KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

South Korea's policy on multicultural families has achieved remarkable progress since the mid-2000s when the country legislated the Multicultural Family Support Act; formed departments dedicated to multicultural family policy at the central government level; and prepared inter-departmental coordinating systems. However, the policy is likely to leave out some groups if it fails to embrace all the groups prescribed by the law and the system. Focusing on female Korean-ethnic Chinese marriage immigrants, male marriage immigrants and their families who are excluded from the policy, this study aims to examine the policy demands of these groups, their experiences with receiving policy benefits, and the limitations of policy approaches for them.

This study analyzed the original data of the 2009 national survey about the actual conditions of multicultural families and the use of multicultural family support centers by sub-groups of marriage immigrants. The analysis showed that compared to other ethnic Koreans, female Korean-Chinese marriage immigrants were often excluded from multicultural family policy.

Due to the particular backgrounds of their parents, Korean-ethnic Chinese people have high demands for their children's identity issues, parent-child relationships, social discrimination, and the pursuit of better jobs. Though they solve many daily problems when they join their families and relatives staying in Korea, they are limited in coping with critical issues, such as children's problems and a parent's role in school. They have had experiences with using institutional services in the past but it is notable that they no longer maintain their relationships with the institutions.

Male marriage immigrants faced serious problems with their children being isolated from peers due to their different appearance. They were also aware of the problem of being treated as “permanent foreigners” regardless of their acquisition of Korean nationality. Also, their networks were limited in sharing alternatives because of heterogeneity or differences in group members. Their use of services was also limited to support for children's learning, one-time cultural experiences, etc., and it is hard to resolve their deep-felt policy demands through the policy.

“Distancing” of existing policies from multicultural family policy has also had a significant impact because the policies viewed these groups as lacking something or identified them as having negative traits. In addition, previous policies set policy agendas centering on married immigrant women who were still adjusting to Korean culture and their Korean husbands. Policy implementers at front-line agencies have insufficient systems to clearly identify demands from local policy targets at institutional levels. Even if some agencies were able to identify some of the demands, they still had difficulty attempting to implement a constant approach to policy demands because they could hardly expect stable support for budgets.

Therefore, this study developed the following suggestions: ① Shift from a support-centered to a social participation-oriented paradigm ② Coordinate specialized projects for multicultural families and vitalize joint participatory programs ③ Diversify programs for marriage immigrants ④ Expand services for children from multicultural families ⑤ Form a marriage immigrant council, taking into account the distribution of gender and former nationality ⑥ Establish a support system for developing programs in response to regional and target-specific demands ⑦ Enhance front-line officials' understanding of target groups ⑧ Improve user management of service agencies and their business operation systems and ⑨ Vitalize functions connecting resources and information at the regional level.