Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea

<p>This book aims to capture the complicated development of Korea from monoethnic to multicultural society challenging the narrative of “ethnonational continuity” in Korea through a discursive institutional approach.</p><p>At a time when immigration is changing the face of South Korea and an increasingly diverse society becomes empirical fact this doesn’t necessarily mean that multiculturalism has been embraced as a normative policy-based response to that fact. The approach here diverges from existing academic analyses which tend to conclude that core institutions defining Korea’s immigration and nationality regimes — and which crucially also reflect a basic and hitherto unyielding commitment to racial and ethnic homogeneity — will remain largely unaffected by increasing diversity. Here this title underscores the critical importance of “discursive agency” as a necessary corrective to still dominant power and interestbased arguments. In addition “discursive agents” are found to play a central role in communicating promoting and helping to instill the ideas that create a basis for change on the road to remaking Korean society.</p><p><em>The Road to Multiculturalism in South Korea </em>will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian studies immigration and migration studies race and ethnic studies as well as comparative politics broadly.</p>