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| Daedong Elementary School. Capture from school's website |
By Hwang Jae-ho
One out of 14 Koreans is in an international marriage ― more than 7 percent. This is numerical evidence that Korean society is becoming more accepting of international marriages compared with the past.
Nowadays, we see celebrities who are married to non-Koreans, and fluent Korean-speaking foreigners through TV programs. Along with the media, many organizations have campaigns that might steadily change our perspective on multicultural families.
In the past, we were used to distinguishing "the foreigners" through their skin color and thought they could not get along with Korean society. However, the bias and repulsion have certainly vanished in some areas.
There is a special elementary school in Seoul that has a majority of children who come from multicultural families. It is Daedong Elementary School, established in the 1980s. Daedong is in Yeongdeungpo and is designated a "World Citizens School" by the Seoul Education Office. Its reputation is famous among multicultural families. This week, I met the principal of Daedong, Choi Young-nam.
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| Choi Young-nam, the principal of Daedong |
The number of Chinese students at Daedong has dramatically increased compared with four to five years ago. Back in 2015, the ratio of multicultural children (who come from international marriages or foreign parents) was less than half. However, today we are recording 318 out of 445, which is about 71.5 percent. Among the 318, 95 percent of parents have Chinese nationality. We have 302 (67.9 percent) Chinese, 127 (28.5 percent) Koreans and 16 (3.6 percent) who come from other countries, including Southeast Asia. So the rumor that every Daedong student is Chinese is totally untrue.
Q: How are you operating Daedong? Is there any particular way?
I was appointed as the principal of Daedong on March 1 this year. I still remember that day. It was a pretty heavy burden for me to work in Daedong back then, because of Daedong's unique conditions. However, as I live my everyday with them I see Daedong children's manners and purity as a considerable merit. Also, how parents respect teachers actually comforts the mood in Daedong. Though the academic achievement might be slow, teachers and administration members feel very stable with the parents. Now my vision is to strengthen the weak. While thousands of Koreans are heading to China to learn Chinese, why don't we develop our special conditions to improve ourselves? My ultimate goal is to build Daedong into a place where children with various nationalities can light-heartedly come and learn.
Q: Are there any difficulties caused due to cultural differences?
I don't witness particular cultural collisions, but know there is big difficulty in the language barrier. In this sense, many of the students are in fact falling behind in the standard academic levels, in such as Korean or math. To overcome this inevitable barrier, we are having afterschool supplementary classes and operating a program at library where senior students can voluntarily read the books out loud to the juniors. This actually works very well and builds bonds among students. Besides the academic part, we are also having a "Let's Commend" program for healthy minded growing. In this little box of compliments, anyone from friends and teachers to parents can freely participate. We systemized this program that every week we select the most highly laudable student and officially share compliments through the school broadcast. Similarly, we united our greetings to each other as "love you." By doing so, we are encouraging and letting them know they deserve respect and being cared for.
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| "Box of Compliment" |
The toughest difficulty is definitely the negative views on multicultural families and Daedong from society. Especially, since the parents usually maintain their Chinese nationality and get job visas, most people consider they only exploit benefits such as free meals and free compulsory education until they go back to their country. In addition, the majority of the Korean parents whose children attend Daedong do not have positive thoughts on the image Daedong has: the "Multicultural School." Since Yeongdeungpo is one of the deteriorating areas in Seoul, lack of budget and human resources, and serious deterioration of facilities are urgent matters which must be solved soon.
Q: What might be most necessary for Daedong's development?
Of course budget. I recently submitted the application for support to the city council. Because we need a globalized faculty, we are in need of more support in that. Furthermore, liberalizing the curriculum will help Daedong to operate smoothly. Though all the Korean elementary schools share the same subjects in the same frames, a blanket application to Daedong is quite harsh; it might be more efficient if we could liberalize a little.
Q: Is there any other comment you'd like to add?
I personally consider myself as a pioneer of a multiculturalized Korea. In other words, I feel fruitful but on the other hand have some kind of obligation to navigate Daedong in the right direction as a role model. There still is a lot to do. Many programs must be systemized to be settled. Then my dream is to lead Daedong into being a public globalized elementary school. In our efforts, we are trying to improve public awareness by planning a sustainable campaign that will see Daedong recognized as a school where children wish to come.
Korean people are generally referred as the "one" ethnic group; but now it would not be easy to say that. Korea has maintained its people, language and cultural community based on similar values and view of the world. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, thousands of foreign laborers rushed into the country and young foreign women also came in. Today, there are more than 2 million foreigners in Korea, which is 4.2 percent of the total population.
At the same time, the social adjustment of the increasing number of multicultural children is a key point for Korea's further development. If Korean society can successively integrate them, they will provide potential energy for future development. If it fails, it will create the social conflict that many Western countries are now grappling with. In this globalized world, a multicultural society might be competitive since it is based on diversity. If we strengthen these factors, it will be to our advantage. I support Daedong Elementary School's brave efforts to achieve success.
Hwang Jae-ho is director of the Global Security Cooperation Center, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul. Ko Sung-hwah, a researcher at the center, assisted Professor Hwang with the article.
