The Korea Herald Wants to "Help" Multicultural Families

[justkyhdding.livejournal.com]

[Editorial] Multicultural children

"All-out efforts needed to properly educate them"

It has been repeatedly warned that Korea’s future is being overshadowed by its falling birthrate coupled with a rapidly aging population. Over the past years, the country’s birthrate has remained the lowest among major developed nations, with its population, which now numbers around 50 million, aging at the fastest pace in the world.

According to recent data from the national statistics office, the proportion of working-age people ― those aged between 15 and 64 ― in Korea is forecast to decrease from its peak of 72.9 percent in 2016 to 49.7 percent in 2060. This means that, in about four decades, each Korean worker will on average have to support an elderly person.

The core working-age population aged 25-49 has already shrunk since 2006.

This demographic trend is prompting government policymakers to work out a series of measures designed to raise the birthrate. But their efforts have not been very effective, as shown in the fact that the country’s fertility rate ― the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime ― was down 0.11 from the previous year to a mere 1.187 last year.

Besides pushing for measures to increase the number of newborns, it is also necessary ― perhaps more important ― to educate younger generations to become more competitive and adaptive to society. With regard to this, more attention should be paid to the need to take care of children from multicultural families. Their number has exceeded 200,000, with about 5 percent of newborn babies being born into multinational families last year.

They should be educated to become full members of society. With their multicultural backgrounds, they might grow up to play a valuable role in making Korean society more diversified and inclusive.

To our regret, the reality is far from this expectation. Nearly all multicultural children enter elementary school but only about 70 percent of them enter middle school. The proportion of multicultural students who have graduated from high school is thought to be far below 50 percent, with few of them having opportunities to be admitted into universities. Most of these undereducated children will likely end up being jobless, with little hope for their future.

Unless this gloomy situation is addressed effectively at an early stage, it will become yet another destabilizing factor for our society. Some rural communities across the country, where nearly all newborns are children born between Korean husbands and immigrant wives, may collapse altogether.

Our future should not be like this. All-out efforts should be made consistently and persistently to get children from multicultural families to be properly educated and become good citizens who contribute to enhancing the stability and prosperity of our society. One effective ― and probably indispensable ― measure is to provide more substantial support for immigrant mothers to encourage them to pass at least elementary school qualifications. This achievement would help them nurture and inspire their children.




What is this POS

Ignorant Herald, gif: credit to owner

Comments

[torontok.livejournal.com]

Might be the sociology student in me speaking but I think this idiotic article went way off base.They should be discussing what factors are keeping mixed-race children out of school or scoring lower in schools, addressing bullying,lack of language proficiency maybe,lack of societal acceptance, material factors etc etc.Not just: Let's educate the dummies.'

[agoongprincess.livejournal.com]

i feel like an idiot OP so correct me if i'm wrong but this doesn't seem to awful? it seems they're trying to help multi cultural students and children get the education they deserve. it seems a bit like affirmative action in the usa, helping people who traditionally have limited access to higher education by setting up firm foundations of education so that in the future they'll be just as advantaged as other students.

the assumption immigrant mothers don't even have elementary level education is horrid and ignorant though.

[justkyhdding.livejournal.com]

I'm not arguing about the intentions, though the aim is more about maintaining economic growth rather than producing well rounded and functional members of society (though we can't do much about that). But this articles starts with talking about "all-out efforts" and the only suggestion they can come up with is to send migrant mothers back to primary school?

This article is basically making migrant families into scapegoats (put all the responsibility on them to instigate change and then blame then when that change obviously doesn't happen), instead of reflecting on what mainstream Korean society needs to do to produce well-educated Koreans, especially multicultural kids, like the things torontok listed above.

[agoongprincess.livejournal.com]

you're totally right. i see that after reading it again.

[agoongprincess.livejournal.com]

ooo this is really well written and explained thank you!

[premonitioner.livejournal.com]

This stems from the fact that a lot of multicultural families are rural Korean men who have bought a foreign wife (literally, they pay for South East Asian women to be brought to Korea to marry them) who doesn't speak Korean, then the man is at work all day and the wife is the one tasked with raising a child in a country where she can't speak the language. The kids end up starting school with limited language skills and then the issues of bullying kick in and the kids drop out, don't go to middle school and then don't become 'valuable members of society'.

This article pisses me off because they created this problem by allowing these men to fucking buy wives and then expecting the women to be perfect members of Korean society the second they set foot on Korean soil.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

ALL OF THIS.

Korea does everything, but acknowledge the real problem. This doesn't even account for the fact that most of these children are poor, at least half of their fathers are probably abusive (verbally, emotionally, physically), oh and they have HUGE identity crisis that never get properly treated with.

[undeniablysarah.livejournal.com]

Amen

[asth77.livejournal.com]

ia completely with you.

[yakuniku-8.livejournal.com]

I dont understand the 70% enter middle school. Can you leave school at 10 years old?

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

They can if their teachers are the same people telling them not to come to school.

[mjspice.livejournal.com]

What kind of BS? Remain ignorant as always S.Korea.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

What Korea needs to do is get really anti-bully practices and it's blatant prejudice/racism. Bullies get a way with too much there, mainly because it's more like an entire class turning against 1 person. People need to teach children that it's okay to be "different".

This solution only fixes one-side of the problem. The non-mixed kids (and their parents) are a much bigger part of the problem. It would be interesting to know what the numbers are for just rural areas, because I know a lot of the smaller farming towns would have a significant number of mixed kids which should make bullying them hard (since they would be the "norm").

P.s. STOP WITH THE LEGAL GLAMOURIZED SEX-TRADE FOR THE POOR, OLD, SINGLE FARMER!

[digitalqueen.livejournal.com]

its too eaarly to be this pissed off.

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

This seems to be more of a problem with the school system than with multi-national families though.
IA with the intentions though, it's terrible that multi-national children aren't completing their education, but it's the system that needs to help them. Placing the blame on their mothers is just shitty.

[atopworld.livejournal.com]

Trash.

[ariellm13.livejournal.com]

Honestly the numbers are probably way off. What happens with a lot of mixed kids(Korean kids with dual nationality) is that they find trouble in school because they aren't "Korean" enough. Their parents pull them out and have them homeschooled or just schooled in their other country. This is where the problem comes in. Most Dual Korean citizens have two names. Different name for their respective countries. For example, let's say there is a mixed Korean American kid named Andre Kim. In America his legal name is Andre Kim while in Korea his legal name is Kim Jisun. He attends school in Korea from age 4-10 but his parents decide that ultimately they prefer him to continue his education in the states. In the states they take into account Andres other legal persona(Kim Jisun) because in America you need documentation that your child was receiving an education but then they proceed to enroll him as Andre Kim. Done and simple. In Korea however, Kim Jisun was just pulled out of school. Gone from the Korean education system without a trace because Andre Kim doesnt exist in Korea. Kim Jisun then goes onto the list of kids not currently receiving an education even though he is in school in America.

TLDR: A kid with two legal personas gets booked under only one of them in Korea. If they don't do something under the Korean persona then it's likely to not be recorded.

[lobotronic.livejournal.com]

I like how the blame is put on multicultural kids for not trying hard enough, when the reasons they don't go to high school and university is because THE KOREAN KIDS TEASE, BULLY, AND EXCLUDE THEM. literally korean citizens are treating multicultural kids like trash. exceptions exist--I had a kid with an Indonesian mom in my middle school last year (I was teaching) and he was a valued member of the class. However most multicultural kids are literally pusshed out of the school system and given no opportunities.

the multicultural kids don't need extra education. it's the korean kids and their parents need the sensitivity training and education.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Eh no, the blame is not put on the kids anywhere in the text. More education for groups of the people who receive less education is unequivocally a good thing. Of course it doesn't offer any answers to how exactly that should be done, so it's a bit of a "duh" thing, and in that answer there's obviously a big job to be done in making society wake up to its multicultural realities, but the thing pointed out in the article, that more effforts to keep this group of people in school is important, is not any less true because of that. It's baffling that people react this way to this op ed.

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

But are some of the children not going on to higher education because their families are sending them away or moving away from Korea?
Honestly after working in the education system there I wouldn't send my kid there past elementary school. I'd move back to the U.S. or something.