Multicultural education and the rights to education of migrant children in South Korea

TLDR

Racism rooted in Korea’s colonial past persists today, and as the country shifts toward a multicultural society, immigrants face discrimination and human‑rights abuses that underscore the urgent need for multicultural education to confront racism. The study reviews the state of multicultural education for migrant children in South Korea and argues that it must be reoriented through decolonizing thinking and aligning with children’s education rights and global justice. The authors conduct a review of the current state of multicultural education for migrant children in South Korea and advocate for its critical reorientation.

Abstract

This study reviews the current state of multicultural education for migrant children in South Korea and calls for a critical reorientation of multicultural education for all. Racism was deepened during the colonial period in Korea, and continues to this day. Thus I argue that the ambivalent, dualistic ethnic prejudice distorted by colonialism can be resolved only through a decolonization of thinking. Currently South Korea is moving from being a homogeneous and mono‐cultural community into a heterogeneous and multicultural society. In this context, immigrants are subject to discrimination and excluded from ethnocentric Korean society, and abused in terms of universal human rights. This is the environment for the urgently needed multicultural education. Multicultural education is one of the avenues through which we are able to confront racism today throughout the world. Multicultural education in Korea needs to be reconsidered in accordance with the rights to education for all children and in keeping with global justice.