Voices of Foreign Brides: The Roots and Development of Multiculturalism in Korea
By Kim Choong-soon
(AltaMira Press)


One of the stars to emerge from last year’s silver screen hit “Punch” was Jasmine Lee.

The Filipino-born Korean actress and activist, who rose to prominence as a panelist on KBS TV’s multicultural show “Love in Asia,” also appeared as an immigrant in the box-office hit.

Aside from the film and TV roles, Lee was appointed one of Seoul City’s first foreign civil servants last year. The fluent Korean speaker initiated a variety of charity and voluntary projects, and was awarded by Corea Image Communication Institute for her contribution to Korean multiculturalism this month.

Her life story, which pivots around her impressive career in spite of the sudden death of her Korean husband in 2010, has been popularized by the local media.

Yet scholar Kim Choong-soon’s latest English-language book, “Voices of Foreign Brides: The Roots and Development of Multiculturalism in Korea,” instead focuses on the “voiceless” migrant women in Korea whose experiences haven’t mirrored Lee’s success.

The book examines Korean multiculturalism with a focus on the roughly 160,000 “foreign brides” who have married Korean men and made Korea their second home. Kim explores shared problems that the women encountered while living in Korea, including racial and cultural discrimination, domestic violence, poverty, illegal international matchmaking and suicide, while arguing that the government had been “ill-prepared” to deal with them.

Kim points out that Korea has received a warning from the U.N. Commission on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that it must come up with solid measures to protect the women and their children against discrimination and mistreatment.

The well-researched and well-written book presents interesting analysis of the history of Korean immigration and assimilation, as well as countless real-life cases of present-day migrant women in Korea. In one of its sections where Kim explores Korea’s violation of human rights cases against the women, readers are introduced to a Mongolian woman’s shocking story.

The woman, who hadn’t been informed by her marriage broker that her Korean husband-to-be was hearing impaired and impotent before her wedding, had to endure tremendous pressure and abuse from her in-laws who placed all the blame on her for not conceiving a child.

Other notable cases presented by Kim are those of “Joseonjok” ― Chinese people of Korean descent ― women, who are very often expected or forced to speak fluent Korean and have no problem understanding traditional Korean culture of their in-laws, although they grew up in Chinese-dominant culture.

“If I were from Vietnam or the Philippines, they wouldn’t expect as much,” a woman tells Kim in the book. “But since I am of Korean ancestry, they expect more from me. But, you see, I am Chinese and just happen to have Korean ancestry.”

All in all, the book is a meaningful study of Korean multiculturalism, as well as a valuable record of the present-day ethnic minorities and their shared experiences in Korea.

Kim, who currently serves as the president of the Cyber University of Korea, was formerly a university faculty scholar and professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He has published numerous articles in a variety of scholarly journals, as well as books written in English.

His notable publications include “Anthropological Studies of Korea by Westerners” (2000) and “Kimchi and IT: Tradition and Transformation in Korea” (2007).

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)