Critical re-examination of multicultural education in an emerging diverse society: The South Korean case

In today's Korea, social factors such as the increase of the migration of foreign workers, foreign spouses, and North Korean refugees continue to contribute to the makings of a multi-ethnic society. As acceleration and irreversible changes of such diversity within its demographics occur, multicultural education is becoming an increasingly important social and educational issue in Korea. A great share of curricular responses to such transformations have mostly been state-driven and focused primarily on the minority population resulting from international marriages. With the main goals of such approaches being centered on an assimilation approach, past responses do not incorporate the various complex challenges and needs that come from the diversity within minority groups, nor do they achieve change in the perception of mainstream Korean students; being ineffective of enabling the mainstreamers to gain a better understanding of and empathy for the different minority cultures and the diversity that lies within the Korean society. By examining the Korean case, this paper provides an opportunity to rethink curricular and pedagogical responses to the changing student body in an emerging multicultural society like Korea.