North Gyeongsang Province, hardly ever draws attention from outsiders.
But the county has recently been thrust into the spotlight after its announcement last week that it was in talks with the central government to invite 40 refugees from Myanmar to one of its villages and help them settle there permanently, as part of efforts to help address the issue of its shrinking population.
In the days that followed the announcement, the online bulletin board run by the office has been filled with dozens of complaints calling for county head Oh Do-chang to ditch the plan.
“The idea that depopulation can be solved by multicultural or refugee immigration policies is absurd. That's wrong,” one petitioner wrote. “I hope you come up with a policy to help your own people.”
Many petitioners appear worried that it could be the beginning of what will eventually lead to more immigrants and problems they could potentially bring into Korea such as public safety and religious issues.
“The issue of hosting Myanmar refugees in our country is not just a humanitarian one, but also a matter of public safety. As seen in Europe, as a result of such a policy, many countries have experienced many problems, including a rise in crime,” another petitioner wrote. “The county chief is pushing ahead with the experimental policy despite his obligation to put the safety of his own people first. Yeongyang should not be a refugee testing ground.”
Such hostile reactions have left many officials baffled, according to a person who has direct knowledge of the matter. Now, they are assessing whether it would be politically viable and reasonable to press ahead with the policy as pressure is intensifying for Oh, who faces reelection next year.
Korea is known to have strict immigration policies. It introduced its system to accept foreign refugees in 1994, but only about 1,500 people have been granted refugee status since then. Its acceptance rate stands at 2.7 percent, compared with the average of more than 20 percent among OECD member nations.
When 550 people from war-torn Yemen arrived on Jeju Island to seek asylum between 2016 and 2018, a barrage of petitions against them ensued, which led the government to exclude the Middle Eastern country from its list of visa waiver nations for Jeju and imposed restrictions to bar them from traveling from the island to the mainland.
Yet if Korea is to continue to prosper, it should change course before it is too late, according to Kim Joon-sik, honorary chairman of Asian Friends, a Seoul-based advocacy group for immigrants. He said a strong backlash against the policy idea proposed by Yeongyang County reflects a broader national sentiment against immigrants.
“In the 1960s, many countries in Europe began to accept immigrants in large numbers, who helped them build up those countries for many decades to come,” he told The Korea Times, Tuesday. “It is regrettable that people do not see many of such positive aspects of accepting more immigrants, including refugees, while negative aspects tend to be exaggerated by some politicians and the media.”
Yeongyang has the lowest number of residents among counties in Korea, apart from those on islands. Its population, which was higher than 70,000 in the early 1970s, has fallen steadily to 15,271 as of February. Officials worry the figure will drop below 15,000 by the end of the year.