This interview with APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin was originally published in Asia Experts Forum, a student-curated journal from the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. Ava Liao, a student journalist pursuing a dual major in International Relations and Media Studies, reported this story.

While Korean national identity was historically defined against Japanese imperialism, in more recent times Korean identity is responding to new influences related to globalization. How has Korean national identity been shaped by the distinctly Korean policy of segyehwa in the face of globalization?

Japanese colonialism was instrumental to the formation of Korean national identity. The Korean peninsula is surrounded by big powers such as China, Japan, and Russia. Even today, these influences are still very strong. A sense of threat is still there. Furthermore, although Korea is divided into North and South, Koreans share a strong sense of ethnic unity. Both North and South Koreans believe that they belong to a single nation, ethnicity, and race. For Koreans, this conflation of nation, ethnicity and race emphasizes the idea that there is a single bloodline going back to Dangun, a common ancestor and the mythic founder of the Korean nation. Even though they are divided, both sides believe that it is unnatural and only temporary and that they will eventually be reunified. 

Korea is very homogeneous; only about five percent of the population is non-ethnic Korean. The issue of maintaining social cohesion in the face of a growing power of globalization ironically strengthens ethnic identity. South Korea is trying to promote Korean culture on the world stage. Look at BTS, for example, and Parasite. Korean culture becoming popular around the world is fairly new and Koreans are really proud of that. The economy has grown greatly, it is a G20 country, and South Korea is proud of exporting its culture so successfully. With globalization, there have also been further efforts to absorb the overseas Korean population into the Korean identity and to utilize them as representatives in their host or resident countries. All these interrelated factors shape Korean national identity.

Your 2012 article “Racist South Korea? Diverse but Not Tolerant of Diversity,” concludes that although South Korea has become multi-ethnic, it has yet to become multicultural. It also outlines how foreigners, migrant workers of Korean ethnicity, and those with darker skin color often face discrimination in South Korea. Have these dynamics changed significantly since 2012?

Not so much. South Korea has been promoting multiculturalism as a policy initiative since 2006, so it is a fairly new phenomenon in Korean society. Foreign brides—from China, Vietnam, and other countries—marry Korean men and move to South Korea. They make contributions to the reproduction of the nation, which has an aging population and a low birth rate. It becomes a question of how to assimilate, and how these foreign brides can be integrated into Korean society. Even though the rhetoric is inclusive, in reality it is not very much so. Foreign brides are taught to assimilate into Korean culture and society, for example, by learning the Korean language, how to make kimchi, and how to respect the elderly. Another respect is in migrant labor, especially unskilled workers from developing countries. They are basically on a temporary visa, have little legal protection, and face a great deal of discrimination. Lower-class ethnic Koreans from China and North Korean defectors are also looked down upon, even if they belong to the same Korean nation. There is a gap between perception and reality. While they are told that they belong to the same nation and ethnicity, in reality, what really matters is class. Class matters much more than ethnicity, nationality, or even citizenship in practice. Foreign brides, migrant workers, and North Korean defectors are treated much poorly in South Korea than say, middle-class Korean-Americans or professionals from developed countries.

Your article also features Park No-Ja’s argument that colorism and white supremacy are inextricably linked in South Korean society. Why is this phenomenon prevalent across East Asia and Southeast Asia?

It reflects the reality of who has power in the world. If you refer back to history, this is very Orientalist thinking. Orientalism is the understanding of the East from the Western perspective, and Asians have not been able to overcome Orientalism. Even in Korea as I mentioned earlier, there is much higher regard for white people coming from developed countries, in comparison to Asians from developing parts of Asia, or Africans. They are not shown much respect. Even with Japan challenging the United States as a competing power in the 1980s and now China, Asians are generally not respected on the international stage as much as Americans, for example. Ironically, that is quite true, or even worse in Asia. 

The Black Lives Matter protest movement that began in the United States has greatly expanded in its global reach, although less so in East Asia. Why has the BLM movement against racism found so little resonance or support in East Asian countries?

If you compare the Black Lives Matter movement to the #MeToo movement, the #MeToo movement had much greater impact in South Korea. BLM has not had very much impact so far in South Korea, Japan, or China for different reasons. Korea had a very strong feminist movement already. #MeToo was immediately embraced by feminists and developed very quickly, but BLM has hardly found any resonance or community in East Asia. 

For Japan and South Korea, ethnic homogeneity is still very strong. There are ethnic minorities, but the population is very small. There have been some movements from ethnic minorities in Japan, but they have very little voice and are not as well-organized as BLM here. In the case of Korea, once again, most ethnic minorities are foreigners and often temporary residents, whereas black people have a much longer history in the U.S. In Korea, the majority came as adults, rather than being born and growing up there. There are some NGOs advocating for the rights of those migrants, but their impact is still limited. China is a different case. The Chinese government officially recognizes 56 different ethnic groups, with Han Chinese being the majority. China is very nervous about the breakup of the national minority structure, which is why they are repressing Xinjiang and Tibet. China suppresses any movements advocating for independence of national minorities. Japan, Korea, and China have not been much receptive to the BLM movement, for these different reasons. 

We can learn a lot from the BLM movement in studying racism in Asia but there exists a separation between Asian Studies and ethnic studies. While race and ethnicity are popular topics of discussion in the U.S., they are not much talked about in Japan or South Korea, which may also explain why there is so little resonance in East Asian countries. We, Asian experts, need to learn from the insights of ethnic studies in addressing racism in Asia.

South Korea notably has no legal protections against racial discrimination. Is this likely to change in the future, given the changing values of the younger generation?

Overall, Korea is improving protection against discrimination, especially with regards to gender and sexual minorities. They are moving in the right direction. In contrast, racial discrimination does not get much attention from the public, the media, or the government because the ethnic minority population is so small. The same goes to religious minority. For example, there are more than 100,000 Muslims in Korea right now, but there are very few Koreans who even know that there are so many Muslims. Most of them do not really understand Muslim culture, and may mainly associate them with terrorists. It is a lack of understanding and ignorance, and even though they exist, Koreans just ignore them. The Black community in Korea is even smaller, so they do not see it affecting Korean society that much. They understand that it is a global issue, but do not see it as their issue yet. 

How has the outbreak of COVID-19 exacerbated racial inequalities in South Korea?

COVID-19 certainly made the situation much more difficult for the foreign unskilled workers in Korea. The majority of them are physical workers in non-office jobs, which means they cannot work remotely. Many of them have been forced out of jobs, so they either have to go back to their country of origin or stay in Korea without stimulus funds or medical and other financial assistance that are available to Korean citizens. Many of them are also illegal or unregistered workers, so they have to hide from the government even if they do have symptoms or come into contact with the virus. Recently, there has been a number of unassisted COVID-19 deaths of unregistered foreign workers in Korea because they avoided seeking medical treatment out of a fear that they might be deported. The pandemic has also increased inequalities for society as a whole, so those already suffering from racial inequality experience it even more. Even here in the U.S., it is one story if a white male spreads COVID-19, but it is another if a Chinese one spreads it. There are similar aspects of racial discrimination in Korea. It makes bigger news if a foreign worker spreads the virus, and feeds into the same kind of prejudice.

In September 2018, Shinzo Abe won a party election, thereby securing his third consecutive term as president of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and getting closer to becoming the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s postwar history. With his current administration now in its seventh year, Abe looks likely to continue implementing the economic policies he started in 2012, dubbed "Abenomics” and based upon “three arrows” of bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy, and structural reform to promote private investment.

Seven years in, with growth visible in many measures of the Japanese economy, has Abenomics truly succeeded? Are there, in fact, shortcomings that the administration needs to address before taking the proverbial victory lap, as Abe is considering the legacy he will leave behind? What are the most important challenges facing the Japanese economy in the near future?

These questions were the focus of an expert panel that APARC’s Japan Program recently hosted at Stanford. The event gathered five experts to go beyond the readily apparent successes of Abenomics in order to examine some of its potential shortfalls.

Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program and moderator for the panel, opened the session by recounting many of the acheivements made by Abenomics: the country’s economy was experiencing its longest expansion in the postwar period—73 months and counting; real GDP was increasing; and the unmployment rate had fallen below 2.5%, with significant growth in female workforce participation.

And yet by other measures, Abenomics could be viewed as having missed several of its major goals. Inflation remains around 0.5%, and even after extending the target date from 2020 to 2025, it appears unlikely that the Japanese government can achieve primary balance. Additionally, and even though the government changed the way it calculated nominal GDP (leading to a possibly-inflated bump), the economy was still unlikely to reach the target goals of 600 trillion yen GDP along with 3% nominal growth and 2% real growth as set by Abenomics.

Joshua Hausman, assistant professor of public policy and of economics at the University of Michigan, discussed Abenomics targets for inflation. Hausman explained to the audience that Abenomics expressed goal of raising inflation was meant to achieve three benefits. First, GDP would see growth due to increased domestic spending ahead of inflation. Second, by raising nominal interest rates above 0%, the Bank of Japan would have more leeway to lower rates during a recession. And third, raising the rate of inflation would help erode Japan’s substantial government debt.

However, argued Hausman, while the Bank of Japan was hopeful that their actions would encourage businesses to raise prices, there has yet to be a significant change in the inflation figure. And while there has been growth in the GDP, the amount of change mirrors that of the period between 1993 and 2007, well before Abenomics. The Bank of Japan, concluded Hausman, desserves credit for what it has achieved, but should consider alternative courses of action.

Takatoshi Ito, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, noted that the Abe administration was also unlikely to achieve its goal of a primary balance in the next six years. Even after raising the consumption tax in 2014 (and with indications that another tax hike would occur in October of this year), the mark was unlikely to be achieved, because even as tax revenue were increasing, so too were expenditures made by the Abe government.

Another impact area of Abenomics, and focus of previous events by the Japan Program, is “womenomics,” or the economic policies’s influence on women’s presence and roles in the workforce. Nobuko Nagase, professor of labor economics and social policy at Ochanomizu University, Japan, shared several of the ways in which the administration appeared to be successfully addressing gender inequality in the economy. One big achievement has been the increase in the number of female university graduates who have children and are able to obtain better-paying jobs. Previously, as little as 30% of the female workforce in Japan remained employed following either marrage or a first child; the present figure has risen to 48%. And while across all management levels the growth of women has been relatively flat, among the middle and lowest tier management positions, there have been modest improvements in female representation.

Nagase noted, however, that there was still much to be done. Abenomics has not been successful in increasing the participation of fathers in childcare. Additionally, while both men and women had seen reductions in the long work hours for which Japan is notorious, improvement in narrowing the gender pay gap has been slow, especially in large-size firms. The most important challenges, said Nagase, are reforming the japanese labor practice of long-term employment and the seniority-based pay system, changing household models from full-time working husband and dependent housewives to double income households with children, and re-regulating labor rules to protect non-standard employees.

Panelist Steven Vogel, professor of Asian studies and of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, considered the extent to which the third arrow of Abenomics has hit the mark. He suggested that the Japanese government had succumbed to the ideological trap that regulations were a hindrance to the markets. Before Abe, explained Vogel, deregulation models had led to increases in non-regular work, expansion in inequality, and lower overall consumption. And while under Abe there was a continuation of appetite for deregulation—for example, the establishment of 10 dereguation zones over several cities—there is some evidence, albeit mixed, of it having a positive impact: profits are up, but capital investment and labor’s share of income are both down.

“Don’t expect huge economic impact from deregulation per se,” noted Vogel. Japan needs to improve its model of corporate governance, and it needs labor market reform, he concluded.

The panel was cohosted by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership. For related information, as well as published reports, see the Japan Program’s research project The Political Economy of Japan under the Abe Government.

On August 9, 2018 the Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC) Japan Program hosted a conference, "Break Through: Women in Silicon Valley, Womenomics in Japan." Women thought-leaders and entrepreneurs from Stanford, Silicon Valley, and Japan came together to discuss innovative ideas for narrowing the gender gap, and cultivating interpersonal support networks and collaboration across the pacific. The program combined panel presentations with participatory exercises and startup showcases which afford participants the opportunity to 1) discuss progress and challenges in women's advancement in Silicon Valley and Japan, 2) share practices and organizational features that better enable the hiring and retaining of women, 3) showcase Silicon Valley and Japanese women entrepreneurs and 4) provide tools for branding and building support networks. 

The Break Through conference was supported by the Acceleration Program in Tokyo for Women (APT), a program that aims to shape a new narrative by providing opportunities for women entrepreneurs to build networks, receive mentoring, and become a focal point for dynamism. The program, spearheaded by Tokyo's first female governor, Yuriko Koike, is undertaken by the Tokyo Metropolitan government and supported by Tohmatsu Venture Support. 

The full conference report, now available, outlines the issues and offers an analysis of the themes that were discussed in the presentations, panels and participatory exericses throughout the day. 

Download the Full Report

The Korea Program invites junior faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to apply for travel awards to attend an upcoming two-day conference organized by the Korea Program at Stanford' Asia-Pacific Research Center. The workshop titled "Future Visions: Challanges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America" will be held on November 1st and 2nd, 2018 at Stanford University.

The awards will cover accepted applicants' lodging, domestic airfares, and/or ground transportation. To apply for the travel awards, please submit your CV and 2-page statement as a single file by July 15 here.

About the conference:

“Future Visions: Challenges and Possibilities of Korean Studies in North America,” is designed to bring together leading scholars in the fields of language education, literature, history, social sciences, and library studies. Each panel will consist of three-four scholars who will be tasked with presenting a report on the state of the field. The purpose of the panels is to generate discussion around some of the following questions: 

Accepted applicants are expected to actively participate in discussion sessions and to engage in networking with other scholars during the 2-day conference.

Please direct questions on the conference to hjahn@stanford.edu.