Korean Racism is Something Else

It may sometimes seem as if I'm unfairly ragging on Korea for its racism and xenophobia, but anyone doubting that I'm doing anything more than speaking the truth should read this LA Times story on the Korean response to Hines Ward.

He is a most unlikely national hero, a man who has barely spent any time in South Korea, speaks little of the language and who under other circumstances might be looked down upon in this society.

Ever since Hines Ward was named the most valuable player of the Super Bowl last week, the half-Korean Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver has been the toast of the town. People are talking about throwing parades in his honor. His name dominates the television and radio talk shows; his photo is splayed across the front pages of the newspapers.

Especially popular are close-up shots of his muscular upper arm, tattooed with his name spelled in Korean.

South Koreans' fascination with Hines is not simply a matter of pride, but of curiosity. The 29-year-old athlete is something of a novelty in that his mother is Korean, but his father was an African American GI.

In ethnically homogenous South Korea, such mixed-race offspring are generally viewed with contempt. And because social status is based on being registered under the father's name, children raised by their mothers alone in effect are treated as nonpersons.

Biracial men have been banned from the South Korean military, although the Defense Ministry announced Friday, in a move that some attributed to the Hines Ward phenomenon, that the policy is being changed. (emphasis added)

Unbelievable or what? What were the Koreans thinking, that the foreign DNA in these men would make them liable to treachery or something? It reminds me of nothing so much as Hitler's decision in the middle of the war to purge all "half-Jews" from the Wehrmacht, that's just how odious this mentality is. But wait, there's more:

In interviews with the media here, Kim [Ward's mother] said she did not move back to South Korea because of discrimination against herself and her child. When she visited in 1998 to attend her mother's funeral, she told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, people spat at her because she had been married to an African American.

Even in the United States, Korean immigrants excluded her son from their gatherings because of his racial background. "After that, I told Hines never to hang out with Korean kids," Kim said.

It's incredible that people should think and act like this in our age, and this mentality can neither be "explained" away by the tired old resort to Japanese colonialism or even the mindless references to Korea's unique homogeneity: the fact is that white and Asian faces are pretty damn rare in most of West Africa, but I've never once heard of people from the region acting in this way.

The plain truth is that Koreans - and here I don't mean "gyopos" but actual Koreans living in Korea - are some of the most xenophobic and chauvinistic people on the face of the Earth, and it is this, along with the well-founded suspicion that their grudge against the Japanese owes more to wounded pride in the "superiority" afforded by their "pure blood" [sic] and "5000 [sic] years of history" which makes them so unsympathetic in the eyes of so many foreigners they rush to label "Korea haters"; it's good to see that glimmers of reflection and self-criticism are finally beginning to appear in Korean society, but until this blossoms into something more searching, the country will continue to compare extremely unfavorably to its neighbor to the east, however high its GDP per capita becomes.

PS: Via this blog, another telling indicator of how bad Korean racism is.

This year, Jang pulled off a rare feat for mixed children in South Korea when she graduated from high school.

Graduating from high school is a "rare feat"? Need I say more?

PPS: To get an appreciation for where Koreans get their ideas about black people, you absolutely must not skip over this blog post on textbooks used by Korean schools even in the 1990s. This little picture is especially (ahem) enlightening - if that's the sort of thing those now in their teens and twenties were imbibing courtesy of the Korean educational system, one shudders to think just what hideous prejudices older Koreans harbor.

Comments

[joey]

It's rather pathetic that some Koreans like "wonderboys" are unable to accept the fact that racism exists in South Korea so they have to resort to weak comebacks in which they seek deflect attention from the issue by accusing others of racism. I'm sick of how some Koreans always complain about Japan, but then conveniently ignore the fact that they became mercenaries for the United States in the Vietnam War and committed numerous atrocities against unarmed Vietnamese villagers.

[Jamie Rory]

We are getting married in Korea in a traditional marriage. I am Canadian and she is Korea. It is a big deal and hopefully will help to change some of the perceptions in the country. We are blogging about the experience at http://www.roryandjamie.wordpress.com and our latest post is about racism in Korea. Keep the debate going. It is the only way that things will ever change.

[Account Deleted]

These attitudes exist in ALL parts of society. The are handed down from one generation to another. Personally, I admire people who think for themselves regardless of society or family influence. I teach at an elementary school in Korea and I find Korean childrens attitudes towards children of 'mixed' parentage or children from other Asian countries quite shocking. Kids discriminating kids. Geez, I wonder where they get their attitudes from!!!

I have taught my kids a lesson on cultural stereo types and shown them both positive and negative images of people of different colour. I also teach them not to laugh at each other if their pronunciation isn't quite spot on. French people speak English with an French accent and everybody thinks it's sexy. I don't care about your accent as long as your speech is coherent! I don't give my students English names because they already have names! If people can pronounce Russian, Scottish or whatever, then surely you can try to pronounce a Korean name.

Apart from the constant staring(which is extremely annoying. sometimes i want to gorge someone's eyes out), touching of my hair (ever heard of personal space) and other rude behaviour, the Korean people I have met, have been very polite and respectful. Finally, I'm black and I have dated a Korean guy. The relationship only dissolved because of distant issues and also because he wanted to carry on with his bad- boy persona. Personally, I find that second generation Koreans from other countries be it the US, Australia, Canada or wherever, tend to be more rude and exude a superiority complex far greater than that of born and bred Korean folk.

As for the 'black issue', I think we'll all be wise to learn something from Sarah Kim and Jonathan Kim.(scroll up) They summed up my arguments quite perfectly!

Moral of the story, "treat others as you would like them to treat you," we are all human beings after all!